PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Bows his head.] And laying my life waste.

IRENE.

[Suddenly firing up.] It was just that I wanted!  Never, never should you create anything again—­after you had created that only child of ours.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Was it jealously that moved you, then?

IRENE.

[Coldly.] I think it was rather hatred.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Hatred?  Hatred for me?

IRENE.

[Again vehemently.] Yes, for you—­for the artist who had so lightly and carelessly taken a warm-blooded body, a young human life, and worn the soul out of it—­because you needed it for a work of art.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

And you can say that—­you who threw yourself into my work with such saint-like passion and such ardent joy?—­that work for which we two met together every morning, as for an act of worship.

IRENE.

[Coldly, as before.] I will tell you one thing, Arnold.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Well?

IRENE.

I never loved your art, before I met you.—­Nor after either.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

But the artist, Irene?

IRENE.

The artist I hate.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

The artist in me too?

IRENE.

In you most of all.  When I unclothed myself and stood for you, then I hated you, Arnold—–­

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Warmly.] That you did not, Irene!  That is not true!

IRENE.

I hated you, because you could stand there so unmoved—–­

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Laughs.] Unmoved?  Do you think so?

IRENE.

—­at any rate so intolerably self-controlled.  And because you were an artist and an artist only—­not a man! [Changing to a tone full of warmth and feeling.] But that statue in the wet, living clay, that I loved—­as it rose up, a vital human creature, out of those raw, shapeless masses—­for that was our creation, our child.  Mine and yours.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.