Then where is the burning desire for me that you fought and battled against when I stood freely forth before you as the woman arisen from the dead?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Our love is assuredly not dead, Irene.

IRENE.

The love that belongs to the life of earth—­the beautiful, miraculous earth-life—­the inscrutable earth-life—­that is dead in both of us.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Passionately.] And do you know that just that love—­it is burning and seething in me as hotly as ever before?

IRENE.

And I?  Have you forgotten who I now am?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Be who or what you please, for aught I care!  For me, you are the woman I see in my dreams of you.

IRENE.

I have stood on the turn-table-naked—­and made a show of myself to many hundreds of men—­after you.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

It was I that drove you to the turn-table—­blind as I then was—­I, who placed the dead clay-image above the happiness of life—­of love.

IRENE.

[Looking down.] Too late—­too late!

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Not by a hairsbreadth has all that has passed in the interval lowered you in my eyes.

IRENE.

[With head erect.] Nor in my own!

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Well, what then!  Then we are free—­and there is still time for us to live our life, Irene.

IRENE.

[Looks sadly at him.] The desire for life is dead in me, Arnold.  Now I have arisen.  And I look for you.  And I find you.—­And then I see that you and life lie dead—­as I have lain.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Oh, how utterly you are astray!  Both in us and around us life is fermenting and throbbing as fiercely as ever!

IRENE.

[Smiling and shaking her head.] The young woman of your Resurrection Day can see all life lying on its bier.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Throwing his arms violently around her.] Then let two of the dead—­ us two—­for once live life to its uttermost—­before we go down to our graves again!

IRENE.

[With a shriek.] Arnold!