Gustav.  Oh, Hell!  Then you had better take back your God—­if you needs must have something to kow-tow to!  You’re a fine atheist, with all that superstition about woman still in you!  You’re a fine free-thinker, who dare not think freely about the dear ladies!  Do you know what that incomprehensible, sphinx-like, profound something in your wife really is?  It is sheer stupidity!—­Look here:  she cannot even distinguish between th and t.  And that, you know, means there is something wrong with the mechanism.  When you look at the case, it looks like a chronometer, but the works inside are those of an ordinary cheap watch.—­Nothing but the skirts-that’s all!  Put trousers on her, give her a pair of moustaches of soot under her nose, then take a good, sober look at her, and listen to her in the same manner:  you’ll find the instrument has another sound to it.  A phonograph, and nothing else—­giving yon back your own words, or those of other people—­ and always in diluted form.  Have you ever looked at a naked woman--oh yes, yes, of course!  A youth with over-developed breasts; an under-developed man; a child that has shot up to full height and then stopped growing in other respects; one who is chronically anaemic:  what can you expect of such a creature?

Adolph.  Supposing all that to be true—­how can it be possible that
I still think her my equal?

Gustav.  Hallucination—­the hypnotising power of skirts!  Or—­the two of you may actually have become equals.  The levelling process has been finished.  Her capillarity has brought the water in both tubes to the same height.—­Tell me [taking out his watch]:  our talk has now lasted six hours, and your wife ought soon to be here.  Don’t you think we had better stop, so that you can get a rest?

Adolph.  No, don’t leave me!  I don’t dare to be alone!

Gustav.  Oh, for a little while only—­and then the lady will come.

Adolph.  Yes, she is coming!—­It’s all so queer!  I long for her, but I am afraid of her.  She pets me, she is tender to me, but there is suffocation in her kisses—­something that pulls and numbs.  And I feel like a circus child that is being pinched by the clown in order that it may look rosy-cheeked when it appears before the public.

Gustav.  I feel very sorry for you, my friend.  Without being a physician, I can tell that you are a dying man.  It is enough to look at your latest pictures in order to see that.

Adolph.  You think so?  How can you see it?

Gustav.  Your colour is watery blue, anaemic, thin, so that the cadaverous yellow of the canvas shines through.  And it impresses me as if your own hollow, putty-coloured checks were showing beneath—­

Adolph.  Oh, stop, stop!

Gustav.  Well, this is not only my personal opinion.  Have you read to-day’s paper?

Adolph. [Shrinking] No!