ALLAN. Do you know what is worse than anything else? It is to sit still and keep silent while the old ones talk nonsense--I know that I am better informed than they on some matters--and yet I must keep silent. Well, pardon me, I am not counting you among the old.
ALLAN. Perhaps because we have only just now become acquainted----
CURT. And because--your ideas of me have undergone a change?
CURT. During the years we were separated, I suppose you didn't always think of me in a friendly way?
ALLAN. One, and it was very unfavourable.
CURT. Ten years ago my hair turned gray in a single night--it has since then resumed its natural color without my doing anything for it--Let us talk of something else! There comes your aunt--my cousin. How do you like her?
ALICE. [_Enters dressed in a very light-colored walking-suit and carrying a sunshade_] Good morning, Curt.
[_Gives him a glance signifying that_ ALLAN _should leave_.
ALICE _takes a seat on the sofa to the left_.
ALICE. [_In some confusion_] He will be here in a moment, so you need not feel embarrassed.
ALICE. Of course--Once I forgot myself, when in you I saw the liberator, but you kept your self-control--and for that reason we have a right to forget--what has never been.
ALICE. However--I don't think _he_ has forgotten----
CURT. You are thinking of that night when his heart gave out and he fell on the floor--and when you rejoiced too quickly, thinking him already dead?
ALICE. Yes. Since then he has recovered; but when he gave up drinking, he learned to keep silent, and now he is terrible. He is up to something that I cannot make out----
CURT. Your husband, Alice, is a harmless fool who has shown me all sorts of kindnesses----
ALICE. Beware of his kindnesses. I know them.
ALICE. He has then blinded you also? Can you not see the danger? Don't you notice the snares?
ALICE. Think only, I have to sit here and see disaster stalking you like a cat--I point at it, but you cannot see it.
CURT. Allan, with his unspoiled vision, cannot see it either. He sees nothing but Judith, for that matter, and this seems to me a safeguard of our good relationship.
CURT. A flirtatious little thing, with a braid down her back and rather too short skirts----
ALICE. Exactly! But the other day I saw her dressed up in long skirts--and then she was a young lady--and not so very young either, when her hair was put up.