MASTER. Quite strange to me! Your voice, glance, manner----
MASTER. That I cannot tell!--They say that not a single atom in a person's body remains wholly the same after three years--and in five years everything is renewed. And for that reason you, who stand over there, are not the same person as the sufferer who once sat here--you seem such a complete stranger to me that I can only address you in the most formal way. And I suppose it would be just the same in the case of my daughter, too.
GERDA. Don't speak like that. I would much rather have you angry.
GERDA. Because of all the evil I have done you.
MASTER. Have you? That's more than I know.
GERDA. Didn't you read the papers in the suit?
MASTER. No-o! I left that to my lawyer. [_He sits down_.
MASTER. No, why should I? As I don't mean to marry again, I have no use for that kind of documents.
MASTER. What did those papers say? That I was too old?
MASTER. Well, that was nothing but the truth, so that need not trouble you. In my answer I said the very same thing and asked the Court to set you free again.
MASTER. I said, not that I _was_, but that I was about to _become_ too old _for you_!
MASTER. Yes.--I couldn't say that I was too old when we married, for then the arrival of the child would have been unpleasantly explained, and it was _our_ child, was it not?
MASTER. Do you think I should be ashamed of my age?--Of course, if I took to dancing and playing cards at night, then I might soon land in an invalid's chair, or on the operating-table, and that would be a shame.
MASTER. Did you expect the divorce to kill me?
MASTER. There are those who assert that you _have_ killed me. Do you think I look like a dead man?
MASTER. Some of your friends are said to have caricatured me in the papers, but I have never seen anything of it, and those papers went into the dump five years ago. So there is no need for your conscience to be troubled on my behalf.
MASTER. Don't you know why a man marries? And you know, too, that I didn't have to go begging for love. And you ought to remember how we laughed together at all the wiseacres who felt compelled to warn you.--But why you led me on is something I have never been able to explain--When you didn't look at me after the marriage ceremony, but acted as if you had been attending somebody else's wedding, then I thought you had made a bet that you could kill me. As the head of the department, I was, of course, hated by all my subordinates, but they became your friends at once. No sooner did I make an enemy than he became _your_ friend. Which caused me to remark that, while it was right for you not to hate your enemies, it was also right that you shouldn't _love_ mine!--However, seeing where you stood, I began to prepare for a retreat at once, but before leaving I wanted a living proof that you had not been telling the truth, and so I stayed until the little one arrived.