OVER THE JAWS OF THE CROWD
Tarrasch.
Excellent! Excellent! (To Rada) You should have seen our brave soldiers laughing—do you remember, Brander—at a little village near Termonde. They made the old vicar and his cook dance naked round the dead body of his wife, who had connived at the escape of her daughter from a Prussian officer.
Nanko.
Ah, that was reality, wasn’t it? None of your provincial respectability about that, none of your shallow conventionality! That’s what the age wants—realism!
Tarrasch.
It was brutal, I confess; but better than British hypocrisy, eh? There was something great about it, like the neighing of the satyrs in the Venusberg music.
Rada (sinking on her knees by the couch and sobbing).
God! God!