MRS. WEGRAT
How can you talk like that?
REUMANN
Well, am I not right?
MRS. WEGRAT
Just as if I couldn't feel how all of us, deceivers and deceived, must seem equally contemptible to you in particular!
REUMANN
Why to me in particular...? What you call contempt, madam—supposing I did feel anything like it—would, after all, be nothing but disguised envy. Or do you think I lack the desire to conduct my life as I see most other people conducting theirs? I simply haven't the knack. If I am to be frank, madam—the deepest yearning of all within me is just to be a rogue: a fellow who can dissemble, seduce, sneer, make his way over dead bodies. But thanks to a certain shortcoming in my temperament, I am condemned to remain a decent man—and what is still more painful perhaps: to hear everybody say that I am one.
MRS. WEGRAT (who has been listening with a smile)
I wonder whether you have told the truth about what is keeping you here in Vienna?