ALICE. You may well ask! While still engaged we parted twice; since then we have been trying to part every single day—but we are chained together and cannot break away. Once we were separated—within the same house—for five whole years. Now nothing but death can part us. This we know, and for that reason we are waiting for him as for a liberator.
CURT. Why are you so lonely?
ALICE. Because he isolates me. First he "exterminated" all my brothers and sisters from our home—he speaks of it himself as "extermination"—and then my girl friends and everybody else.
CURT. But his relatives? He has not "exterminated" them?
ALICE. Yes, for they came near taking my life, after having taken my honour and good name. Finally I became forced to keep up my connection with the world and with other human beings by means of that telegraph—for the telephone was watched by the operators. I have taught myself telegraphy, and he doesn't know it. You must not tell him, for then he would kill me.
CURT. Frightful! Frightful!—But why does he hold me responsible for your marriage? Let me tell you now how it was. Edgar was my childhood friend. When he saw you he fell in love at once. He came to me and asked me to plead his cause. I said no at once—and, my dear Alice, I knew your tyrannical and cruel temperament. For that reason I warned him—and when he persisted, I sent him to get your brother for his spokesman.
ALICE. I believe what you say. But he has been deceiving himself all these years, so that now you can never get him to believe anything else.
CURT. Well, let him put the blame on me if that can relieve his sufferings.
ALICE. But that is too much——
CURT. I am used to it. But what does hurt me is his unjust charge that I have deserted my children——