CURT. [Watching ALICE] Why, Alice, what does this mean? Your hair has turned gray in these two nights!
ALICE. No, my friend, it has long been gray, and I have simply neglected to darken it since my husband is as good as dead. Twenty-five years in prison—do you know that this place served as a prison in the old days?
CURT. Prison—well, the walls show it.
ALICE. And my complexion! Even the children took on prison color in here.
CURT. I find it hard to imagine children prattling within these walls.
ALICE. There was not much prattling done either. And those two that died perished merely from lack of light.
CURT. What do you think is coming next?
ALICE. The decisive blow at us two. I caught a familiar glimmer in his eye when you read out that telegram from Judith. It ought, of course, to have been directed against her, but she, you know, is inviolate, and so his hatred sought you.
CURT. What are his intentions in regard to me, do you think?
ALICE. Hard to tell, but he possesses a marvellous skill in nosing out other people's secrets—and did you notice how, all day yesterday, he seemed to be living in your quarantine; how he drank a life-interest out of your existence; how he ate your children alive? A cannibal, I tell you—for I know him. His own life is going, or has gone——