THE OFFICER. Come!
THE LAWYER. [Enters again] Now I go back to my first hell—this was the second and greater. The sweeter the hell, the greater—And look here, now she has been dropping hair-pins on the floor again. [He picks up some hair-pins.
THE OFFICER. My! but he has discovered the pins also.
THE LAWYER. Also?—Look at this one. You see two prongs, but it is only one pin. It is two, yet only one. If I bend it open, it is a single piece. If I bend it back, there are two, but they remain one for all that. It means: these two are one. But if I break—like this!—then they become two.
[Breaks the pin and throws the pieces away.
THE OFFICER. All that he has seen!—But before breaking, the prongs must diverge. If they point together, then it holds.
THE LAWYER. And if they are parallel, then they will never meet—and it neither breaks nor holds.
THE OFFICER. The hair-pin is the most perfect of all created things. A straight line which equals two parallel ones.
THE LAWYER. A lock that shuts when it is open.
THE OFFICER. And thus shuts in a braid of hair that opens up when the lock shuts.