MASTER. No ghosts, however!
CONSUL. How about your memories?
MASTER. They don't walk. They are only poems wrought by me out of certain realities. But if dead people walk, then you have ghosts.
CONSUL. Well, then—in your memory—who brings you the prettiest mirage: the woman or the child?
MASTER. Both! I cannot separate them, and that's why I never tried to keep the child.
CONSUL. But do you think you did right? Did the possibility of a stepfather never occur to you?
MASTER. I didn't think that far ahead at the time, but afterward, of course, I have had—my thoughts—about—that very thing.
CONSUL. A stepfather who abused—perhaps debased—your daughter?
MASTER. Hush!
CONSUL. What is it you hear?