GERDA. You don't look it——
MASTER. Did you expect the divorce to kill me?
The silence of GERDA is ambiguous.
MASTER. There are those who assert that you have killed me. Do you think I look like a dead man?
GERDA appears embarrassed.
MASTER. Some of your friends are said to have caricatured me in the papers, but I have never seen anything of it, and those papers went into the dump five years ago. So there is no need for your conscience to be troubled on my behalf.
GERDA. Why did you marry me?
MASTER. Don't you know why a man marries? And you know, too, that I didn't have to go begging for love. And you ought to remember how we laughed together at all the wiseacres who felt compelled to warn you.—But why you led me on is something I have never been able to explain—When you didn't look at me after the marriage ceremony, but acted as if you had been attending somebody else's wedding, then I thought you had made a bet that you could kill me. As the head of the department, I was, of course, hated by all my subordinates, but they became your friends at once. No sooner did I make an enemy than he became your friend. Which caused me to remark that, while it was right for you not to hate your enemies, it was also right that you shouldn't love mine!—However, seeing where you stood, I began to prepare for a retreat at once, but before leaving I wanted a living proof that you had not been telling the truth, and so I stayed until the little one arrived.
GERDA. To think that you could be so disingenuous!
MASTER. I learned to keep silent, but I never lied!—By degrees you turned all my friends into detectives, and you lured my own brother into betraying me. But worst of all was that your thoughtless chatter threw suspicions on the legitimacy of the child.