GERDA. All that I took back!
MASTER. The word that's on the wing cannot be pulled back again. And worse still: those false rumours reached the child, and now she thinks her mother a——
GERDA. For Heaven's sake!
MASTER. Well, that's the truth of it. You raised a tall tower on a foundation of lies, and now the tower of lies is tumbling down on your head.
GERDA. It isn't true!
MASTER. Yes, it is! I met Anne-Charlotte a few minutes ago——
GERDA. You have met——
MASTER. We met on the stairs, and she said I was her uncle. Do you know what an uncle is? That's an elderly friend of the house and the mother. And I know that at school I am also passing as her uncle.—But all that is dreadful for the child!
GERDA. You have met——
MASTER. Yes. But why should I tell anybody about it? Haven't I a right to keep silent? And, besides, that meeting was so shocking to me that I wiped it out of my memory as if it had never existed.