STRANGER. I fully believe it. But your husband represents a still more interesting case. He has created a new character for himself out of lies. Tell me: isn't he a coward in facing the struggles of life?
MRS. WALSTRÖM. Of course he is a coward!
STRANGER. And yet he boasts of his courage, which is nothing but brutality.
MRS. WALSTRÖM. You know him pretty well.
STRANGER. Yes, and no!—And you have been living in the belief that you had married into a respected family which had never disgraced itself?
MRS. WALSTRÖM. So I believed until this morning.
STRANGER. When your faith crumbled! What a web of lies and mistakes and misunderstandings! And that kind of thing we are supposed to take seriously!
MRS. WALSTRÖM. Do you?
STRANGER. Sometimes. Very seldom nowadays. I walk like a somnambulist along the edge of a roof—knowing that I am asleep, and yet being awake—and the only thing I am waiting for is to be waked up.
MRS. WALSTRÖM. You are said to have been across to the other side?