AXEL, You seem to be filled with malicious delight, Bertha. Oh, I feel that a great hate is beginning to grow in here. [Indicating his breast.]
BERTHA. Perhaps I look delighted because I've had a success, but when one is tied to a man who cannot rejoice in another's good fortune, it's difficult to sympathize with his misfortune.
AXEL. I don't know why, but it seems as if we had become enemies now. The strife of position has come between us, and we can never be friends any more.
BERTHA. Can't your sense of justice bend and recognize me as the abler, the victorious one in the strife?
AXEL. You are not the abler.
BERTHA. The jury must have thought so, however.
AXEL. But surely you know that I paint better than you do.
BERTHA. Are you so sure of that?
AXEL. Yes, I am. But for that matter—you worked under better conditions than I. You didn't have to do any pot-boiling, you could go to the studio, you had models, and you were a woman!
BERTHA. Yes, now I'll hear how I have lived on you—