STRANGER. You've been a child yourself, and you must remember how we, when we'd just married, came to your mother in rags, dirty and without money. I seem to remember she didn't find us very sweet.

LADY. That's true.

STRANGER. And I... well, just now I met Sylvia. And I expected that all that was beautiful and good in the child would have blossomed in the girl....

LADY. Well?

STRANGER. I found a faded rose, that seemed to have blown too soon. Her breasts were sunken, her hair untidy like that of a neglected child, and her teeth decayed.

LADY. Oh!

STRANGER. You mustn't grieve. Not for the child! You might perhaps have had to grieve for her later, as I did.

LADY. So that's what life is?

STRANGER. Yes. That's what life is. And that's why I'm going to bury myself alive.

LADY. Where?