STRANGER. Later. Everything comes later.
CONFESSOR. Yes. If it doesn't come at once! (He goes out. The LADY enters pensively and sits down at the table, opposite the STRANGER.)
STRANGER. What? You back again? The same and not the same? How beautiful you've grown; as beautiful as you were the first time I ever saw you; when I asked if I might be your friend, your dog.
LADY. That you can see beauty I don't possess shows that once more you have a mirror of beauty in your eye. The werewolf never thought me beautiful, for he'd nothing beautiful with which to see me.
STRANGER. Why did you kiss me that day? What made you do it?
LADY. You've often asked me that, and I've never been able to find the answer, because I don't know. But just now, when I was away from you, here in the mountains, where the air's purer and the sun nearer.... Hush! Now I can see that Sunday afternoon, when you sat on that seat like a lost and helpless child, with a broken look in your eyes, and stared at your own destiny.... A maternal feeling I'd never known before welled up in me then, and I was overcome with pity, pity for a human soul—so that I forgot myself.
STRANGER. I'm ashamed. Now I believe it was so.
LADY. But you took it another way. You thought...
STRANGER. Don't tell me. I'm ashamed.
LADY. Why did you think so badly of me? Didn't you notice that I drew down my veil; so that it was between us, like the knight's sword in the bridal bed....