TEMPTER. Now I'll leave you gentlemen for a while. But soon we'll meet again. (He goes out.)
CONFESSOR. I saw you just now with a woman! So there are still temptations?
STRANGER. Not the kind you mean.
CONFESSOR. Then what kind?
STRANGER. I could still imagine a reconciliation between mankind and woman—through woman herself! And indeed, through that woman who was my wife and has now become what I once held her to be having been purified and lifted up by sorrow and need. But...
CONFESSOR. But what?
STRANGER. Experience teaches; the nearer, the further off: the further from one another, the nearer one can be.
CONFESSOR. I've always known that—it was known by Dante, who all his life possessed the soul of Beatrice; and Beethoven, who was united from afar with Therese von Brunswick, knew it, though she was the wife of another!
STRANGER. And yet! Happiness is only to be found in her company.
CONFESSOR. Then stay with her.