TEMPTER. I don't know! Perhaps a larva or a chrysalis, out of whose trance-like life a man one day will be created. She seems a child, but isn't one; she is a sort of child, and yet not like one. Drags downward, when the man pulls up. Drags upward, when the man pulls down.
STRANGER. She always wants to disagree with her husband; always has a lot of sympathy for what he dislikes; is crudest beneath the greatest superficial refinement; the wickedest amongst the best. And yet, whenever I've been in love, I've always grown more sensitive to the refinements of civilisation.
TEMPTER. You, I dare say. What about her?
STRANGER. Oh, whilst our love was growing she was always developing backwards. And getting cruder and more wicked.
TEMPTER. Can you explain that?
STRANGER. No. But once, when I was trying to find the solution to the riddle by disagreeing with myself, I took it that she absorbed my evil and I her good.
TEMPTER. Do you think woman's particularly false?
STRANGER. Yes and no. She seeks to hide her weakness but that only means that she's ambitious and has a sense of shame. Only whores are honest, and therefore cynical.
TEMPTER. Tell me some more about her that's good.
STRANGER. I once had a woman friend. She soon noticed that when I drank I looked uglier than usual; so she begged me not to. I remember one night we'd been talking in a café for many hours. When it was nearly ten o'clock, she begged me to go home and not to drink any more. We parted, after we'd said goodnight. A few days later I heard she'd left me only to go to a large party, where she drank till morning. Well, I said, as in those days I looked for all that was good in women, she meant well by me, but had to pollute herself for business reasons.