STRANGER. Do not trouble me.
TEMPTER. Speak to me a little, before you depart into the long silence. For you'll not be allowed to speak for a whole year.
STRANGER. All the better. Speaking at last becomes a vice, like drinking. And why speak, if words do not cloak thoughts?
TEMPTER. You at the graveside.... Was life so bitter?
STRANGER. Yes. My life was.
TEMPTER. Did you never know one pleasure?
STRANGER. Yes, many pleasures; but they were very brief and seemed only to exist in order to make the pain of their loss the sharper.
TEMPTER. Can't it be put the other way round: that pain exists in order to make joy more keen?
STRANGER. It can be put in any way.
(A woman enters with a child to be baptized.)