MOTHER. Spera in Deo....
(The Maid comes in, and signs to the MOTHER, who goes over to her. They whisper together and the maid goes out again.)
OLD MAN. I heard what you said. O God! Must I bear that too!
MOTHER. You needn't see them. You can go up to your room.
OLD MAN. No. It shall be a penance. But why come like this: as vagabonds?
MOTHER. Perhaps they lost their way and have had much to endure.
OLD MAN. But to bring her husband! Is she lost to shame?
MOTHER. You know Ingeborg's queer nature. She thinks all she does is fitting, if not right. Have you ever seen her ashamed, or suffer from a rebuff? I never have. Yet she's not without shame; on the contrary. And everything she does, however questionable, seems natural when she does it.
OLD MAN. I've always wondered why one could never be angry with her. She doesn't feel herself responsible, or think an insult's directed at her. She seems impersonal; or rather two persons, one who does nothing but ill whilst the other gives absolution.... But this man! There's no one I've hated from afar so much as he. He sees evil everywhere; and of no one have I heard so much ill.
MOTHER. That's true. But it may be Ingeborg's found some mission in this man's life; and he in hers. Perhaps they're meant to torture each other into atonement.