Franka sprang up.
“Don’t move. I will sit down with you for a few minutes. It is very charming here, so quiet and peaceful. I have disturbed you. You were deep in dreams ... probably you were thinking about your lover.”
“I have no lover.”
“That is incredible—only you will not confide in me. But you might, carina. I am so much older than you are; I have tasted so fully of the joys and sorrows of life, and I know well that we women—if we are genuine women—experience all our pleasure and all our grief only through love ... everything else is nothing. Our art, our beauty, our social or domestic virtues—all that is only the shell, is only the tabernacle; the true sanctuary is our burning and bleeding heart.”
“So speaks one from the South,” replied Franka. “The rest of us are colder. My heart truly—up to the present time—has neither burned nor bled for any man. I do not take into account any passing little acceleration of its throbbing. My work, my duties, have completely occupied me—up to now....”
“What has been your special work?”
“Making girls over into thinking beings.”
“Thinking—not feeling?”
“The one does not exclude the other. Men, too, feel and love; at the same time it is their duty to think—not that they always do so—I must agree to that. You, great artist that you are, who have penetrated into the depths of poetry, would surely be the last person to forbid women thinking.”
“No, I do not; but I insist that they love. And ultimately, they all obey—even the women of the North. In the Northern poets especially I have found the most fundamental love-problems. However, madamigella Franka, you just said the words ‘up to now’ in a tone which makes me suspect that perhaps the coldness which you boast of is already beginning to melt.”