Wendla.
I dreamed I was a poor, poor beggar girl, who was turned out in the street at five o'clock in the morning. I had to beg the whole long day in storm and bad weather from rough, hard-hearted people. When I came home at night, shivering from hunger and cold, and without as much money as my father coveted, then I was beaten——beaten——
Melchior.
I know that, Wendla. You have the silly children's stories to thank for that. Believe me, such brutal men exist no longer.
Wendla.
Oh yes, Melchior, you're mistaken. Martha Bessel is beaten night after night, so that one sees the marks of it the next day. Oh, but it must hurt! It makes one boiling hot when she tells it. I'm so frightfully sorry for her that I often cry over it in my pillows at night. For months I've been thinking how one can help her.——I'd take her place for eight days with pleasure.
Melchior.
One should complain of her father at once. Then the child would be taken away from him.
Wendla.
I, Melchior, have never been beaten in my life——not a single time. I can hardly imagine what it means to be beaten. I have beaten myself in order to see how one felt then in one's heart——It must be a gruesome feeling.