Oh, I beseech you--you don't understand the conditions; it would be a fatal handicap for me. I might as well leave the service at once.
MAGDA.
And if you did?
VON KELLER.
Oh, you can't be in earnest. For a hardworking and ambitious man who sees a brilliant future before him to give up honor and position, and as his wife's husband to play the vagabond,--to live merely as the husband of his wife? Shall I turn over your music, or take the tickets at the box-office? No, my dearest friend, you underestimate me, and the position I fill in society. But don't be uneasy. You will have nothing to repent of. I have every respect for your past triumphs, but [pompously] the highest reward to which your feminine ambition can aspire will be achieved in the drawing-room.
MAGDA.
[Aside.] Good Heaven, this thing I'm doing is mere madness!
VON KELLER.
What do you say? [Magda shakes her head.] And then the wife, the ideal wife, of modern times is the consort, the true, self-sacrificing helper of her husband. For instance, you, by your queenly personality and by the magic of your voice, will overcome my enemies, and knit even my friends more closely to me. And we will be largely hospitable. Our house shall be the centre of the most distinguished society, who still keep to the severely gracious manners of our forefathers. Gracious and severe may seem contradictory terms, but they are not.