Lise. I shall never do that—because he does not love me.
Daughter. Not love you?
Lise. No, because he’s fond of you.
Daughter. Me?
Lise. Yes—and he has commissioned me to inquire if he can call on you.
Daughter. Here? No, that’s impossible. And besides, do you think I would stand in your way? Do you think I could supplant you in his regard, you who are so pretty, so delicate. [Takes LISE’S hand in hers.] What a hand! And the wrists! I saw your foot when we were in the Bath-house together. [Falls on her knees before LISE, who has sat doun.] A foot on which there isn’t even a crooked nail, on which the toes are as round and as rosy as a baby’s hand. [Kisses LISE’S foot.] You belong to the nobility—you’re made of different stuff from what I am.
Lise. Leave off, please, and don’t talk so silly. [Gets up.] If you only knew—but…
Daughter. And I’m sure you’re as good as you’re beautiful; we always think that down below here when we look up at you above there, with your delicate chiseled features, where trouble hasn’t made any wrinkles, where envy and jealousy have not drawn their hateful lines
Lise. Look here, Helen; I really think you’re quite mad on me.
Daughter. Yes, I am that, too. I wish I were like you a bit, just as a miserable whitlow-grass is like an anemone, and that’s why I see in you my better self, something that I should like to be and never can be. You have tripped into my life during the last summer days as lightly and as delicately as an angel; now the autumn’s come: the day after to-morrow we go back to town—then we shan’t know each other any more—and we mustn’t know each other any more. You can never draw me up, dear, but I can draw you down—and I don’t want to do that! I want to have you so high, so high and so far away, that I can’t see your blemishes. And so good-bye, Lise, my first and only friend.