Gustav. You can’t save your own life? But tell me, as you’ve taken me into your confidence so far, haven’t you any other wound that hurts you?—some other secret trouble in this multifarious life of ours, with all its numerous opportunities for jars and complications? There is usually more than one motif which is responsible for a discord. Haven’t you got a skeleton in the cupboard, old chap, which you hide even from yourself? You told me a minute ago you’d given your child to people to look after. Why didn’t you keep it with you? [He goes behind the square table on the left and then behind the sofa.]
Adolf.[Covers the figure on the small table with a cloth.] It was my wife’s wish to have it nursed outside the house.
Gustav. The motive? Don’t be afraid.
Adolf. Because when the kid was three years old she thought it began to look like her first husband.
Gustav. Re-a-lly? Ever seen the first husband?
Adolf. No, never. I just once cast a cursory glance over a bad photograph, but I couldn’t discover any likeness.
Gustav. Oh, well, photographs are never like, and besides, his type of face may have changed with time. By the by, didn’t that make you at all jealous?
Adolf. Not a bit. The child was born a year after our marriage, and the husband was traveling when I met Thekla, here—in this watering place—in this very house. That’s why we come here every summer.
Gustav. Then all suspicion on your part was out of the question? But so far as the intrinsic facts of the matter are concerned you needn’t be jealous at all, because it not infrequently happens that the children of a widow who marries again are like the deceased husband. Very awkward business, no question about it; and that’s why, don’t you. know, the widows are burned alive in India. Tell me, now, didn’t you ever feel jealous of him, of the survival of his memory in your own self? Wouldn’t it have rather gone against the grain if he had just met you when you were out for a walk, and, looking straight at Thekla, said “We,” instead of “I”? “We.”
Adolf. I can’t deny that the thought has haunted me.