“You ...” said the man. “What shall I call you? I do not know your name. I have always called you just ‘you.’ In all the bad days and worse nights, for I did not know if I should find you again, I always called you only, ‘you’.... Will you tell me, at last, what your name is?”
“Maria,” answered the girl.
“Maria.... That should be your name ... you did not make it easy for me to find my way to you, Maria.”
“And why did you seek your way to me? And why do you wear the blue linen uniform? Those condemned to wear it all their life long, live in an underground city, which is accounted a wonder of the world in all the five continents. It is an architectural wonder—that is true. It is light and shining bright and a model of tidiness. It lacks nothing but the sun—and the rain—and the moon by night—nothing but the sky. That is why the children which are born there have their gnome-like faces.... Do you want to go down into this city under the earth in order the more to enjoy your dwelling which lies so high above the great Metropolis, in the light of the sky? Are you wearing the uniform, which you have on to-day, for fun?”
“No, Maria. I shall always wear it now.”
“As Joh Fredersen’s son?”
“He no longer has a son ... unless—you, yourself, give him back his son.”
Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed devil’s-ear, one man’s hand was laid upon another man’s mouth.
“It is written,” whispered a laugh: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife....”