Fanny [astounded]. Drop your rhetorical figures. End your work. Cut away, since you've begun the cutting.
Hindes [without looking at her, deeply stirred]. Berman did not mean you.
Fanny. Not me?
Hindes. Not you, but your sister.
Fanny [with an outcry]. Oh!—
Hindes. He writes me that his first meeting with her was as if the splendor of God had suddenly shone down upon him,—that gradually he was inflamed by a fiery passion, and that he hopes his love is returned, that....
Fanny [falls upon a chair, her face turned toward the table. She breaks into moaning]. She has taken from me everything!
[In deepest despair, with cries from her innermost being, she tears at her hair.]
Hindes [drops his books and packages to the floor. Limps over to Fanny, and removes her hands from her head]. You have good reason to weep, but not to harm yourself.
Fanny [hysterically]. She has taken from me everything! My ambition to study, my youth, my fondest hopes, and now....