Adolf. I can't live without some one to reverence.
Gustav. Slave!
[He goes round the table on the right.]
Adolf. And without a woman to reverence, to worship.
Gustav. Oh, the deuce! Then you go back to that God of yours—if you really must have something on which you can crucify yourself; but you call yourself an atheist when you've got the superstitious belief in women in your own blood; you call yourself a free thinker when you can't think freely about a lot of silly women. Do you know what all this illusive quality, this sphinx-like mystery, this profundity in your wife's temperament all really comes to? The whole thing is sheer stupidity; why, the woman can't distinguish between A.B. and bull's foot for the life of her. And look here, it's something shoddy in the mechanism, that's where the fault lies. Outside it looks like a fifty-guinea hunting watch, open it and you find it's tuppenny-halfpenny gun-metal. [He comes up to Adolf.] Put her in trousers, draw a mustache under her nose with a piece of coal, and then listen to her in the same state of mind, and then you'll be perfectly convinced that it is quite a different kettle of fish altogether—-a gramaphone which reproduces, with rather less volume, your words and other people's words. Do you know how a woman is constituted? Yes, of course you do. A boy with the breasts of a mother, an immature man, a precocious child whose growth has been stunted, a chronically anæmic creature that has a regular emission of blood thirteen times in the year. What can you do with a thing like that?
Adolf. Yes—but—but then how can I believe—that we are really on an equality?
Gustav [moves away from him again towards the right]. Sheer hallucination! The fascination of the petticoat. But it is so; perhaps, in fact you have become like each other, the leveling has taken place. But I say. [He takes out his watch.] We've been chatting for quite long enough. Your wife's bound to be here shortly. Wouldn't it be better to leave off now, so that you can rest for a little?
[He comes nearer and holds out his hand to say good-by. Adolf grips his hand all the tighter.]
Adolf. NO, don't leave me. I haven't got the pluck to be alone.
Gustav. Only for a little while. Your wife will be coming in a minute.