FREI.
Let me have another one, host.
[Holds out his glass.]
LINDENSCHMIED (lost in thought, alone in the foreground).
Six times I ran out where he was to pass; but he did not come. At that time conscience was still the fashion. Then I thought: "It is not to be now," and postponed it to some time when he should come along by accident, so that I should be obliged to see that it was to be. For whole nights it choked me like a nightmare and wasted my body, that I should not lay hands on him, and now—ha! ha! ha!
[Gives a short convulsive laugh, thus rousing himself out of his thoughts; looks around embarrassed.]
FREI.
Did you laugh, Lindenschmied?
LINDENSCHMIED.
I don't know whether it was me.