(Shakes his head.) How can a lady write such stuff, or allow it to be printed? Everybody who reads it must call up a picture of the authoress and the neck and ... the intoxication.
Margaret. When I give you my word that such a neck has never existed ...
Clement. No, I can't believe that it has. Lucky for me that I can't—and ... for you too, Margaret. But how did you ever come by such fancies? All these glowing emotions can't possibly be referred to your first husband—you told me yourself he never understood you.
Margaret. Of course he didn't—that's why I got a divorce from him. You know all about that. I simply couldn't exist by the side of a man who had no ideas beyond eating and drinking and cotton.
Clement. Yes, I know. But all that's three years ago—and you wrote the verses later.
Margaret. Yes ... But just think of the position in which I found myself ...
Clement. What sort of a position? You hadn't any privations to put up with, had you? From that point of view your husband, to give him his due, behaved really very well. You weren't forced to earn your own living. And even if they gave you a hundred florins for a poem—they certainly wouldn't give more—you weren't obliged to write a book like that.
Margaret. Clement, dear, I didn't mean the word "position" in a material sense; I meant the position in which my soul was. Haven't you any conception ...? When you first met me, it was much better—to a certain extent I had found myself; but at first ...! I was so helpless and distracted. I did everything I could—I painted, I even gave English lessons in the boardinghouse where I was living. Just think what it was like, to be there as a divorced woman at twenty-two, to have no one ...
Clement. Why didn't you stay quietly in Vienna?
Margaret. Because I was not on good terms with my family. No one has really understood me. Oh, these people ...! Do you suppose any of my relations could conceive that one should want anything else from life except a husband and pretty clothes and a position in society! Oh, good heavens ...! If I had had a child, things might have been very different—and again they might not. I am a very complex creature. But after all, what have you to complain of! Wasn't my going to Munich the best thing I could have done? How else should I ever have known you!