Rita: Which tone?
Friedrich: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to the world in which I live—that we could hardly understand each other.
Rita: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal—how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need—but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it?
Friedrich (looks at her calmly): Well, is there anything wrong about it?
Rita: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me?
Friedrich: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear, silvery, childlike laughter. Right in the midst of my petty scruples it resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do you still remember that time, Erna?
(Rita is silent.)
Bertha (enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses): My lady—from the Count.
Rita (jumps up, nervously excited): Roses! My dark roses! Give them to me! Ah! (She holds them toward Friedrich and asks) Did he say anything?
Bertha: No, said nothing, but——