Michaelis.
All my life long I have known you, and fled from you, I have heard you singing on the hills of sleep and have fled from you into the waking day. I have seen you in the spring forest, dancing and throwing your webs of sunlight to snare me; on moonlit mountains, laughing and calling; in the streets of crowded cities, beckoning and disappearing in the crowd—and everywhere I have fled from you, holding above my head the sign of God's power in me, my gift and my mission.—What use? What use? It has crumbled, and I do not care!
Rhoda.
Oh, don't speak such words, I beseech you. Let me go. This must not, shall not be!
She makes another attempt to escape. He presses upon her until she stands at bay.
Michaelis.
You are all that I have feared and shunned and missed on earth, and now I have you, the rest is as nothing.
He takes her, feebly resisting, into his arms.
I know a place out there, high in the great mountains. Heaven-piercing walls of stone, a valley of trees and sweet water in the midst—grass and flowers, such flowers as you have never dreamed could grow.—There we will take our happiness. A year—a month—a day—what matter? We will make a lifetime of each hour!
Rhoda.