LOTH

How do you come across just that book? Do you quite understand it?

HELEN

I hope I do--at least, in part. It rests me to read it. [_After a pause._] But if it _is_ a foolish book, as you say, could you recommend me a better one?

LOTH

Read ... well, let me see ... do you know Dahn's "Fight for Rome"?

HELEN

No, but I'll buy the book now. Does it serve a practical end?

LOTH

No, but a rational one. It depicts men not as they are but such as, some day, they ought to be. Thus it sets up an ideal for our imitation.

HELEN

[_Deeply convinced._] Ah, that is n.o.ble. [_A brief pause._] But perhaps you can tell me something else. The papers talk so much about Zola and Ibsen. Are they great authors?

LOTH

In the sense of being artists they are not authors at all, Miss Krause.

They are necessary evils. I have a genuine thirst for the beautiful and I demand of art a clear, refreshing draught.--I am not ill; and what Zola and Ibsen offer me is medicine.

HELEN

[_Quite involuntarily._] Ah, then perhaps, they might help me.

LOTH

[_Who has become gradually absorbed in his vision of the dewy orchard and who now yields to it wholly._] How very lovely it is here. Look, how the sun emerges from behind the mountain peak.--And you have so many apples in your garden--a rich harvest.

HELEN

Three-fourths of them will be stolen this year just as last. There is such great poverty hereabouts.

LOTH

I can scarcely tell you how deeply I love the country. Alas, the greater part of _my_ harvest must be sought in cities. But I must try to enjoy this country holiday thoroughly. A man like myself needs a bit of sunshine and refreshment more than most people.

HELEN

[_Sighing._] More than others ... In what respect?

LOTH

It is because I am in the midst of a hard conflict, the end of which I will not live to see.

HELEN

But are we not all engaged in such a conflict?

LOTH

No.

HELEN

Surely we are all engaged in some conflict?

LOTH

Naturally, but in one that may end.

HELEN

It _may_. Yon are right. But why cannot the other end--I mean the one in which you are engaged, Mr. Loth?

LOTH

Your conflict, after all, can only be one for your personal happiness.

And, so far as is humanly speaking possible, the individual can attain this. My struggle is a struggle for the happiness of all men. The condition of my happiness would be the happiness of all; nothing could content me until I saw an end of sickness and poverty, of servitude and spiritual meanness. I could take my place at the banquet table of life only as the last of its guests.

HELEN

[_With deep conviction._] Ah, then you are a truly, truly good, man!

LOTH

[_Somewhat embarra.s.sed._] There is no merit in my att.i.tude: it is an inborn one. And I must also confess that my struggle in the interest of progress affords me the highest satisfaction. And the kind of happiness I thus win is one that I estimate far more highly than the happiness which contents the ordinary self-seeker.

HELEN

Still there are very few people in whom such a taste is inborn.

LOTH

Perhaps it isn't wholly inborn. I think that we are constrained to it by the essential wrongness of the conditions of life. Of course, one must have a sense for that wrongness. There is the point. Now if one has that sense and suffers consciously under the wrongness of the conditions in question--why, then one becomes, necessarily, just what I am.

HELEN

Oh, if it were only clearer to me ... Tell me, what conditions, for instance, do you call wrong?

LOTH