Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Who has joined in the general, outburst of laughter called forth by SPITTA'S explanation._] Well now, listen here! You blandly say: Nothing else! And you announce it publicly here before all these people?

SPITTA

[_In consternation._] Why not? The lady in question, was very well dressed; I've often seen her on the stairs of this house, and she unfortunately met with an accident on the street.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

You don't say so? Tell us about it, dear Spitta! Apparently the lady inflicted spots on your clothes and scratches on your hands.

SPITTA

Oh, no. That was probably the fault of the mob. The lady had an attack of some kind. The policeman caught hold of her so awkwardly that she slipped down in the middle of the street immediately in front of two omnibus horses. I simply couldn't bear to see that, although I admit that the function of the Good Samaritan is, as a rule, beneath the dignity of well-dressed people on the public streets.

_MRS. JOHN wheels the perambulator behind the part.i.tion and reappears with a basin full of water, which she places on a chair._

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Did the lady, by any chance, belong to that international high society which we either regulate or segregate?

SPITTA

I confess that that was quite as indifferent to me in the given instance, as it was to one of the omnibus horses who held his left fore foot suspended in the air for five, six or, perhaps, even eight solid minutes, in order not to trample on the woman who lay immediately beneath it.

[_SPITTA is answered by a round of laughter._] You may laugh! The behaviour of the horse didn't strike me as in the least ludicrous. I could well understand how some people applauded him, clapped their hands, and how others stormed a bakery to buy buns with which to feed him.

MRS. JOHN

[_Fanatically._] I wish he'd trampled all he could! [_MRS. JOHN'S remark calls forth another outburst of laughter._] An' anyhow! That there k.n.o.bbe woman! She oughta be put in some public place, that she ought, publicly strapped to a bench an' then beaten--beaten--that's what! She oughta have the stick taken to her so the blood jus' spurts!

SPITTA

Exactly, I've never been deluded into thinking that the so-called Middle Ages were quite over and done with. It isn't so long ago, in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-seven, as a matter of fact, that a widow named Mayer was publicly broken on the wheel right here in the city of Berlin on Hausvogtei Square,--[_He displays fragments of the lenses of his spectacles._] By the way, I must hurry to the optician at once.

JOHN

[_To SPITTA._] You must excuse us. But didn't you take that there fine lady home on this very floor acrost the way? Aha! Well, mother she noticed it right off that that couldn't ha' been n.o.body but that k.n.o.bbe woman what's known for sendin' girls o' twelve out on the streets! Then she stays away herself an' swills liquor an' has all kinds o' dealin's an' takes no care o' her own children. Then when she's been drunk an'

wakes up she beats 'em with her fists an' with an umbrella.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Pulling himself together and bethinking himself._] Hurry, gentlemen! We must proceed to our period of instruction. We're fifteen minutes behind hand as it is and our time is limited. We must close the period quite punctually to-day. I'm sorry. Come, mama. See you later, ladies and gentlemen.

[_Ha.s.sENREUTER offers his arm to his wife and leaves the room, followed by KaFERSTEIN and DR. KEGEL. JOHN also picks up his slouch hat._

JOHN

[_To his wife._] Good-bye. I gotta go an' see the boss.

[_He also leaves._

SPITTA

Could you possibly lend me a tie?

MRS. JOHN

I'll see what c'n be found in Paul's drawer. [_She opens the drawer of the table and turns pale._] O Lord! [_She takes from the drawer a lock of child's hair held together by a riband._] I found a bit of a lock o' hair here that was cut off the head of our little Adelbert by his father when he was lyin' in the coffin. [_A profound, grief-stricken sadness suddenly comes over her face, which gives way again, quite as suddenly, to a gleam of triumph._] An' now the crib is full again after all! [_With an expression of strange joyfulness, the lock of hair in her hand, she leads the young people to the door of the part.i.tion through which the perambulator projects into the main room by two-thirds of its length.

Arrived there she holds the lock of hair close to the head of the living child._] Come on! Come on here! [_With a strangely mysterious air she beckons to WALBURGA and SPITTA, who take up their stand next to her and to the child._] Now look at that there hair an' at this! Ain't it the same? Wouldn't you say it was the same identical hair?

SPITTA

Quite right. It's the same to the minutest shade, Mrs. John.

MRS. JOHN

All right! That's all right! That's what I wanted to know.

[_Together with the child she disappears behind the part.i.tion._

WALBURGA

Doesn't it strike you, Erich, that Mrs. John's behaviour is rather peculiar?

SPITTA

[_Taking WALBURGA'S hands and kissing them shyly but pa.s.sionately._] I don't know, I don't know ... Or, at least, my opinion musn't count to-day. The sombre state of my own mind colours all the world. Did you get the letter?

WALBURGA

Yes. But I couldn't make out why you hadn't been at our house in such a long while.

SPITTA

Forgive me, Walburga, but I couldn't come.

WALBURGA

And why not?

SPITTA

Because my mind was not at one with itself.

WALBURGA

You want to become an actor? Is that true? You're going to change professions?

SPITTA