Am I too late? It was only by the greatest cunning, by the greatest determination, by the most ruthless disregard of everything that I succeeded in getting away from home. My younger sister tried to bar the door. Even the servant girl! But I told mama that if they wouldn't let me out through the door, they might just as well bar the window, else I'd reach the street through it, although it's three stories high. I flew.

I'm more dead than alive. But I am prepared for anything. How was it with your father, Erich?

SPITTA

We have parted. He thought that I was going out to eat husks with the swine as the Prodigal Son did, and told me not to take it into my mind ever again to cross the threshold of my father's house in my future capacity as acrobat or bareback rider, as he was pleased to express it.

His door was not open to such sc.u.m! Well, I'll fight it down! Only I'm sorry for my poor, dear mother.--You can't imagine with what abysmal hatred a man of his kind considers the theatre and everything connected with it. The heaviest curse is not strong enough to express his feelings.

An actor is, to his mind, _a priori_, the worst, most contemptible scamp imaginable.

WALBURGA

I've found out, too, how papa discovered our secret.

SPITTA

My father gave him your picture.

WALBURGA

O Erich, if you knew with what awful, with what horrible names papa overwhelmed me in his rage. And I had to be silent through it all. I might have said something that would have silenced all his lofty moral discourses and made him quite helpless before me. I was almost on the point of saying it, too. But I felt so ashamed for him! My tongue refused to form the words! I couldn't say it, Erich! Finally mama had to intervene. He struck me! For eight or nine hours he locked me in a dark alcove--to break my stubbornness, as he put it, Erich. Well, he won't succeed! He won't break it!

SPITTA

[_Taking WALBURGA into his arms._] You dear, brave girl! I am beginning to see now what I possess in having your love, what a treasure you are!

[_Pa.s.sionately._] And how beautiful you look, Walburga!

WALBURGA

Don't! Don't!--I trust you, Erich; that's all.

SPITTA

And you shall not be disappointed, dearest. You see, a man like me in whom everything is still in a ferment, who feels that he was born to achieve something great and significant but something which, for the present, he can make sufficiently clear neither to himself nor to the world--such a man has, at twenty, every man's hand against his and is a burden and a laughing-stock to all the world. But believe me: it will not always be so! The germs of the future lie in us! The soil is being loosened even now by the budding shoots! Unseen to-day, _we_ are the harvest of the future! We _are_ the future! And the time will come when all this great and beautiful world will be ours!

WALBURGA

Ah, go on, Erich! What you say heals my heart.

SPITTA

Walburga, I did more, last night! I flung straight out into my father's face, just as I felt it, my accusation of the crime committed against my sister. And that made the break definite and unbridgeable. He said stubbornly: He had no knowledge of such a daughter as I was describing.

Such a daughter had no existence in his soul, and it seemed to him that his son would also soon cease to exist there. O these Christians! O these servants of the good shepherd who took the lost lamb with double tenderness into his arms! O thou good Shepherd, how have your words been perverted; How have your eternal truths been falsified into their exact contrary. But to-day when I sat amidst the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder in the _Tiergarten_ and certain Berlin hyaenas were prowling about me, I felt the crushed and restless soul of my sister close beside me. How many nights, in her poor life, may she not have sat shelterless on such benches, perhaps on this very bench in the _Tiergarten_, in order to consider in her loneliness, her degradation, her outcast estate, how, two thousand years after the birth of Christ, this most Christian world is drenched with Christianity and with the love of its fellow-men! But whatever she thought, this is what I think; the poor harlot, the wretched sinner who is yet above the righteous, who is weighed down by the sins of the world, the poor outcast and her terrible accusation shall never die in my soul! And into this flame of our goals we must cast all the wretchedness, all the lamentations of the oppressed and the disinherited! Thus shall my sister stay truly alive, Walburga, and effect n.o.ble ends before the face of G.o.d through the ethical impulse that lends wings to my soul, and that will be more powerful than all the evil, heartless parson's morality in the world.

WALBURGA

You were in the _Tiergarten_ all night, Erich? Is that the reason why your hands are so icy cold, and why you look so utterly worn out? Erich, you must take my purse! No, please, you must! Oh, I a.s.sure you what is mine is yours! If you don't feel that, you don't love me. Erich, you're suffering! If you don't take my few pennies, I'll refuse all nourishment at home! By heaven, I'll do it, I'll do it, unless you're sensible about that!

SPITTA

[_Chokes down his rising tears and sits down._] I'm nervous; I'm overwrought.

WALBURGA

[_Puts her purse into his pocket._] And you see, Erich, this is the real reason why I asked you to meet me here. To add to all my misfortunes I received yesterday this summons from the court.

SPITTA

[_Regards a doc.u.ment which she hands to him._] Look here? What's behind this, Walburga?

WALBURGA

I'm quite sure that it must have some connection with the stolen goods upstairs in the loft. But it does disquiet me terribly. If papa were to discover this ... oh, what would I do then?

_MRS. JOHN enters, carrying the child in her arms. She is dressed for the street, and looks dusty and hara.s.sed._

MRS. JOHN

[_Frightened, suspicious._] Well, what d'you want here? Is Paul home yet?

I jus' went down in the street a little with the baby.

[_She carries the child behind the part.i.tion._

WALBURGA

Erich, do mention the summons to Mrs. John!

MRS. JOHN

Why, Paul's at home. There's his things!

SPITTA

Miss Ha.s.senreuter wanted very much to talk to you. She received a summons to appear in court. It's probably about those things that were stolen from the loft. You know.

MRS. JOHN

[_Emerging from behind the part.i.tion._] What's that? You reelly got a summons, Miss Walburga? Well, then you better look out! I ain't jokin'.

An' maybe you're thinkin' o' the black man!

SPITTA

What you're saying there is quite incomprehensible, Mrs. John.

MRS. JOHN

[_Taking up her domestic tasks._] Did you hear that 'way out in the Lauben settlement, beyond the Halle Gate, the lightenin' struck a man an'

a woman an' a little girl o' seven this mornin'. It was right under a tall poplar tree.

SPITTA