Perhaps it would be better for me to....

LOTH

Please stay. Miss Krause! By all means stay, at least as far as I'm concerned. I've seen for some time what he's aiming at. There's nothing in the least dangerous about it. [_To HOFFMANN._] You're thinking of my betrothal, eh?

HOFFMANN

Since you mention it yourself, yes. I was, as a matter of fact, thinking of your betrothal to Anna Faber.

LOTH

That was broken off, naturally, when I was sent to prison.

HOFFMANN

That wasn't very nice of your....

LOTH

It was, at least, honest in her! The letter in which she broke with me showed her true face. Had she shown that before she would have spared herself and me, too, a great deal.

HOFFMANN

And since that time your affections haven't taken root anywhere?

LOTH

No.

HOFFMANN

_Of_ course! I suppose you've capitulated along the whole line--forsworn marriage as well as drink, eh? Ah, well, _a chacun son gout_.

LOTH

It's not my taste that decides in this matter, but perhaps my fate. I told you once before, I believe, that I have made no renunciation in regard to marriage. What I fear is this, that I won't find a woman who is suitable for me,

HOFFMAN

That's a big order, Loth!

LOTH

I'm quite serious, though. It may be that one grows too critical as the years go on and possesses too little healthy instinct. And I consider instinct the best guarantee of a suitable choice.

HOFFMANN

[_Frivolously._] Oh, it'll be found again some day--[_laughing_]--the necessary instinct, I mean.

LOTH

And, after all, what have I to offer a woman? I doubt more and more whether I ought to expect any woman to content herself with that small part of my personality which does not belong to my life's work. Then, too, I'm afraid of the cares which a family brings.

HOFFMANN

Wh-at? The cares of a married man? Haven't you a head, and arms, eh?

LOTH

Obviously. But, as I've tried to tell you, my productive power belongs, for the greater part, to my life's work and will always belong to it.

Hence it is no longer mine. Then, too, there would be peculiar difficulties ...

HOFFMANN

Listen! Hasn't some one been sounding a gong?

LOTH

You consider all I've said mere phrase-making?

HOFFMANN

Honestly, it does sound a little hollow. After all, other people are not necessarily savages, even if they are married. But some men act as though they had a monopoly of all the good deeds that are to be done in the world.

LOTH

[_With some heat._] Not at all! I'm not thinking of such a thing. If you hadn't abandoned your life's work, your happy material situation would be of the greatest a.s.sistance ...

HOFFMANN

[_Ironically._] So that would be one of your demands, too?

LOTH

Demands? How? What?

HOFFMANN

I mean that, in marrying, you would have an eye on money.

LOTH

Unquestionably.

HOFFMANN

And then--if I know you at all--there's quite a list of demands still to come.

LOTH