How distrustful you are, Nellie.

HELEN

Don't say that, dearest. Anybody would trust you, would just have to trust you!... When I am your own, oh, then ... then, you surely wouldn't leave me. [_As if beside herself._] I beseech you! Don't go away! Only don't leave me! Don't--go, Alfred! If you go away without me, I would just have to die, just have to die!

LOTH

But you are strange!... And you say you're not distrustful! Or perhaps they're worrying you, torturing you terribly here--more than ever ... At all events we'll leave this very night. I am ready. And so, as soon as you are--we can go.

HELEN

[_Falling around his neck with a cry of joyous grat.i.tude._]

Dear--dearest!

[_She kisses him madly and hurries out._

_DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG comes in through the middle door and catches a glimpse of HELEN disappearing into the conservatory._

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Who was that?--Ah, yes! [_To himself._] Poor thing!

[_He sits down beside the table with a sigh, finds his old cigar, throws it aside, takes a new cigar from the case and starts to knock it gently against the edge of the table. Thoughtfully he looks away across it._

LOTH

[_Watching him._] That's just the way you used to loosen every cigar before smoking it eight years ago.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

It's possible--[_When he has lit and begun to smoke the cigar._] Listen to me!

LOTH

Yes; what is it?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

I take it that, so soon as the affair is over, you'll come along with me.

LOTH

Can't be done. I'm sorry.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

Once in a while, you know, one does feel like talking oneself out thoroughly.

LOTH

I feel that need quite as much, as you do. But you can see from just that how utterly out of my power it is to go ...

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

But suppose I give you my emphatic and, in a way, solemn a.s.surance that there is a specific, an extremely important matter that I'd like--no, that I must discuss with you to-night, Loth!

LOTH

Queer! You don't expect me to take that in deadly earnest. Surely not!--You've waited to discuss that matter so many years and now it can't wait one more day? You know me--I'm not pretending.

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

So I am right! Well, well ...

[_He gets up and walks about._

LOTH

What are you right about?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

[_Standing still before LOTH _and looking straight into his eyes._] So there is really something between you and Helen Krause?

LOTH

Who said--?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

How in the world did you fall in with this family?

LOTH

How do you know that, Schimmel?

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

It wasn't _so_ hard to guess.

LOTH

Well then, for heaven's sake, don't say a word, because ...

DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG

So you're quite regularly betrothed?

LOTH