Part 47 (1/2)

STRANGER. Where will you go?

LADY (sobbing). I don't know.

STRANGER. So you're in despair? You see no reason for living and no end to your misery! How like me you are! What a pity there's no monastery for both s.e.xes, so that we could pair off together. Is the werewolf still alive?

LADY. You mean...?

STRANGER. Your first husband.

LADY. He never seems to die.

STRANGER. Like a certain worm! (Pause.) And now that we're so far from the world and its pettiness, tell me this: why did you leave him in those days, and come to me?

LADY. Because I loved you.

STRANGER. And how long did that last?

LADY. Until I read your book, and the child was born.

STRANGER. And then?

LADY. I hated you! That is, I wanted to be rid of all the evil you'd given me, but I couldn't.

STRANGER. So that's how it was! But we'll never really know the truth.

LADY. Have you noticed how impossible it is to find things out? You can live with a person and their relations for twenty years, and yet not know anything about them.

STRANGER. So you've discovered that? As you see so much, tell me this: how was it you came to love me?

LADY. I don't know; but I'll try to remember. (Pause.) Well, you had the masculine courage to be rude to a lady. In me you sought the companions.h.i.+p of a human being and not merely of a woman. That honoured me; and, I thought, you too.

STRANGER. Tell me also whether you held me to be a misogynist?

LADY. A woman-hater? Every healthy man is one, in the secret places of his heart; and all perverted men are admirers of women.

STRANGER. You're not trying to flatter me, are you?

LADY. A woman who'd try to flatter a man's not normal.

STRANGER. I see you've thought a great deal!

LADY. Thinking's the least I've done; for when I've thought least I've understood most. Besides, what I said just how is perhaps only improvised, as you call it, and not true in the least.

STRANGER. But if it agrees with many of my observations it becomes most probable. (The LADY weeps into her handkerchief.) You're weeping again?

LADY. I was thinking of Mizzi. The loveliest thing we ever had is gone.

STRANGER. No. You were the loveliest thing, when you sat all night watching over your child, who was lying in your bed, because her cradle was too cold! (Three loud knocks are heard on the ferryman's door.) 's.h.!.+

LADY. What's that?