utton. The guests will pass in
review before your throne and timidly deposit their treasures on
your table. You cannot imagine how people tremble when a bill is
presented to them--I'll salt the items, and you'll sugar them with
your sweetest smiles. Oh, let us get away from here--[pulling a
time-table from his pocket]--at once, with the next train! We'll be
in Malmoe at 6.30; in Hamburg at 8.40 to-morrow morning; in Frankfort
and Basel a day later. And to reach Como by way of the St. Gotthard
it will take us--let me see--three days. Three days!

JULIA. All that is all right. But you must give me some courage--
Jean. Tell me that you love me. Come and take me in your arms.

JEAN. [Reluctantly] I should like to--but I don't dare. Not in this
house again. I love you--beyond doubt--or, can you doubt it, Miss
Julia?

JULIA. [With modesty and true womanly feeling] Miss? Call me Julia.
Between us there can be no barriers here after. Call me Julia!

JEAN. [Disturbed] I cannot! There will be barriers between us as
long as we stay in this house--there is the past, and there is the
count---and I have never met another person for whom I felt such
respect. If I only catch sight of his gloves on a chair I feel
small. If I only hear that bell up there, I jump like a shy horse.
And even now, when I see his boots standing there so stiff and
perky, it is as if something made my back bend. [Kicking at the
boots] It's nothing but superstition and tradition hammered into us
from childhood--but it can be as easily forgotten again. Let us
only get to another country, where they have a republic, and you'll
see them bend their backs double before my liveried porter. You
see, backs have to be bent, but not mine. I wasn't born to that
kind of thing. There's better stuff in me--character--and if I only
get hold of the first branch, you'll see me do some climbing.
To-day I am a valet, but next year I'll be a hotel owner. In ten
years I can live on the money I have made, and then I'll go to
Roumania and get myself an order. And I may--note well that I say
_may_--end my days as a count.

JULIA. Splendid, splendid!

JEAN. Yes, in Roumania the title of count can be had for cash, and
so you'll be a countess after all. My countess!

JULIA. What do I care about all I now cast behind me! Tell me that
you love me: otherwise--yes, what am I otherwise?

JEAN. I will tell you so a thousand times--later. But not here. And
above all, no sentimentality