at each other.]

GUSTAV. Do you think a person can ever forget anything that has
made a very deep impression on him?

TEKLA. No! And our memories have a tremendous power. Particularly
the memories of our youth.

GUSTAV. Do you remember when I first met you? Then you were a
pretty little girl: a slate on which parents and governesses had
made a few scrawls that I had to wipe out. And then I filled it
with inscriptions that suited my own mind, until you believed the
slate could hold nothing more. That's the reason, you know, why I
shouldn't care to be in your husband's place--well, that's his
business! But it's also the reason why I take pleasure in meeting
you again. Our thoughts fit together exactly. And as I sit here
and chat with you, it seems to me like drinking old wine of my own
bottling. Yes, it's my own wine, but it has gained a great deal in
flavour! And now, when I am about to marry again, I have purposely
picked out a young girl whom I can educate to suit myself. For the
woman, you know, is the man's child, and if she is not, he becomes
hers, and then the world turns topsy-turvy.

TEKLA. Are you going to marry again?

GUSTAV. Yes, I want to try my luck once more, but this time I am
going to make a better start, so that it won't end again with a
spill.

TEKLA. Is she good looking?

GUSTAV. Yes, to me. But perhaps I am too old. It's queer--now when
chance has brought me together with you again--I am beginning to
doubt whether it will be possible to play the game over again.

TEKLA. How do you mean?

GUSTAV. I can feel that my roots stick in your soil, and the old
wounds are beginning to break open. You are a dangerous woman,
Tekla!

TEKLA. Am I? And my young husband says that I can make no more
conquests.

GUSTAV. That means he has ceased to love you.

TEKLA. Well, I can't quite make out what love means to him.

GUSTAV. You have been playing hide and seek so long that at last
you cannot find each other at all. Such things do happen. You have
had to play the innocent to yourself, until he has lost his
courage. There _are_ some drawbacks to a change, I tell you--there
are drawbacks to it, indeed.

TEKLA. Do you mean to reproach--

GUSTAV. Not at all! Whatever happens is to a certain extent
necessary, for if it didn't happen, something else would--but now
it did happen, and so it had to happen.

TEKLA. _You_ are a man of discernment. And I have never met anybody
with whom I liked so much to