e more than one bucket of water!

SYLVETTE. But I see you have been wounded in a real duel?

PERCINET. It came near being mortal.

SYLVETTE. And now you return to us--?

PERCINET. Thoroughly worn-out.

SYLVETTE. Yes, but you have at least found romance and poetry?

PERCINET. No--I was seeking afar what was here all the time.
Don't make fun of me: I adore you!

SYLVETTE. Even after our disillusion?

PERCINET. What difference does that make?

SYLVETTE. But our fathers played an abominable trick on us.

PERCINET. What of it? What I feel in my heart is real.

SYLVETTE. They pretended to hate each other.

PERCINET. Did we pretend that we loved?

SYLVETTE. The wall was a punch-and-judy theater--you said so
yourself.

PERCINET. I did, Sylvette, but it was blasphemy. Ah, wall, you
gave us a divine setting, with moonlight and stars, flowers and
vines, the four winds for music, and Shakespeare for prompter!
Yes, our fathers made us go through the motions, but it was Love
that made us speak: _it_ pulled the strings!

SYLVETTE. [Sighing] That's true, but we loved because we believed
it was wicked!

PERCINET. And it was! Only the intention counts, and thinking we
were guilty, we were!

SYLVETTE. Really?

PERCINET. Really, my dear, we were infamous. It was wrong of us
to love.

SYLVETTE. [Seating herself beside him] Very wrong? [She changes
her tone, as she rises and goes away.] Still, I wish the danger
had been a little more real.

PERCINET. It _was_ real, because we believed it so.

SYLVETTE. No: my abduction, like your duel, was false.

PERCINET. Was your fear false? If you were afraid then, it was
as if you were really being abducted.

SYLVETTE. No, the dear remembrance is gone. All those masks and
torches, the soft music, the duel; it is too cruel to think that
Straforel prepared it all.

PERCINET. But who prepared the spring night? Was that Straforel?
Did he also sprinkle the sky with stars? Did he plant roses, did
he create the gray of evening and the blue mists of night? Did he
have anything to do with the rising of that huge pink star?

SYLVETTE. No, of course--

PERCINET. Was it his doing that we were two children of twenty,
on a spring night, and that we loved each other? We loved, that
was the charm--all the charm!

SYLVETTE. All the--? That's true, yet--

PERCINET. A tear? Am I then--forgiven?

SYLVETTE. I have always loved you, my poo