within--soulless. [Looking at him with a fixed stare.] It was that I
died of, Arnold.

[The SISTER OF MERCY opens the door wide and makes room for her.
She goes into the pavilion.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Stands and looks after her; then whispers.] Irene!

ACT SECOND.

[Near a mountain resort. The landscape stretches, in the form of
an immense treeless upland, towards a long mountain lake. Beyond
the lake rises a range of peaks with blue-white snow in the clefts.
In the foreground on the left a purling brook falls in severed
streamlets down a steep wall of rock, and thence flows smoothly
over the upland until it disappears to the right. Dwarf trees,
plants, and stones along the course of the brook. In the
foreground on the right a hillock, with a stone bench on the
top of it. It is a summer afternoon, towards sunset.

[At some distance over the upland, on the other side of the brook,
a troop of children is singing, dancing, and playing. Some are
dressed in peasant costume, others in town-made clothes. Their
happy laughter is heard, softened by distance, during the
following.

[PROFESSOR RUBEK is sitting on the bench, with a plaid over his
shoulders, and looking down at the children's play.

[Presently, MAIA comes forward from among some bushes on the upland
to the left, well back, and scans the prospect with her hand
shading her eyes. She wears a flat tourist cap, a short skirt,
kilted up, reaching only midway between ankle and knee, and high,
stout lace-boots. She has in her hand a long alpenstock.

MAIA.

[At last catches sight of RUBEK and calls.] Hallo!

[She advances over the upland, jumps over the brook, with the
aid of her alpenstock, and climbs up the hillock.

MAIA.

[Panting.] Oh, how I have been rushing around looking for you, Rubek.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Nods indifferently and asks.] Have you just come from the hotel?

MAIA.

Yes, that was the last place I tried--that fly-trap.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Looking at her for moment.] I noticed that you were not at the
dinner-table.

MAIA.

No, we had our dinner in the open air, we two.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

"We two"? What two?

MAIA.

Why, I and that horrid bear-killer, of course.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Oh, he.

MAIA.

Yes. And first thing to-morrow morning we are going off again.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

After bears?

MAIA.