. The STRANGER calls.) Gerda! Erik!
Thyra! It's your father! (The children appear to recognise him; they
turn away to the left.) They don't know me. They don't want to know me.

(A man and a woman enter from the right. The children dance of to the
left and disappear. The STRANGER falls on his face on the ground.)

BEGGAR. Something like that was to be expected. Such things happen. Get
up again!

STRANGER (raising himself up). Where am I? Where have I been? Is
it spring, winter or summer? In what century am I living, in what
hemisphere? Am I a child or an old man, male or female, a god or a
devil? And who are you? Are you, you; or are you me? Are those my own
entrails that I see about me? Are those stars or bundles of nerves in my
eye; is that water, or is it tears? Wait! Now I'm moving forward in time
for a thousand years, and beginning to shrink, to grow heavier and to
crystallise! Soon I'll be re-created, and from the dark waters of Chaos
the Lotus flower will stretch up her head towards the sun and say: it is
I! I must have been sleeping for a few thousand years; and have dreamed
I'd exploded and become ether, and could no longer feel, no longer
suffer, no longer be joyful; but had entered into peace and equilibrium.
But now! Now! I suffer as much as if I were all mankind. I suffer and
have no right to complain....

BEGGAR. Then suffer, and the more you suffer the earlier pain will leave
you.

STRANGER. No. Mine are eternal sufferings....

BEGGAR. And only a minute's passed.

STRANGER. I can't bear it.

BEGGAR. Then you must look for help.

STRANGER. What's coming now? Isn't it the end yet?

(It grows light above the bridge. CAESAR comes in and throws himself
from the parapet; then the DOCTOR appears on the right, with bare head
and a wild look. He behaves as if he would throw himself into the stream
too.)

STRANGER. He's revenged himself so thoroughly, that he awakes no qualms
of conscience! (The DOCTOR goes out, left. The SISTER enters, right, as
if searching for someone.) Who's that?

BEGGAR. His unmarried sister, who's unprovided for, and has now no home
to go to. She's grown desperate since her brother was driven out of his
wits by sorrow and went to pieces.

STRANGER. That's a harder fate. Poor creature, what can one do? Even if
I felt her sufferings, would that help her?

BEGGAR. No. It wouldn't.

STRANGER. Why do qualms of conscience come after, and not beforehand?
Can you help me over tha