only you'd understand
yourself.

STRANGER. Have you anything else to teach me?

DAUGHTER. Perhaps! But in your day that wasn't considered seemly.

STRANGER. My day's over and exists no longer; just as Sylvia exists no
longer, but is merely a name, a memory. (He takes a guide-book out of
his pocket.) Look at this guide-book! Can you see small marks made here
by tiny fingers, and others by little damp lips? You made them when you
were five years old; you were sitting on my knee in the train, and we
saw the Alps for the first time. You thought what you saw was Heaven;
and when I explained that the mountain was the Jungfrau, you asked if
you could kiss the name in the book.

DAUGHTER. I don't remember that!

STRANGER. Delightful memories pass, but hateful ones remain! Don't you
remember anything about me?

DAUGHTER. Oh yes.

STRANGER. Quiet! I know what you mean. One night... one dreadful,
horrible night... Sylvia, my child, when I shut my eyes I see a pale
little angel, who slept in my arms when she was ill; and who thanked
me when I gave her a present. Where is she whom I long for so and
who exists no more, although she isn't dead? You, as you are, seem a
stranger, whom I've never known and certainly don't long to see
again. If Sylvia at least were dead and lay in her grave, there'd be a
churchyard where I could take my flowers.... How strange it is! She's
neither among the living, nor the dead. Perhaps she never existed, and
was only a dream like everything else.

DAUGHTER (wheedling).Father, dear!

STRANGER. It's she! No, only her voice. (Pause.) So you think my life's
been ruined?

DAUGHTER. Yes. But why speak of it now?

STRANGER. Because remember I once saved _your_ life. You had brain fever
for a whole month and suffered a great deal. Your mother wanted the
doctor to deliver you from your unhappy existence by some powerful drug.
But I prevented it, and so saved you from death and your mother from
prison.

DAUGHTER. I don't believe it!

STRANGER. But a fact may be true, even if you don't believe it.

DAUGHTER. You dreamed it.

STRANGER. Who knows if I haven't dreamed everything, and am not even
dreaming now. How I wish it were so!

DAUGHTER. I must be going, father.

STRANGER. Then good-bye!

DAUGHTER. May I write to you?

STRANGER. What? One of the dead write to another? Letters won't reach
me in future. And I mayn't receive visitors. But I'm glad we've met,
for now there's nothing else on