r what they are in
this.

LADY. I'd like to die, yet I don't want to. I think I must be dead
already.

STRANGER. The air up here's too strong.

LADY. You can't love me if you speak like that.

STRANGER. To be frank, there are moments when you don't exist for me.
But in others I feel your hatred like suffocating smoke.

LADY. And I feel my heart creeping from my breast, when you are angry
with me.

STRANGER. Then we must hate one other.

LADY. And love one another too.

STRANGER. And hate because we love. We hate each other, because we're
bound together. We hate the bond, we hate our love; we hate what is most
loveable, what is the bitterest, the best this life can offer. We've
come to an end!

LADY. Yes.

STRANGER. What a joke life is, if you take it seriously. And how
serious, if you take it as a joke! You wanted to lead me by the hand
towards the light; your easier fate was to make mine easier too. I
wanted to raise you above the bogs and quicksands; but you longed for
the lower regions, and wanted to convince me they were the upper ones. I
ask myself if it's possible that you took what was wicked from me, when
I was freed from it; and that what was good in you entered into me? If
I've made you wicked I ask your pardon, and I kiss your little hand,
that caressed and scratched me... the little hand that led me into the
darkness... and on the long journey to Damascus....

LADY. To a parting? (Silence.) Yes, a parting!

(The LADY goes on her way. The STRANGER falls on to a chair by the
table. The TEMPTER puts his head in at the window, and rests himself on
his elbows whilst he smokes a cigarette.)

TEMPTER. Ah, yes! C'est l'amour! The most mysterious of all mysteries,
the most inexplicable of all that can't be explained, the most
precarious of all that's insecure.

STRANGER. So you're here?

TEMPTER. I'm always everywhere, where it smells of quarrels. And in love
affairs there are always quarrels.

STRANGER. Always?

TEMPTER. Always! I was invited to a silver wedding yesterday.
Twenty-five years are no trifle--and for twenty-five years they'd been
quarrelling. The whole love affair had been one long shindy, with
many little ones in between! And yet they loved one another, and were
grateful for all the good that had come to them; the evil was forgotten,
wiped out--for a moment's happiness is worth ten days of blows and
pinpricks. Oh yes! Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.
The rin