ould be ashamed of yourself.

(The TEMPTER conies in, holding a letter in his hand.)

TEMPTER. Here's a letter. It's for you. (The WOMAN takes it, reads it
and falls into a chair.) A farewell note! Oh, well! All beginnings
are hard--in love affairs. And those who lack the patience to surmount
initial difficulties--lose the golden fruit. Pages are always impatient.
Unknown youth, have you had enough?

STRANGER (rising and picking up his hat). My poor Anna!

WOMAN. Don't leave me.

STRANGER. I must.

WOMAN. Don't go. You were the best of them all.

TEMPTER. Do you want to begin again from the beginning? That would be
a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one another,
they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty, each one of
you, before we part.

WOMAN. I don't know what it is. The highest and the loveliest of things,
that has to sink to the lowest and the ugliest.

STRANGER. A caricature of godly love.

TEMPTER. An annual plant, that blossoms during the engagement, goes to
seed in marriage and then sinks to the earth to wither and die.

WOMAN. The loveliest flowers have no seed. The rose is the flower of
love.

STRANGER. And the lily that of innocence. That can form seeds, but only
opens her white cup to kisses.

TEMPTER. And propagates her kind with buds, out of which fresh lilies
spring, like chaste Minerva who sprang fully armed from the head of
Zeus, and not from his royal loins. Oh yes, children, I've understood
much, but never this: what the beloved of my soul has to do with.... (He
hesitates.)

STRANGER. Well, go on!

TEMPTER. What all-powerful love, that is the marriage of souls, has to
do with the propagation of the species!

STRANGER and WOMAN. Now he's come to the point!

TEMPTER. I've never been able to understand how a kiss, that's an
unborn word, a soundless speech, a quiet language of the soul, can be
exchanged, by means of a hallowed procedure, for a surgical operation,
that always ends in tears and the chattering of teeth. I've never
understood how that holy night, the first in which two souls embrace
each other in love, can end in the shedding of blood, in quarrelling,
hate, mutual contempt--and lint! (He holds his mouth shut.)

STRANGER. Suppose the story of the fall were true? In pain shalt thou
bring forth children.

TEMPTER. In that case one could understand.

WOMAN. Who is the man who says these things?

TEMPTER. Only a wanderer on the qui