all my life, have I met anyone like you. I have
only to look at you for the tears to start to my eyes. Tell me, what
have you on your conscience? Have you done something wrong, that's never
been discovered or punished?

STRANGER. You may well ask! No, I've no more sins on my conscience than
other free men. Except this: I determined that life should never make a
fool of me.

LADY. You must let yourself be fooled, more or less, to live at all.

STRANGER. That would seem a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out
of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm
a changeling.

LADY. What's that?

STRANGER. A child substituted by the elves for the baby that was born.

LADY. Do you believe in such things?

STRANGER. No. But, as a parable, there's something to be said for it.
(Pause.) As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to
life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no
constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for the woods
and the sea.

LADY. Did you ever see visions?

STRANGER. Never. But I've often thought that two beings were guiding
my destiny. One offers me all I desire; but the other's ever at hand
to bespatter the gifts with filth, so that they're useless to me and
I can't touch them. It's true that life has given me all I asked of
it--but everything's turned out worthless to me.

LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?

STRANGER. That is the curse....

LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that transcend
this life, that can never be sullied?

STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.

LADY. But the elves?

STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. (Pointing to a seat.) Shall we sit
down?

LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?

STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for
me--it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. (They sit down.) But
tell me something of yourself now. (The Lady takes up her crochet work.)

LADY. There's nothing to tell.

STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like that.
Impersonal, nameless--I only do know one of your names. I'd like to
christen you myself--let me see, what ought you to be called? I've got
it. Eve! (With a gesture towards the wings.) Trumpets! (The funeral
march is heard again.) There it is again! Now I must invent your age,
for I don't know how old you are. From now on you are thirty-four--so
you w