g about it.

AMADEUS (_resuming his superior tone_)

Is that what draws you to Berlin?

CECILIA

No!... Indeed, no! The spell has been broken ... it seems....

AMADEUS

And yet you talk of going about New Year....

CECILIA (_rising_)

My dear Amadeus, I am really too tired to discuss that matter to-day.
Now I shall say good-night to you. It is quite late. (_She holds out
her hand to him_)

AMADEUS (_faltering_)

Good-night, Cecilia!... (_He clings to her hand_) You have been gone
three weeks. I shall leave early the day after to-morrow--and when _I_
return, you will be gone, I suppose.... There can't be so very much to
your friendship, if you won't stay and talk a while with me under such
circumstances.

CECILIA

What's the use of being sentimental? Leave-takings are familiar things
to us.

AMADEUS

That's true. But nevertheless this will be a new kind of leave-taking,
and a new kind of home-coming also.

CECILIA

Well, seeing that it had to turn out this way....

AMADEUS

But neither of us ever imagined that it would turn out this way.

CECILIA

Oh?

AMADEUS

No, Cecilia, we did _not_ imagine it. The remarkable thing has been
that we retained our faith in each other in the midst of all doubts,
and that, even when away from each other, we used to feel calm and
confident far beyond what was safe, I suppose. But it was splendid.
Separation itself used to have a sort of charm of its own--_formerly_.

CECILIA

Naturally. It isn't possible to love in that undisturbed fashion except
when you are miles apart.

AMADEUS

You may be able to make fun of it to-day, Cecilia, but there will never
again be anything like it--neither for you nor for me. You can be sure
of that.

CECILIA

I know that as well as you do.--But why should you all at once begin to
talk as if, somehow, everything would be over between us two, and as if
the best part of our life had been irretrievably lost? That's not the
case, after all. It cannot possibly be the case. Both of us know that
we remain the same as before--don't we--and that everything else that
has happened to us, or may happen to us, can be of no particular
importance.... And even if it should become important, we shall always
be able to join hands, no matter what chasms open between us.

AMADEUS

You speak very sensibly, as usual.

CECILIA

If you seduce ladies by the dozen, and if gentlemen shoot each other
dead for my sake--as they do for the