ly thing you forget is that they must remain closed to me
forever.

AMADEUS

Don't say that, Cecilia. What has happened to me in the past seems so
very insignificant, after all.

CECILIA

Insignificant, you say?--And if it had happened to me, it would have
been so significant that people should have had to kill or be killed on
that account? How can you think then, that I might get over it so
easily?

AMADEUS

How can I...? Because you have proved it already. You knew just what
had happened, and yet you became mine again.... You knew that I had
been faithless, while you had kept your faith, and yet....

CECILIA

You say that I have kept my faith?--No, I haven't! And even if I should
seem faithful to you, I have long ago ceased to be so in my own mind.
_I_ know the desires that have burned within me.... _I_ know how often
my body has trembled and yearned in the presence of some man.... And
what I told you last night--that I am waiting with wide-open arms, full
of longings and expectations--that's true, Amadeus--no less true than
it is that I am standing face to face with you now.

AMADEUS

If that be true, what has kept you from satisfying all your
longings--you, who have been as free as I have?

CECILIA

I am a woman, Amadeus. And we seem to be like that. Something makes us
hesitate even when we have already made up our minds.

AMADEUS

And because you seemed guilty in your own mind, you remained silent?...
And for no other reason have you left me--me, whose sufferings you
might have relieved by a single word--to believe you as guilty as
myself?

CECILIA

Perhaps....

AMADEUS

And how long did you mean to let me go on believing that?

CECILIA

Until it became true, Amadeus.

AMADEUS

But there has been enough of it now, Cecilia. It will never become true
... never after this.

CECILIA

Where do you get that idea, Amadeus? It is going to be true. Do you
think, perhaps, that all this was meant as a kind of ordeal for you? Do
you think I was playing a childish comedy in order to punish you, and
that now, when you have discovered the truth prematurely, I shall sink
into your arms and declare everything right again? Have you really
imagined that everything could now be forgotten, and that we might
resume our marriage relations at the exact point where they were
interrupted? How can you possibly have wished that such might be the
case--so that our marriage would be like thousands of others