e--whether the risk concern you or myself ...
more than I would risk even with certainty in mind. (_She turns away
from him_)

AMADEUS

Then I cannot possibly understand you, Cecilia. What is it you want to
make us pay for so dearly--yes, both of us? Is it our guilt or our
happiness?

CECILIA

Why should either one of them be paid for? What's the use of such a
word between us? Neither one of us has done anything that requires
atonement. Neither one of us has any right to reproach the other one.
Both of us have been free, and each one has used his freedom in
accordance with his own desire and ability. I think nothing has
happened but what must happen. We have trusted each other too much--or
too little. We were neither made to love each other faithfully forever
nor to maintain a pure friendship. Others have become resigned--I
can't--and you mustn't allow yourself, Amadeus. Our experiment has
failed. Let us admit our disillusionment. That can be borne. But I have
no curiosity to find how it tastes when everything comes to an end in
sheer loathing.

AMADEUS

Comes to an end, you say?--But that can't be possible, Cecilia! It
can't be possible that we should really leave each other--part from
each other like strangers! We are still face to face--each of us can
feel the closeness of the other one--and that's why you cannot yet
realize what it would mean. Consider all the things that might come
into your life as well as into mine during a separation of that
kind--so prolonged and so void of responsibility--things that now have
no place in your imagination even, and for which there could be no
reparation.

CECILIA

Could they be worse than what has already befallen me? Faithfulness to
each other in the ordinary sense matters least of all, I should think.
And we could probably more easily find our way back to each other
sometime from almost any other experience than that adventure of last
night, or from a moment of self-deception like this one.

AMADEUS

Find our way back, you say...?

CECILIA

It's also possible that, after a couple of years, we won't care to do
so--that everything may be over between us to such an extent that we
cannot imagine it now. That's possible, I say. But if we stayed
together now, everything would be over within the next few seconds. For
then we should be no better than all those we have despised
hitherto--the one difference being that we had arranged ourselves more
comfortably than