ever left unfulfilled.

SALA

Not a single one...?

JOHANNA

I know that you have also had many sad experiences. But frequently I
believe you have longed for those too.

SALA

Longed for them...? You may be right, perhaps, in saying that I enjoyed
them when they came.

JOHANNA

How perfectly I understand that! A life without sorrow would probably
be as bare as a life without happiness. (_Pause_) How long ago is it
now?

SALA

What are you thinking of?

JOHANNA

That Mrs. von Sala died?

SALA

It's seven years ago, almost to a day.

JOHANNA

And Lillie--the same year?

SALA

Yes, Lillie died a month later. Do you often think of Lillie, Miss
Johanna?

JOHANNA

Quite often, Mr. von Sala. I have never had a girl friend since that
time. (_As if to herself_) She too would have to be called "miss" now.
She was very pretty. She had black hair with a bluish glint in it like
your wife, and the same clear eyes that you have, Mr. von Sala. (_As if
to herself_) "Then both of them walked hand in hand along the gloomy
road that leads through sunlit land...."

SALA

What a memory you have, Johanna.

JOHANNA

Seven years ago that was.... Remarkable!

SALA

Why remarkable?

JOHANNA

You are building a house, and digging out submerged cities, and writing
queer poetry--and human beings who once meant so much to you have been
rotting in their graves these seven years--and you are still almost
young. How incomprehensible the whole thing is!

SALA

"Thou that livest on, cease thou thy weeping," says Omar Nameh, who was
born at Bagdad in the year 412 of the Mohammedan era as the son of a
cobbler. For that matter, I know a man who is only thirty-eight. He has
buried two wives and seven children, not to speak of grandchildren. And
now he is playing the piano in a shabby little Prater[1] restaurant,
while artists of both sexes show off their tights and their fluttering
skirts on the platform. And recently, when the pitiful performance had
come to an end and they were turning out the lights, he went right on,
without apparent reason, and quite heedless of everything, playing away
on that frightful old rattle-box of his. And then Ronsky and I asked
him over to our table and had a chat with him. And then he told us that
the piece he had just played was his own composition. Of course, we
complimented him. And then his eyes lit up, and he asked us in a voice
that shook: "Gentlemen, do you think my piec