octor, I am not
going to be sentimental.

REUMANN

I don't object to sentiment, but to nonsense.

MRS. WEGRAT (_smiling_)

Thank you.--However, I have occasion to think of many different things.
And it is no reason for taking it too seriously, my dear friend. You
know, of course, that I told you everything merely that I might have a
kind and sensible man with whom to discuss the past--and not at all to
be absolved of any guilt.

REUMANN

To give happiness is more than being free of guilt. And as this has
been granted you, it is clear that you have made full atonement--if
you'll pardon the use of such a preposterously extravagant term.

MRS. WEGRAT

How can you talk like that?

REUMANN

Well, am I not right?

MRS. WEGRAT

Just as if I couldn't feel how all of us, deceivers and deceived, must
seem equally contemptible to you in particular!

REUMANN

Why to me in particular...? What you call contempt, madam--supposing I
did feel anything like it--would, after all, be nothing but disguised
envy. Or do you think I lack the desire to conduct my life as I see
most other people conducting theirs? I simply haven't the knack. If I
am to be frank, madam--the deepest yearning of all within me is just to
be a rogue: a fellow who can dissemble, seduce, sneer, make his way
over dead bodies. But thanks to a certain shortcoming in my
temperament, I am condemned to remain a decent man--and what is still
more painful perhaps: to hear everybody say that I am one.

MRS. WEGRAT (_who has been listening with a smile_)

I wonder whether you have told the truth about what is keeping you here
in Vienna?

REUMANN

Certainly. Indeed, I have no other reason. I have no right to have any
other. Don't let us talk any more of it.

MRS. WEGRAT

Are we not such good friends that I can talk calmly with you of
everything? I know what you have in mind. But I believe that it might
be in your power to drive certain illusions and dreams out of the soul
of a young girl. And it would be such a comfort to me if I could leave
you for good among these people, all of whom are so near to me, and who
yet know nothing whatever about each other--who are hardly aware of
their mutual relationships even, and who seem fated to flitter away
from each other to God knows where.

REUMANN

We'll talk of those things, madam, when it's time to do so.

MRS. WEGRAT

Of course, I regret nothing. I believe I have never regretted anything.
But I hav