t if you do not come in
the name of my father, what do you want here? Why do you come? For what
purpose? What do you want of me?

FRIEDRICH: Erna, you ask that in a strange manner.

RITA: Well, yes. I have a suspicion that you--begrudge me my liberty.
How did you find me, anyway?

FRIEDRICH: Yes, that was hard enough.

RITA: Rita Revera is not so unknown.

FRIEDRICH: Rita Revera! Oh, no! How often I have read that name these
last years--in the newspapers in Berlin, on various placards, in large
letters. But how could I ever have thought that you were meant by it?

RITA (_laughs_): Why did you not go to the "Winter Garden" when you were
in Berlin?

FRIEDRICH: I never frequent such places.

RITA: Pardon me! Oh, I always forget the old customs.

FRIEDRICH: Oh, please, please, dear Erna; not in this tone of voice!

RITA: Which tone?

FRIEDRICH: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I
had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a
long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at
first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up
everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived
in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the
other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to
the world in which I live--that we could hardly understand each other.

RITA: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal--how you would have liked
to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during
the four years, had lived in hunger and need--but respectably, that is
the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and
the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you
deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it?

FRIEDRICH (_looks at her calmly_): Well, is there anything wrong about
it?

RITA: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this
disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me?

FRIEDRICH: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear,
silvery, childlike laughter. Right in the midst of my petty scruples it
resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do
you still remember that time, Erna?

(_Rita is silent._)

BERTHA (_enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses_): My
lady--from the Count.

RITA (_jumps up, nervously excited_): Roses! My dark