Page:Bambi (1914).djvu/328

302 it about, at once, if anything happens to postpone the play opening.

“What you say about being indifferent to my looks makes me happy. I shall not try you too far, my lover. I’m quite pretty and young. Did you know I was young?

“You speak so confidently of freedom and a new life together. Are we to shed our old mates, like Nautilus shells? My new coming into love makes me pitiful. Must we be ruthless? “.”

“: I do not wish to seem ruthless to you, much less to be so. But has our suffering not entitled us to some joy? I know my wife to be absorbed in another man; you say your husband turns to another woman. We represent to them stumbling-blocks between them and their happiness. Surely it is only right that we should all be freed to find our true mates.

“I find it daily more of a burden to carry this secret in my heart, when knowledge of it would lighten my wife’s unhappiness. Shall we not confess the situation, and discuss plans for separation? I owe this girl who bears my name more than I can ever pay. I would not do anything to hurt her pride. Tell me what you think about it, dear one? “.”

“: Again I must seem to oppose you. Please let us keep our secrets to ourselves until our meeting. Suppose that something should happen even yet? Suppose we should not wish to take