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Well, you see—then it becomes a quite different matter. Miss Asta—are you sure you can never make up your mind to share gladness and success and—and labour and trouble, with one—with one alone in all the world?

I have tried it—once.

Have you?

Yes, all the time that my brother—that Alfred and I lived together.

Oh, with your brother, yes. But that is altogether different. That ought rather to be called peace than happiness, I should say.

It was delightful, all the same.

There now—you see even that seemed to you delightful. But just think now—if he had not been your brother!

[Makes a movement to rise, but remains sitting.] Then we should never have been together. For I was a child then—and he wasn't much more.