THEKLA [_leaning on the arm of the sofa_]. Really, he's serious, is he, quite serious? Then I'll jolly well show you--that you made a mistake. I mean--you'll never see it yourself, you'll never know it. The whole world will be up to it, but you jolly well won't, you'll have suspicions and surmises and you won't enjoy a single hour of peace. You will have the consciousness of being ridiculous and of being deceived, but you'll never have proofs in your hand, because a husband never manages to get them. [_She makes a few steps to the right in front of him and toward him._] That will teach you to know me. ADOLF [_sits down in his previous place by the table on the left_]. You hate me. THEKLA. No, I don't hate you, nor do I think that I could ever get to hate you. Simply because you're a child. ADOLF. Listen to me! Just think of the time when the storm broke over us. [_Standing up._] You lay there like a new-born child and shrieked; you caught hold of my knees and I had to kiss your eyes to sleep. Then I was your nurse, and I had to be careful that you didn't go out into the street without doing your hair. I had to send your boots to the shoe-maker. I had to take care there was something in the larder. I had to sit by your side and hold your hand in mine by the hour, for you were frightened, frightened of the whole world, deserted by your friends, crushed by public opinion. I had to cheer you up till my tongue stuck to my palate and my head ached; I had to pose as a strong man, and compel myself to believe in the future, until at length I succeeded in breathing life into you while you lay there like the dead. Then it was I you admired, then it was I who was the man; not the athlete like the man you deserted, but the man of psychic strength, the man of magnetism, who transferred his moral force into your enervated muscles and filled your empty brain with new electricity. And then I put you on your feet again, got a small court for you, whom I jockeyed into admiring you, as a sheer matter of friendship to myself, and I made you mistress over me and my home. I painted you in my finest pictures, in rose and azure on a ground of gold, and there was no exhibition in which you didn't have the place of honor. At one moment you were called St. Cecelia, then you were Mary Stuart, Karm Mansdotter, Ebba Brahe, and so I succeeded in awakening and stimulating your interests and so I compelled the yelping rabble to look at you with my own dazzled eyes. I impressed your personality on them by sheer force. I compelled them until you had won their overwhelming sympathy--so that at last you have the free _entrée_. And when I had created you in this way it was all up with my own strength--I broke down, exhausted by the strain. [_He sits down in his previous place. Thekla turns toward the fireplace on the right._] I had lifted you up, but at the same time I brought myself down; I fell ill; and my illness