began to bore you, just because things were beginning to look a bit rosy for you--and then it seemed to me many times as though some secret desire were driving you to get away from your creditor and accomplice. Your love became that of a superior sister, and through want of a better part I fell into the habit of the new rôle of the little brother. Your tenderness remained the same as ever, in fact it has rather increased, but it is tinged with a grain of pity which is counterbalanced by a strong dose of contempt, and that will increase until it becomes complete, even as my genius is on the wane and your star is in the ascendant. It seems, too, as though your source were likely to dry up, when I leave off feeding it, or, rather, as soon as you show that you don't want to draw your inspiration from me any longer. And so we both go down, but you need somebody you can put in your pocket, somebody new, for you are weak and incapable of carrying any moral burden yourself. So I became the scapegoat to be slaughtered alive, but all the same we had become like twins in the course of years, and when you cut through the thread of my longing, you little thought that you were throttling our own self. You are a branch from my tree, and you wanted to cut yourself free from your parent stem before it had struck roots, but you are unable to flourish on your own, and the tree in its turn couldn't do without its chief branch, and so both perish. THEKLA. Do you mean, by all that, that you've written my books? ADOLF. No; you say that so as to provoke me into a lie. I don't express myself so crudely as you, and I've just spoken for five minutes on end simply so as to reproduce all the nuances, all the half-tones, all the transitions, but your barrel organ has only one key. THEKLA [_walking up and down on the right_]. Yes, yes; but the gist of the whole thing is that you've written my books. ADOLF. No, there's no gist. You can't resolve a symphony into one key; you can't translate a multifarious life into a single cipher. I never said anything so crass as that I'd written your books. THEKLA. But you meant it all the same. ADOLF [_furious_]. I never meant it. THEKLA. But the result-- ADOLF [_wildly_]. There's no result if one doesn't add. There is a quotient, a long infinitesimal figure of a quotient, but I didn't add. THEKLA. You didn't, but I can. ADOLF. I quite believe you, but I never did. THEKLA. But you wanted to. ADOLF [_exhausted, shutting his eyes_]. No, no, no--don't speak to me any more, I'm getting convulsions--be quiet, go away! You're flaying my brain with your brutal pinchers--you're thrusting your claws into my thoughts and tearing them. [_He loses consciousness, stares in front of him and turns his thumbs inwards._]