Robert. There! (_Throws down his knife on the table_) Frau Heinecke. How you _do_ act! Robert. Yes, I forgot!--Forgive me! (Frau Heinecke _goes out._) Trast. Now confess, my boy! Trust in me! Robert. Oh, if I had only never seen my home again! Trast. Ha! so that's where the wind blows from. Robert. I am ashamed of the position I was born in. My own people have become nothing to me. My whole being shudders from contact with them. I can't trust my mind, one mad suspicion follows the other! Trast! I almost believe I don't even respect the breast that nursed me! Trast. That's simply rot! Robert. If I could only explain what I have suffered! Every serious word strikes me like a blow! And every pleasantry like a slap in the face! It seems as though they could talk of nothing but what hurts me--I thought I was coming back to a home,--instead of that it's a strange world where I dare hardly breathe!--Advise me what to do! Trast. Pack your trunk! Robert. That would be a cowardly and heartless retreat! Do they deserve that--My own parents! Trast. Listen--drop the pathetic note--The matter is simple enough for us. We've studied caste in its native wilds. The same castes exist here. They aren't established by food-laws, or marriage-rules and religious etiquette; those were simple. The chasm that can't be bridged is the difference of feeling--each caste has its own sense of honor, its own nice distinctions, its own ideas, yes, even its own speech. Unhappy is the man who has fallen out of his own caste and hasn't the courage to cut himself off from it entirely. Just such a declasse are you!--and you know, I was the same thing myself! Just what you are feeling now, I went through years ago. How do you suppose I felt, _chic_ young cavalry officer, when I woke one morning to the realization that I had gambled away ninety thousand talers that had to be paid in twenty-four hours. What good did it do me to ride home and throw myself at my father's feet? He would have put his head in pawn to save the honor of our name--but he had already done so! And, since he had nothing else to give me, he gave me at least his curse! Robert. (_Brooding_) How you had the courage to live after that! Trast. Do you know what happened then? Robert. (_Absently, tortured by his own thoughts_) I know nothing--nothing--nothing!