Good! Your child,--your child,--you love it? [Magda _nods_.] You wish to see it again? [_She nods_.] And--yes--if you made an oath upon its head [_makes a motion as if he laid his hand upon a child's head_], then you would not perjure yourself? [Magda _shakes her head, smiling_.] That's well. [_Rising_.] Either you swear to me now, as upon his head, that you will become the honorable wife of his father, or--neither of us two shall go out of this room alive. [_Sinks back on the seat_.] MAGDA. [_After a short silence_.] My poor, dear papa! Why do you torture yourself so? And do you think that I will let myself be constrained by locked doors? You cannot believe it. SCHWARTZE. You will see. MAGDA. [_In growing excitement_.] And what do you really want of me? Why do you trouble yourself about me? I had almost said, what have you all to do with me? SCHWARTZE. That you will see. MAGDA. You blame me for living out my life without asking you and the whole family for permission. And why should I not? Was I not without family? Did you not send me out into the world to earn my bread, and then disown me because the way in which I earned it was not to your taste? Whom did I harm? Against whom did I sin? Oh, if I had remained the daughter of the house, like Marie, who is nothing and does nothing without the sheltering roof of the home, who passes straight from the arms of her father into the arms of her husband; who receives from the family life, thought, character, everything,--yes, then you would have been right. In such a one the slightest error would have ruined everything,--conscience, honor, self-respect. But I? Look at me. I was alone. I was as shelterless as a man knocked about in the world, dependent on the work of my own hands. If you give us the right to hunger--and I have hungered--why do you deny us the right to love, as we can find it, and to happiness, as we can understand it? SCHWARTZE. You think, my child, because you are free and a great artist, that you can set at naught-- MAGDA.