Some are going to the mine, some are coming from the mine: all day, all day ... At least, I seem always to see them. Do you suppose I even care to go into the street alone? At most I slip through the back gate out into the fields. And they are such a rough set! The way they stare at one--so menacing and morose as if one were actually guilty of some crime. Sometimes, in winter, when we go sleighing, they come in the darkness, in great gangs, over the hills, through the storm, and, instead of making way, they walk stubbornly in front of the horses. Then, sometimes the farmers use the handles of their whips; it's the only way they can get through. And then the miners curse behind us. Ugh! I've been so terribly frightened sometimes! LOTH And isn't it strange that I have come here for the sake of these very people of whom you are so much afraid. HELEN Oh, surely not.... LOTH Quite seriously. These people interest me more than any one else here. HELEN No one excepted? LOTH No one. HELEN Not even my brother-in-law? LOTH No! For my interest in these people is different and of an altogether higher nature. But you must forgive me ... You can't be expected to follow me there. HELEN And why not? Indeed, I understand you very well ... [_She drops a letter inadvertently which LOTH stoops to pick up._] Don't bother ... it's of no importance; only an indifferent boarding-school correspondence. LOTH So you went to boarding-school? HELEN Yes, in Herrnhut. You mustn't think that I'm so wholly ... No, no, I do understand. LOTH You see, these workingmen interest me for their own sake. HELEN To be sure. And a miner like that is very interesting, if you look upon him in that way. Why, there are places where you never see one; but If you have them daily before your eyes ... LOTH Even if you have them daily before your eyes, Miss Krause. Indeed. I think that is necessary if one is to discover what is truly interesting about them. HELEN Dear me! If it's so hard to discover--I mean what is interesting about them! LOTH Well; it is interesting, for instance that these people, as you say, always look so menacing and so morose. HELEN Why do you think that _that_ is particularly interesting? LOTH Because it is not the usual thing. The rest of us look that way only sometimes and by no means always. HELEN Yes, but why do they always look so ... so full of hatred and so surly? There must be some reason for that. LOTH Just so. And it is this very reason that I am anxious to discover. HELEN Oh, don't!... Now you're making fun of me! What good would it do you, even if you knew that? LOTH One might perhaps find ways and means to remove the cause that makes these people so joyless and so full of hatred; one might perhaps make them happier. HELEN [_Slightly confused._] I must confess freely that now ... And yet perhaps just now I begin to understand you a little. Only it is so strange, so new, so utterly new ... HOFFMANN