_HELEN steps from the house door. She wears a light-coloured summer dress and a large garden hat. She looks all around her, walks a few paces toward the gate-way, stands still and gazes out. Hereupon she saunters across the yard toward the right and turns into the path that leads to the inn. Great bundles of various tea-herbs are slung across the fence to dry. She stops to inhale their odours. She also bends downward the lower boughs of fruit trees and admires the low hanging, red-cheeked apples. When she observes LOTH coming toward her from the inn, a yet greater restlessness comes over her, so that she finally turns around and reaches the farm yard before LOTH. Here she notices that the dove-cote is still closed and goes thither through the little gate that leads into the orchard. While she is still busy pulling down the cord which, blown about by the wind, has become entangled somewhere, she is addressed by LOTH, who has come up in the meantime._ LOTH Good morning, Miss Krause. HELEN Good morning. See, the wind has blown the cord up there! LOTH Let me help you. [_He also passes through the little gate, gets the cord down and opens the dove-cote. The pigeons flutter out._ HELEN Thank you so much! LOTH [_Has passed out by the little gate once more and stands there, leaning against the fence. HELEN is on the other side of it. After a brief pause._] Do you make a habit of rising so early? HELEN I was just going to ask you the same thing. LOTH I? Oh, no! But after the first night in a strange place it usually happens so. HELEN Why does that happen? LOTH I have never thought about it. To what end? HELEN Oh, wouldn't it serve some end? LOTH None, at least, that is apparent and practical. HELEN And so everything that you do or think must have some practical end in view. LOTH Exactly. Furthermore ... HELEN I would not have thought that of you. LOTH What, Miss Krause? HELEN It was with those very words that, day before yesterday, my stepmother snatched "The Sorrows of Werther" from my hand. LOTH It is a foolish book. HELEN Oh, don't say that. LOTH Indeed, I must repeat it, Miss Krause. It is a book for weaklings. HELEN That may well be. LOTH How do you come across just that book? Do you quite understand it? HELEN I hope I do--at least, in part. It rests me to read it. [_After a pause._] But if it _is_ a foolish book, as you say, could you recommend me a better one? LOTH Read ... well, let me see ... do you know Dahn's "Fight for Rome"? HELEN No, but I'll buy the book now. Does it serve a practical end? LOTH No, but a rational one. It depicts men not as they are but such as, some day, they ought to be. Thus it sets up an ideal for our imitation. HELEN [_Deeply convinced._] Ah, that is noble. [_A brief pause._] But perhaps you can tell me something else. The papers talk so much about Zola and Ibsen. Are they great authors? LOTH