It is! it is! We mustn't wait! It's the best thing--for you and for me. If you don't take me soon, you'll just leave me quite, and then, and then ... It would just be all over with me. LOTH How distrustful you are, Nellie. HELEN Don't say that, dearest. Anybody would trust you, would just have to trust you!... When I am your own, oh, then ... then, you surely wouldn't leave me. [_As if beside herself._] I beseech you! Don't go away! Only don't leave me! Don't--go, Alfred! If you go away without me, I would just have to die, just have to die! LOTH But you are strange!... And you say you're not distrustful! Or perhaps they're worrying you, torturing you terribly here--more than ever ... At all events we'll leave this very night. I am ready. And so, as soon as you are--we can go. HELEN [_Falling around his neck with a cry of joyous gratitude._] Dear--dearest! [_She kisses him madly and hurries out._ _DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG comes in through the middle door and catches a glimpse of HELEN disappearing into the conservatory._ DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Who was that?--Ah, yes! [_To himself._] Poor thing! [_He sits down beside the table with a sigh, finds his old cigar, throws it aside, takes a new cigar from the case and starts to knock it gently against the edge of the table. Thoughtfully he looks away across it._ LOTH [_Watching him._] That's just the way you used to loosen every cigar before smoking it eight years ago. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG It's possible--[_When he has lit and begun to smoke the cigar._] Listen to me! LOTH Yes; what is it? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG I take it that, so soon as the affair is over, you'll come along with me. LOTH Can't be done. I'm sorry. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG Once in a while, you know, one does feel like talking oneself out thoroughly. LOTH I feel that need quite as much, as you do. But you can see from just that how utterly out of my power it is to go ... DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG But suppose I give you my emphatic and, in a way, solemn assurance that there is a specific, an extremely important matter that I'd like--no, that I must discuss with you to-night, Loth! LOTH Queer! You don't expect me to take that in deadly earnest. Surely not!--You've waited to discuss that matter so many years and now it can't wait one more day? You know me--I'm not pretending. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG So I am right! Well, well ... [_He gets up and walks about._ LOTH What are you right about? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG [_Standing still before LOTH _and looking straight into his eyes._] So there is really something between you and Helen Krause? LOTH Who said--? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG How in the world did you fall in with this family? LOTH How do you know that, Schimmel? DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG It wasn't _so_ hard to guess. LOTH Well then, for heaven's sake, don't say a word, because ... DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG So you're quite regularly betrothed? LOTH Call it that. At all events, we're agreed.