CLEMENT. Come, child, don't be so sensitive. I know you're half-Jewish. And really, you know, I've nothing against the Jews. I even had an instructor once, who put me through my Greek for my final exam. He was a Jew, if you like--and a splendid fellow. One meets all kinds of people ... And I'm not sorry to have had a chance to see your Munich circle--it's all a bit of experience.--But, you admit, I must have appeared to you as a kind of life-saver. MARGARET. Yes, indeed you did. Oh, Clement, Clement ...! (She embraces him.) CLEMENT. What are you laughing at? MARGARET. Oh, a thought struck me ... CLEMENT. Well ...? MARGARET. "So, drunk with bliss, I hang upon thy neck ..." Clement (annoyed). I don't know why you always have to spoil a fellow's illusions! MARGARET. Tell me honestly, Clement--wouldn't you be proud if your girl--if your wife--were a great, famous authoress? CLEMENT. I've told you already what I think. You may call me narrow if you like, but I assure you that if you began writing poems again, or, even more, having them printed, in which you gushed about me or told the world all about our happiness, there'd be an end of the marriage--I should be up and off. MARGARET. And you say that--you, a man who has had a dozen notorious affairs! CLEMENT. Notorious or not, my dear, _I_ never told anybody about them; I never rushed into print when a girl hung, drunk with bliss, about my neck, so that anybody could buy it for a gulden and a half. That's the thing, you see. I know that there are people who get their living that way--but I don't consider it the thing to do. I tell you it seems worse to me than for a girl to show herself off in tights as a Greek statue at the Ronacher. At least she keeps her mouth shut--but the things that one of your poets blabs out, well, they're past a joke! MARGARET (uneasily). Dearest, you forget that a poet doesn't always tell the truth. We tell things which we haven't experienced at all, but what we've dreamed, invented. CLEMENT. My dear Margaret, I wish you wouldn't always keep saying "we." Thank heaven, you're out of that sort of thing now! MARGARET. Who knows? CLEMENT. What do you mean by that? MARGARET (tenderly). Clem, I really must tell you? CLEMENT. Why, what's up now? MARGARET. Well, I'm not out of it--I haven't given up writing. CLEMENT. You mean by that ...? MARGARET. Just what I say--that I'm still writing, or at least that I have written something. Yes, this impulse is stronger than other people can conceive. I believe I should have gone to pieces if I hadn't written. CLEMENT. Well, what have you been writing this time? MARGARET. A novel. I had too much in my breast that wanted to be said--I should have choked if I hadn't got it out. I haven't said anything about it before--but of course I had to tell you sooner or later. Kuenigel is delighted with it. CLEMENT. Who is Kuenigel? MARGARET. My publisher. CLEMENT. Then somebody's read the thing already?