Yes, for you, too. JULIAN But what do you mean by that? IRENE We had deserved no better. JULIAN We...? In what way? IRENE (_very seriously_) You are so very clever otherwise, Julian. Now what do you say--do you think it could have happened as it did--do you think I could have made a mistake like that--if we--had had a child? Ask yourself on your conscience, Julian--do you believe it? I don't, and you don't either. Everything would have happened in a different way. Everything. We had stayed together then. We had had _more_ children. We had married. We might be living together now. I shouldn't have become an old-maidish "young lady from the castle," and you wouldn't have become.... JULIAN An old bachelor. IRENE Well, if you say it yourself. And the main thing is this: we _had_ a child. I had a child. (_Pause_) JULIAN (_walking back and forth_) What's the use, Irene? Why do you begin to talk of all those forgotten things again...? IRENE Forgotten? JULIAN ... Things gone by. IRENE Yes, they are bygone, of course. But out there in the country you have plenty of time. All sorts of things keep passing through your head. And especially when you see other people's children--Lora has two boys, you know--then you get all sorts of notions. It almost amounted to a vision not long ago. JULIAN What? IRENE It was toward evening, and I had walked across the fields. I do it quite often, all by myself. Far and wide there was nobody to be seen. And the village down below was quite deserted, too. And I walked on and on, always in direction of the woods. And suddenly I was no longer alone. You were with me. And between us was the child. We were holding it by the hands--our little child. (_Angrily, to keep herself from crying_) It's too silly for anything! I know, of course, that our child would be a gawky youngster of twenty-three by now--that it might have turned into a scamp or a good-for-nothing girl. Or that it might be dead already. Or that it had drifted out into the wide world, so that we had nothing left of it--oh, yes, yes.... But we should have had it once, for all that--once there would have been a little child that seemed rather fond of us. And.... (_She is unable to go on; silence follows_) JULIAN (_softly_) You shouldn't talk yourself into such a state, Irene. IRENE I am not talking myself into anything. JULIAN Don't brood. Accept things as they are. There have been other things in your life--better things, perhaps. Your life has been much richer than that of a mere mother could ever have been.... You have been an artist. IRENE (_as if to herself_) I don't care that much for it. JULIAN A great, famous one--that means something after all. And your life has brought you many other exquisite experiences--since the one with me. I am sure of it. IRENE