_Magda._ H'm! I didn't reproach you. And now I will tell you why I owe you thanks. I was a stupid, unsuspecting thing, enjoying freedom like a runaway monkey. Through you I became a woman. For whatever I have done in my art, for whatever I have become in myself, I have you to thank. My soul was like--yes, down below there, there used to be an Æolian harp which was left moldering because my father could not bear it. Such a silent harp was my soul; and through you it was given to the storm. And it sounded almost to breaking,--the whole scale of passions which bring us women to maturity,--love and hate and revenge and ambition, and need, need, need,--three times need--and the highest, the strongest, the holiest of all, the mother's love!--All I owe to you! _Von Keller._ My child! _Magda._ Your child? Who calls it so? Yours? Ha, ha! Dare to claim portion in him and I'll kill you with these hands. Who are you? You're a strange man who gratified his lust and passed on with a laugh. But I have a child,--my son, my God, my all! For him I lived and starved and froze and walked the streets; for him I sang and danced in concert-halls,--for my child who was crying for his bread! _Von Keller._ For Heaven's sake, hush! someone's coming. _Magda._ Let them come! Let them all come! I don't care, I don't care! To their faces I'll say what I think of you,--of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you, that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am. _Magda's_ father learns about the affair and immediately demands that the _Councillor_ marry his daughter, or fight a duel. _Magda_ resents the preposterous idea. _Von Keller_ is indeed glad to offer _Magda_ his hand in marriage: she is so beautiful and fascinating; she will prove a great asset to his ambitions. But he stipulates that she give up her profession of singer, and that the existence of the child be kept secret. He tells _Magda_ that later on, when they are happily married and firmly established in the world, they will bring their child to their home and adopt it; but for the present respectability must not know that it is theirs, born out of wedlock, without the sanction of the Church and the State. That is more than _Magda_ can endure. She is outraged that she, the mother, who had given up everything for the sake of her child, who had slaved, struggled and drudged in order to win a career and economic independence--all for the sake of the child--that she should forswear her right to motherhood, her right to be true to herself!