How much _Wendla_ knew, her mother found out when too late. _Wendla_ and _Melchior_, overtaken by a storm, seek shelter in a haystack, and are drawn by what _Melchior_ calls the "first emotion of manhood" and curiosity into each other's arms. Six months later _Wendla's_ mother discovers that her child is to become a mother. To save the family honor, the girl is promptly placed in the hands of a quack who treats her for chlorosis. _Wendla._ No, Mother, no! I know it. I feel it. I haven't chlorosis. I have dropsy--I won't get better. I have the dropsy, I must die, Mother--O, Mother, I must die! _Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You must not die--Great heavens, you must not die! _Wendla._ But why do you weep so frightfully, then? _Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl! You have a child! Oh, why did you do that to me! _Wendla._ I haven't done anything to you. _Frau Bergmann._ Oh, don't deny it any more, Wendla!--I know everything. See, I didn't want to say a word to you.--Wendla, my Wendla--! _Wendla._ But it's not possible, Mother.... I have loved nobody in the world as I do you, Mother. The pathos of it, that such a loving mother should be responsible for the death of her own child! Yet _Frau Bergmann_ is but one of the many good, pious mothers who lay their children to "rest in God," with the inscription on the tombstone: "Wendla Bergmann, born May 5th, 1878, died from chlorosis, Oct. 27, 1892. Blessed are the pure of heart." _Melchior_, like _Wendla_, was also "pure of heart"; yet how was he "blessed"? Surely not by his teachers who, discovering his essay on the mystery of life, expel the boy from school. Only Wedekind could inject such grim humor into the farce of education--the smug importance of the faculty of the High School sitting under the portraits of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and pronouncing judgment on their "immoral" pupil _Melchior_.