The King. Where? (To the BARONESS.) Go and see! (The BARONESS opens the doors at the back and looks out). Baroness. I can see no one. The King. Look down the corridor! Baroness. No--no one there, either! (CLARA has sunk lifelessly into the KING'S arms. After one or two spasmodic twitchings of her hands, her arms slip away from him and her head falls back.) The King. Help, help! The Baroness (rushing to him with a shriek). Clara! Curtain. ACT IV (SCENE.--A room in GRAN's house; the same as in Act I, Scene II. GRAN is standing at his desk on the right. FLINK comes in carrying a pistol-case, which he puts down upon the table.) Gran. You? Flink. As you see. (Walks up and down for a little without speaking.) Gran. I haven't seen you since the day the King was here. Flink. No.--Have you taken your holidays? Gran. Yes; but, anyway, I am likely to have perpetual holidays now! The elections are going against us. Flink (walking about). So I hear. The clerical party and the reactionaries are winning. Gran. That would not have been so, but for her unhappy death--. (Breaks off, and sighs.) Flink. A judgment from heaven--that is what the parsons say, and the women, and the reactionaries-- Gran.--and the landlords. And they really believe it. Flink (stopping). Well, don't you believe it? Gran (after a pause). At all events I interpret it differently from-- Flink.--from the parson? Naturally. But can any one doubt the fact that it was the finger of fate? Gran. Then fate assumed her father's shape? Flink. Whether her father appeared to her at the moment of his death or not (shrugs his shoulders) is a matter in which I am not interested. I don't believe in such things. But that she was suffering pangs of conscience, I do believe. I believe it may have brought painful visions before her eyes. Gran. I knew her pretty well, and I will answer for it she had no guilty conscience. She was approaching her task with enthusiasm. Any one that knew her will tell you the same. With her the King was first and foremost. Flink. What did she die of, then? Of enthusiasm? Gran. Of being overwrought by the force of her emotions. Her task was too great for her. The time was not ripe for it. (Sadly.) Our experiment was bound to fail. Flink. You condemn it when you say that!--But with her last breath she called out: "My father!" And, just at that moment, he died, fifty miles away from her. Either she _saw_ him, or she _imagined_ she saw him, standing before her. But his bloodstained, maltreated, crippled form standing in the way of her criminal advance towards the throne--is that not a symbol of maltreated humanity revolting against monarchy at the very moment when monarchy wishes to atone! Its guilt through thousands of years is too black. Fate is inflexible. Gran. But with what result? Are we rid of monarchy yet?