CASTI-PIANI--[_With a disconsolate smile._] If you guessed, my dear young lady, the hidden springs of your diabolical excitement, you would be wise enough, perhaps, to keep perfectly calm in the presence of such a monster as _I_ seem to you to be. ELFRIEDE--[_Curt._] I don’t understand that. I don’t know what you mean! CASTI-PIANI--You--are--still--a virgin? ELFRIEDE--[_Gasping._] How dare you put such a question to me! CASTI-PIANI--Who in God’s wide world will forbid me!--But we’ll leave that. In any case, you have not married. You are, as you just informed me yourself, twenty-eight years old. These facts may be sufficient to prove to you that in comparison with other women, not to speak of that child of nature for whose rescue you have come here,--you are only to a very slight degree open to sensuous influences. ELFRIEDE--You may be right in that. CASTI-PIANI--I speak, of course, only with the understanding that I shall not annoy you with this discussion. I am very far from thinking you unhealthily or unnaturally constituted. But do you know, my young lady, how you have satisfied those sensuous cravings that you have?--to be sure, as you admit, extremely weak? ELFRIEDE--Well? CASTI-PIANI--By joining the International Union for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. ELFRIEDE--[_Restraining her anger._] Who are you, my dear sir!--I came here to free an unfortunate girl from the claws of vice! I did not come here to listen to lectures, in very bad taste, from you. CASTI-PIANI--Nor did I suppose you did. But you see, when viewed from this standpoint, we are more allied to one another than you in your proud little bourgeois virtue ever dreamt. On =you= nature has conferred but an extremely scant sensuous susceptibility. The storms of life have long since made a horribly chilly desert of =me=. But what fighting the white slave traffic is to =your= sensual life, that, to mine, if you will still grant me something of the kind,--is the white slave traffic itself! ELFRIEDE--[_Aroused._] Don’t dissemble so shamelessly, you vile creature! Do you think you can lull me to sleep with your fantastic =sense=-hocus-pocus?--me, who’ve run after that girl from one den of vice to another like a hunted brute?! I’m not here now as a member of the Union for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. I’m here as an unhappy criminal who has unintentionally plunged an innocent young life into suffering and despair. I shall never be happy again as long as I live if I can’t snatch this child from her ruin now. You would have me believe an impure curiosity drives me into this house. You’re a liar! You don’t believe your own words! And it was not unsatisfied sensuality that made you barter this girl away, but money-greed! You lured and sold this girl because it was good business!