CASTI-PIANI--You take care of it! Or as a feminist, have you perhaps something on earth more important to do? So long as any woman under God’s sun must still be afraid of becoming a mother, all the “emancipation” in the world is nothing but empty gabble! Motherhood is a necessity of nature for a woman, like breathing and sleeping. And this innate right has been most barbarously restricted by conventional society. A natural child is almost as big a disgrace as the love-business itself! =Whore= here and =whore= there! The mother of an illegitimate child is no more spared the name of whore than is a girl in this house. If ever anything in your woman’s movement inspired me with loathing, it was the =morality= that you inject into your disciples on life’s way. Do you imagine the love-business would ever in the world’s history have been described as a disgrace if the man could have competed with the woman in the love-market? Envy! Nothing but commercial envy! Nature accorded to the woman the monopoly of being able to trade in her love. Therefore conventional society, which is governed by man, would like nothing better than over and over again to represent that trade as the most shameful of crimes! ELFRIEDE--[_Stands up and lays her cloak over the chair. Walking up and down._] I confess I am at this moment quite unable to tell whether your opinions on that point are right or not. But how in the world is it possible for a man of your culture, of your social views, of your intellectual eminence, to throw his life away among the vilest elements of society! God knows it may have been only your beastly brutality that has made me take your assertions seriously. But I feel very sure you’ve given me things to think about for a long time to come, things I’d never in my life have thought of myself. Every winter for years I’ve heard from twelve to twenty lectures by all the male and female authorities on the woman movement; but I can’t remember ever having heard a word that went to the bottom of the business the way your statements do. CASTI-PIANI--[_In a singsong._] Let us always realize quite clearly, my dear lady, that we all are as though walking in our sleep on a ridge-pole, and that any unexpected enlightenment can be the breaking of our necks. ELFRIEDE--[_Staring at him._] What do you mean by =that=?--There’s something monstrous in your mind?! CASTI-PIANI--[_Very quietly._] I said it only in regard to your views, which so far have let you feel so innocently safe in throwing round epithets like =respectable= and =vile= as if you were specially commissioned of God to sit in judgment on your fellow-mortals. ELFRIEDE--[_Staring at him._] You’re a great man.--You’re a high-minded man! CASTI-PIANI--Your words probe the mortal wound that I brought with me into the world and that I shall probably die of, some day. [_Throws himself into a chair._] I am--a moralist!