ELFRIEDE--And would you bewail your fate on that account?! Because the power of making other men happy was given you? [_After a short inner struggle, she throws herself at his feet._] Marry me, marry me, for mercy’s sake! Before I saw =you= I was never able to imagine the possibility of giving myself to a man! I am absolutely inexperienced; that I can swear to you by the sacredest oaths. Till this moment I never guessed what the word =love= meant. With you, here, I feel it for the first time. Love lifts the lover up above his miserable self. I’m an everyday average woman, but my love for you makes me so free and fearless that nothing is impossible to me. Continue, in God’s name, from crime to crime! I will go before you! Go to prison! I will go before you! Go from prison to the scaffold! I will go before you. Don’t, I beseech you, don’t let this fortunate opportunity escape! Marry me, marry me, marry me! So shall help come to us two poor children of men! CASTI-PIANI--[_Stroking her head, without looking at her._] Whether you love me or don’t love me, you dear animal, is all one to me. Of course, you cannot know how many thousand times I have already had to undergo just such outbursts of emotion. Far be it from me to undervalue love. But alas, love must also serve as the vindication of all those innumerable women who merely satisfy their sensual wants, without asking the least return, and by their unrecompensed abandon only ruin the market. ELFRIEDE--Marry me! There is still time for you to begin a new life! Marriage will reconcile you with society. You can be editor of a socialist paper, you can be a representative in the Reichstag! Marry me, and then even you will learn for once in your life what superhuman sacrifices a woman is capable of in her boundless love!