WENDLA--Wouldn’t you hit me with it once? MELCHIOR--You? WENDLA--Yes. MELCHIOR--What’s got into you, Wendla? WENDLA--[_Drawing back, a little alarmed._] Why shouldn’t you? MELCHIOR--Oh, don’t shrink. I won’t hit you. WENDLA--But even if I let you? MELCHIOR--Never, girl! WENDLA--Even if I ask you to, Melchior? MELCHIOR--Have you lost your senses? WENDLA--I have never in my life been beaten! MELCHIOR--If you can beg for a thing like that!... WENDLA--[_Thrusting it into his hands._] I do! Please! MELCHIOR--I’ll teach you to say Please! [_Strikes her._] WENDLA--Oh, what! I don’t feel the least thing! MELCHIOR--No wonder--thru all your skirts like that.... WENDLA--Then hit me on the legs--here! MELCHIOR--Wendla! [_Strikes her harder._] WENDLA--Oh, you’re just stroking me!--You’re stroking me! MELCHIOR--You wait, you witch--I’ll beat the devil out of you! [_He throws the sprig aside and falls upon her with his fists so that she breaks out with a fearful cry. Undeterred, raging, his blows rain on her thick and fast, while big tears overflow and streak his cheeks. Of a sudden, he springs upright, clasps his temples with both hands, and, passionately sobbing, plunges into the forest._] CURTAIN ACT II SCENE I.--MELCHIOR’S _study. A recess, rear center, with casements looking out upon moonlit garden and dark, evening woods. Window-seat. Low table with a well-shaded oil lamp, books, cigarettes, etc._ MORITZ _and_ MELCHIOR _sit on the two ends of the window-seat, in profile, facing each other_. MORITZ--Now I’m quite cheerful again--only a bit excited. But in the Greek class I went to sleep like the besotted Polyphemus! I’m amazed old Zungenschlag didn’t tweak my ears. This morning again I came within an ace of being late. My first thought when I woke up was of the verbs in -MI. Gee whiz, but didn’t I conjugate all during breakfast and along the road till everything turned green before me!--It must have been a little after three when I dropped off. The pen left a blot on my book. The lamp was smoking when Matilda woke me. In the elders under my window the blackbirds were twittering so joyously--I got unutterably melancholy again at once. I buttoned my collar and pulled the brush thru my hair.--But you feel it when you force yourself against nature.... MELCHIOR--Shall I roll you a cigarette?