WENDLA--So =here’s= where you hid! Everybody’s looking for you. The wagon’s gone out again. You must help. There’s a storm coming up. MELCHIOR--Get away from me!--Get away from me! WENDLA--What’s the matter with you?--Why do you hide your face? MELCHIOR--Get out! Get out!--Or I’ll throw you down on the barn-floor! WENDLA--Now I certainly won’t go. [_She kneels beside him._] Why won’t you come out on the hayfield with us, Melchior? Here it’s so sultry and dark! What if we =do= get wet to the skin--we don’t care! MELCHIOR--The hay smells so wonderful.--The sky outside must be as black as a pall.--I can’t see anything but the gleaming poppy at your breast,--and your heart, I hear it beating!---- WENDLA--Don’t kiss me, Melchior!--Don’t kiss me! MELCHIOR--Your heart--I hear it beating---- WENDLA--People love each other--when they kiss---- Don’t! Don’t!---- MELCHIOR--Oh, believe me, there’s no such thing as love!--Self-seeking, egoism,--that’s all there is!--I love you as little as you love me.---- WENDLA--Don’t!-------- Don’t, Melchior!---- MELCHIOR-- ... Wendla! WENDLA--Oh, Melchior!----don’t--don’t---- CURTAIN SCENE V.--MRS. GABOR _sits and writes_. [_Or else she may be shown in a dark room, in silhouette against the window, reading her letter over by its failing light._] MRS. GABOR--My dear Moritz Stiefel! I take up my pen with a heavy heart after twenty-four hours of considering and reconsidering everything that you write me. The money for passage to America I am not able, I give you my solemn word, to furnish you. In the first place I have not that much at my disposal, and in the second, even if I had, it would be doing you the greatest wrong I can imagine to put into your hands the means of carrying out so rash and critical a venture. You would do me bitter injustice, Moritz Stiefel, if you saw in this refusal of mine any sign of failing affection. On the contrary, it would be the grossest failure in my duty as your friend and counselor for me to be willing to let your momentary loss of judgment cause me too to lose my head and blindly follow my first, most natural impulses. I am willing and ready, if you wish me to, to write to your parents and try to convince them that throughout the course of this last term you have done all you could and drawn so heavily upon your strength that a severe attitude towards what has happened to you would not only be unwarranted but, more seriously, might have the gravest effect upon your mental and physical health.