When We Dead Awaken Part 48

For me!

IRENE.

As we were sitting by the Lake of Taunitz last evening--

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

By the Lake of--

IRENE. --outside the peasant's hut--and playing with swans and water-lilies--

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

What then--what then?

IRENE. --and when I heard you say with such deathly, icy coldness--that I was nothing but an episode in your life--

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

It was you that said that, Irene, not I.

IRENE.

[Continuing.] --then I had my knife out. I wanted to stab you in the back with it.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Darkly.] And why did you hold your hand?

IRENE.

Because it flashed upon me with a sudden horror that you were dead already--long ago.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Dead?

IRENE.

Dead. Dead, you as well as I. We sat there by the Lake of Taunitz, we two clay-cold bodies--and played with each other.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

I do not call that being dead. But you do not understand me.

IRENE.

Then where is the burning desire for me that you fought and battled against when I stood freely forth before you as the woman arisen from the dead?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Our love is a.s.suredly not dead, Irene.

IRENE.

The love that belongs to the life of earth--the beautiful, miraculous earth-life--the inscrutable earth-life--that is dead in both of us.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Pa.s.sionately.] And do you know that just that love--it is burning and seething in me as hotly as ever before?

IRENE.

And I? Have you forgotten who I now am?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Be who or what you please, for aught I care! For me, you are the woman I see in my dreams of you.

IRENE.

I have stood on the turn-table-naked--and made a show of myself to many hundreds of men--after you.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

It was I that drove you to the turn-table--blind as I then was--I, who placed the dead clay-image above the happiness of life--of love.