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.
[Passionately.] 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.
Irene.
[Looking down.] Too late—too late!
Professor Rubek.
Not by a hairsbreadth has all that has passed in the interval lowered you in my eyes.
