situation is really amusing when one takes a
cool look at it. Here is Helene betrothed to Prince Racowitza, who is
intelligent, kind, amiable, good, unobjectionable. And because society
demands that a girl shall marry somebody, she accepts the situation,
and until Lassalle, the vagrant planet, came shooting through space,
this girl of aspiration and ambition would have actually wedded the
unobjectionable man and herself become unobjectionable to please her
unobjectionable parents.

HERR HOLTHOFF. That is a plain, judicial statement of the case, made by
the wife of a fairly good man.

LASSALLE. Error set in motion continues indefinitely, all according to
the physical law of inertia. The customs of society continue, and are
always regarded by the many as perfect--in fact, divine. This continues
until some one called a demagogue and a fanatic suggests a change. This
talk of change causes a little wobble in the velocity of the error, but
it still spins forward and crushes and mangles all who get in the way.
That is what you call orthodoxy--the subjection of the many. The men,
run over and mangled, are spoken of as "dangerous."

HERR HOLTHOFF. Which reminds me that when people say a man is dangerous,
they simply mean that his ideas are new to them.

LASSALLE. [_Seating himself at a table opposite Helene_] You hear, my
Goddess of the Dawn, Helene, that dangerous ideas are simply new ideas?

HELENE. Yes, I heard it and I have said it.

LASSALLE. Because I have said it.

HELENE. Undoubtedly, which is reason enough.

LASSALLE. Can you make your father believe that?

HELENE. I intend to try and I expect to succeed.

[All slip away and leave Helene and Lassalle alone. As the
conversation grows earnest, he holds her hands across the table,
just as the lovers do in a Gibson picture.]

LASSALLE. And you still think this better than that we should proclaim
the republic tomorrow, and have our dear friends go down and inform the
world that we are man and wife?

HELENE. Listen: The desire of my life is to be your wife. No ceremony
can make us more completely one than we are now. My soul is intertwined
with yours. All that remains is, how shall we announce the truth to the
world? Shall we do it by the tongue of scandal? That is not necessary.
Doctor Haenle can take you to call on my father. I will be there--we
will meet incidentally. You are irresistible to men, as well as to
women. My father will study you.