emptations?

STRANGER. Not the kind you mean.

CONFESSOR. Then what kind?

STRANGER. I could still imagine a reconciliation between mankind and
woman--through woman herself! And indeed, through that woman who was my
wife and has now become what I once held her to be having been purified
and lifted up by sorrow and need. But...

CONFESSOR. But what?

STRANGER. Experience teaches; the nearer, the further off: the further
from one another, the nearer one can be.

CONFESSOR. I've always known that--it was known by Dante, who all his
life possessed the soul of Beatrice; and Beethoven, who was united from
afar with Therese von Brunswick, knew it, though she was the wife of
another!

STRANGER. And yet! Happiness is only to be found in her company.

CONFESSOR. Then stay with her.

STRANGER. You're forgetting one thing: we're divorced.

CONFESSOR. Good! Then you can begin a new marriage. And it'll promise
all the more, because both of you are new people.

STRANGER. Do you think anyone would marry us?

CONFESSOR. I, for instance? That's asking too much.

STRANGER. Yes. I'd forgotten! But I daresay someone could be found. It's
another thing to get a home together....

CONFESSOR. You're sometimes lucky, even if you won't see it. There's
a small house down there by the river; it's quite new and the owner's
never even seen it. He was an Englishman who wanted to marry; but at
the last moment _she_ broke off the engagement. It was built by his
secretary, and neither of the engaged couple ever set eyes on it. It's
quite intact, you see!

STRANGER. IS it to let?

CONFESSOR. Yes.

STRANGER. Then I'll risk it. And I'll try to begin life all over again.

CONFESSOR. Then you'll go down?

STRANGER. Out of the clouds. Below the sun's shining, and up here the
air's a little thin.

CONFESSOR. Good! Then we must part--for a time.

STRANGER. Where are you going?

CONFESSOR. Up.

STRANGER. And I down; to the earth, the mother with the soft bosom and
warm lap....

CONFESSOR. Until you long once more for what's hard as stone, as cold
and as white... Farewell! Greetings to those below!

(Each of them goes of in the direction he has chosen.)

Curtain.

SCENE III

A SMALL HOUSE ON THE MOUNTAIN

[A pleasant, panelled dining-room, with a tiled stove of majolica. On
the dining-table, which is in the middle of the room, stand vases filled
with flowers; also two candelabra with many lighted candles. A large
carved s