MARGARET. What makes you think so?

CLEMENT. Oh ... because they were always cutting jokes--and then their
pronunciation ...

MARGARET. I think you might dispense with anti-Semitic remarks.

CLEMENT. Come, child, don't be so sensitive. I know you're half-Jewish.
And really, you know, I've nothing against the Jews. I even had an
instructor once, who put me through my Greek for my final exam. He was
a Jew, if you like--and a splendid fellow. One meets all kinds of
people ... And I'm not sorry to have had a chance to see your Munich
circle--it's all a bit of experience.--But, you admit, I must have
appeared to you as a kind of life-saver.

MARGARET. Yes, indeed you did. Oh, Clement, Clement ...! (She embraces
him.)

CLEMENT. What are you laughing at?

MARGARET. Oh, a thought struck me ...

CLEMENT. Well ...?

MARGARET. "So, drunk with bliss, I hang upon thy neck ..."

Clement (annoyed). I don't know why you always have to spoil a fellow's
illusions!

MARGARET. Tell me honestly, Clement--wouldn't you be proud if your
girl--if your wife--were a great, famous authoress?

CLEMENT. I've told you already what I think. You may call me narrow if
you like, but I assure you that if you began writing poems again, or,
even more, having them printed, in which you gushed about me or told
the world all about our happiness, there'd be an end of the marriage--I
should be up and off.

MARGARET. And you say that--you, a man who has had a dozen notorious
affairs!

CLEMENT. Notorious or not, my dear, _I_ never told anybody about them;
I
never rushed into print when a girl hung, drunk with bliss, about my
neck, so that anybody could buy it for a gulden and a half. That's the
thing, you see. I know that there are people who get their living that
way--but I don't consider it the thing to do. I tell you it seems worse
to me than for a girl to show herself off in tights as a Greek statue
at the Ronacher. At least she keeps her mouth shut--but the things that
one of your poets blabs out, well, they're past a joke!

MARGARET (uneasily). Dearest, you forget that a poet doesn't always
tell the truth. We tell things which we haven't experienced at all, but
what we've dreamed, invented.

CLEMENT. My dear Margaret, I wish you wouldn't always keep saying "we."
Thank heaven, you're out of that sort of thing now!

MARGARET. Who knows?

CLEMENT. What do you mean by that?

MARGARET (tenderly). Clem, I really must tell you?

CLEMENT