go. We were children then.

FELIX

Why can't you talk to me any longer as you did then? Have you forgotten
how well we two used to understand each other? How we used to confide
all our secrets to each other? What good chums we used to be?... How we
wanted to go out into the wide world together?

JOHANNA

Into the wide world.... Oh, yes, I remember. But there is nothing left
now of all those words of wonder and romance.

FELIX

Perhaps it depends on ourselves only.

JOHANNA

No, those words have no longer the same meaning as before.

FELIX

What do you mean?

JOHANNA

Into the wide world ...

FELIX

What is the matter, Johanna?

JOHANNA

Once, when we were in the museum together, I saw a picture of which I
often think. It has a meadow with knights and ladies in it--and a
forest, a vineyard, an inn, and young men and women dancing, and a big
city with churches and towers and bridges. And soldiers are marching
across the bridges, and a ship is gliding down the river. And farther
back there is a hill, and on that hill a castle, and lofty mountains in
the extreme distance. And clouds are floating above the mountains, and
there is mist on the meadow, and a flood of sunlight is pouring down on
the city, and a storm is raging over the castle, and there is ice and
snow on the mountains.--And when anybody spoke of "the wide world," or
I read that term anywhere, I used always to think of that picture. And
it used to be the same with so many other big-sounding words. Fear was
a tiger with cavernous mouth--love was a page with long light curls
kneeling at the feet of a lady--death was a beautiful young man with
black wings and a sword in his hand--and fame was blaring bugles, men
with bent backs, and a road strewn with flowers. In those days it was
possible to talk of all sorts of things, Felix. But to-day everything
has a different look--fame, and death, and love, and the wide world.

FELIX (_hesitatingly_)

I feel a little scared on your behalf, Johanna.

JOHANNA

Why, Felix?

FELIX

Johanna!--I wish you wouldn't do anything to worry father.

JOHANNA

Does that depend on me alone?

FELIX

I know in what direction your dreams are going, Johanna.--What is to
come out of that?

JOHANNA

Is it necessary that something comes out of everything?--I think,
Felix, that many people are destined to mean nothing to each other but
a common memory.

FELIX

You have said it yourself, Johanna--that y