ter, are you not? (_In a low voice, almost timidly_) My love....
(_He strokes her brow and hair_) Love.... The air is so mild.

SALA

We are having a wonderful Autumn.

REUMANN

Have you just got away from the Academy, Professor?

WEGRAT

Yes. Now, when I am also the president of it, there is a whole lot to
do--and all of it is not pleasant or grateful. But I seem to be made
for it, as they have insisted. And I suppose it will have to go on this
way. (_With a smile_) As somebody once called me--an art-official.

SALA

Don't be so unjust to yourself, Professor.

MRS. WEGRAT

You must have been walking all that long way home again?

WEGRAT

I even went out of my way some distance--to pass across the old Turkish
fort.[2] I am awfully fond of that road. On evenings like this the
whole city lies beneath you as if bathed in a silvery mist.--By the by,
Gabrielle, I have some greetings to deliver. I met Irene Herms.

[2] The place where the Turks fortified themselves before
driven from Vienna by John Sobieski in 1683 is now a small
park, "_Tuerkenschanz-Park_," located in Doebling, one of the
northwestern quarters of Greater Vienna. Only a little ways
south of this park, and overlooking it, stands the
Astronomical Observatory, not far from which Schnitzler has
been living for a number of years. Numerous references to
localities in this play indicate that he has placed the Wegrat
home in that very villa quarter of Waehring, where he himself
is so thoroughly at home.

MRS. WEGRAT

Is she in Vienna?

WEGRAT

Just passing through. She intends to call on you.

SALA

Has she still got an engagement at Hamburg?

WEGRAT

No, she has left the stage, she told me, and is now living in the
country with her married sister.

JOHANNA

I saw her once in a play of yours, Mr. von Sala.

SALA

Then you must have been a very small girl indeed.

JOHANNA

She played a Spanish princess.

SALA

Unfortunately. For princesses were not at all in her line. She has
never in her life been able to treat verse properly.

REUMANN

And you can still bear that in mind, Mr. von Sala--that some lady on
some occasion happened to handle your verse badly?

SALA

Well, why shouldn't I, my dear Doctor? If you were living at the center
of the earth, you would know that all things are of equal weight. And
were you floating in the center of the universe, you would