imate with him.

SALA

He with me rather than I with him.

FELIX

What do you mean by that, Mr. von Sala?

JOHANNA

Oh, I can understand it. I suppose you have had the same experience
with most people.

SALA

Something very much like it, at least.

JOHANNA

Yes, one can see it from what you write, too.

SALA

I hope so. Otherwise it might just as well have been written by
somebody else.

WEGRAT

Did he say when he would be back in Vienna?

FELIX

Soon, I think. But he didn't say very definitely.

JOHANNA

I should like to see Mr. Fichtner again. I am fond of that kind of
people.

WEGRAT

What do you mean by "that kind of people"?

JOHANNA

Who are always arriving from some far-off place.

WEGRAT

But as a rule he never arrived from far-off places when you knew him,
Johanna.... He was living right here.

JOHANNA

What did it matter whether he was living here or elsewhere?--Even when
he came to see us daily, it was always as if he had just arrived from
some great distance.

WEGRAT

Oh, of course....

FELIX

I had often the same feeling.

WEGRAT

Well, it's strange how he has been knocking about in the world--these
last few years at least.

SALA

Don't you think his restlessness goes farther back? Were you not
students together in the Academy?

WEGRAT

Yes. And to know him properly, you must have known him then. There was
something fascinating about him as a young man, something that dazzled.
Never have I known anybody whom the term "of great promise" fitted so
completely.

SALA

Well, he has kept a whole lot of it.

WEGRAT

But think of all he might have achieved!

REUMANN

I believe that what you might achieve you do achieve.

WEGRAT

Not always. Julian was undoubtedly destined for higher things. What he
lacked was the capacity for concentration, the inward calm. He could
never feel at home for good anywhere. And the misfortune has been that
in his own works, too, he has lived only as a transient, so to speak.

FELIX

He showed me a couple of sketches he had made recently.

WEGRAT

Good?

FELIX

To me there was something gripping about them.

MRS. WEGRAT

Why gripping? What kind of pictures were they?

FELIX

Landscapes. And as a rule very pleasant ones at that.

JOHANNA

Once in a dream I saw a Spring landscape, very sunlit and soft, and yet
it made me weep.

SALA

Yes, the sadness of certain things lies much deeper than we com