tea-table, with a coffee-pot and a cup of black
coffee on it, and an arm-chair next it._

_In this chair, deep in cushions, with a plaid shawl over her knees,
sits Countess Geschwitz in a tight black dress. Rodrigo, clad as a
servant, sits on the ottoman. At the rear, Alva Schoen is walking up
and down before the entrance door._

RODRIGO. He lets people wait for him as if he were a concert
conductor!

GESCHWITZ. I beg of you, don't speak!

RODRIGO. Hold my tongue, with a head as full of thoughts as mine
is!--I absolutely can't believe she's changed so awfully much to her
advantage there!

GESCHWITZ. She is more glorious to look at than I have ever seen her!

RODRIGO. God preserve me from founding my life-happiness on your
taste and judgment! If the sickness has hit her as it has you, I'm
smashed and thru! You're leaving the contagious ward like an
acrobat-lady who's had an accident after giving herself up to art.
You can scarcely blow your nose any more. First you need a
quarter-hour to sort your fingers, and then you have to be mighty
careful not to break off the tip.

GESCHWITZ. What puts *us* under the ground gives *her* health and
strength again.

RODRIGO. That's all right and fine enough. But I don't think I'll be
travelling off with her this evening.

GESCHWITZ. You will let your bride journey all alone, after all?

RODRIGO. In the first place, the old fellow's going with her to
protect her in case anything serious--. My escort could only be
suspicious. And secondly, I must wait here till my costumes are
ready. I'll get across the frontier soon enough alright,--and I hope
in the meantime she'll put on a little embonpoint, too. Then we'll
get married, provided I can present her before a respectable public.
I love the practical in a woman: what theories they make up for
themselves are all the same to me. Aren't they to you too, doctor?

ALVA. I haven't heard what you were saying.

RODRIGO. I'd never have got my person mixed up in this plot if she
hadn't kept tickling my bare pate, before her sentence. If only she
doesn't start doing too much as soon as she's out of Germany! I'd
like best to take her to London for six months, and let her fill up
on plum-cakes. In London one expands just from the sea air. And then,
too, in London one doesn't feel with every swallow of beer as if the
hand of fate were at one's throat.

ALVA. I've been asking myself for a week whether a person who'd been
sentenced to p