THEKLA. Without a reconciliation?
GUSTAV [_on her left_]. Reconciliation? You play about with so many
words that they've quite lost their meaning. We reconcile ourselves?
Perhaps we are to live in a trinity, are we? The way for you to effect a
reconciliation is to put matters straight. You can't do that alone. You
have not only taken something, but you have destroyed what you took, and
you can never put it back. Would you be satisfied if I were to say to
you: "Forgive me because you mangled my heart with your claws; forgive
me for the dishonor you brought upon me; forgive me for being seven
years on end the laughing-stock of my pupils, forgive me for freeing you
from the control of your parents; for releasing you from the tyranny of
ignorance and superstition; for making you mistress over my house; for
giving you a position and friends, I, the man who made you into a woman
out of the child you were? Forgive me like I forgive you? Anyway, I now
regard my account with you as squared. You go and settle up your
accounts with the other man.
THEKLA. Where is he? What have you done with him? I've just got a
suspicion--a--something dreadful!
GUSTAV. Done with him? Do you still love him?
THEKLA [_goes over to him toward the left_]. Yes.
GUSTAV. And a minute ago you loved me? Is that really so?
THEKLA. It is.
GUSTAV. Do you know what you are, then?
THEKLA. You despise me?
GUSTAV. No, I pity you. It's a characteristic--I don't say a defect, but
certainly a characteristic--that is very fatal, by reason of its
results. Poor Thekla! I don't know--but I almost think that I'm sorry
for it, although I'm quite innocent--like you. But anyway it's perhaps
all for the best that you've now got to feel what I felt then. Do you
know where your husband is?
THEKLA. I think I know now. [_She points to the right._] He's in your
room just here. He has heard everything, seen everything, and you know
they say that he who looks upon his vampire dies.