When We Dead Awaken Part 20

And yours too, Irene.

IRENE.

But you have forgotten the most precious gift.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

The most precious--? What gift was that?

IRENE.

I gave you my young, living soul. And that gift left me empty within--soulless. [Looking at him with a fixed stare.] It was that I died of, Arnold.

[The SISTER OF MERCY opens the door wide and makes room for her.

She goes into the pavilion.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Stands and looks after her; then whispers.] Irene!

ACT SECOND.

[Near a mountain resort. The landscape stretches, in the form of an immense treeless upland, towards a long mountain lake. Beyond the lake rises a range of peaks with blue-white snow in the clefts.

In the foreground on the left a purling brook falls in severed streamlets down a steep wall of rock, and thence flows smoothly over the upland until it disappears to the right. Dwarf trees, plants, and stones along the course of the brook. In the foreground on the right a hillock, with a stone bench on the top of it. It is a summer afternoon, towards sunset.

[At some distance over the upland, on the other side of the brook, a troop of children is singing, dancing, and playing. Some are dressed in peasant costume, others in town-made clothes. Their happy laughter is heard, softened by distance, during the following.

[PROFESSOR RUBEK is sitting on the bench, with a plaid over his shoulders, and looking down at the children's play.

[Presently, MAIA comes forward from among some bushes on the upland to the left, well back, and scans the prospect with her hand shading her eyes. She wears a flat tourist cap, a short skirt, kilted up, reaching only midway between ankle and knee, and high, stout lace-boots. She has in her hand a long alpenstock.

MAIA.

[At last catches sight of RUBEK and calls.] Hallo!

[She advances over the upland, jumps over the brook, with the aid of her alpenstock, and climbs up the hillock.

MAIA.

[Panting.] Oh, how I have been rus.h.i.+ng around looking for you, Rubek.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Nods indifferently and asks.] Have you just come from the hotel?

MAIA.

Yes, that was the last place I tried--that fly-trap.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Looking at her for moment.] I noticed that you were not at the dinner-table.

MAIA.

No, we had our dinner in the open air, we two.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

"We two"? What two?

MAIA.

Why, I and that horrid bear-killer, of course.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Oh, he.

MAIA.

Yes. And first thing to-morrow morning we are going off again.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

After bears?

MAIA.