Tekla!

TEKLA. Am I? And my young husband says that I can make no more
conquests.

GUSTAV. That means he has ceased to love you.

TEKLA. Well, I can't quite make out what love means to him.

GUSTAV. You have been playing hide and seek so long that at last
you cannot find each other at all. Such things do happen. You have
had to play the innocent to yourself, until he has lost his
courage. There _are_ some drawbacks to a change, I tell you--there
are drawbacks to it, indeed.

TEKLA. Do you mean to reproach--

GUSTAV. Not at all! Whatever happens is to a certain extent
necessary, for if it didn't happen, something else would--but now
it did happen, and so it had to happen.

TEKLA. _You_ are a man of discernment. And I have never met anybody
with whom I liked so much to exchange ideas. You are so utterly
free from all morality and preaching, and you ask so little of
people, that it is possible to be oneself in your presence. Do you
know, I am jealous of your intended wife!

GUSTAV. And do you realise that I am jealous of your husband?

TEKLA. [Rising] And now we must part! Forever!