Hein.
That is my right, perhaps my duty as well. There is nothing
left for me to do -- either kill myself, or else strive
to prove that my mother – did not die in vain.
Haus.
Heinrich! A month ago she was alive, – and you can say
that! She killed herself for you, and you can wish your
hands of responsibility, -- In a few days you will be
beginning to think it was her own fault, Am I not right --
aren’t you after all just like the others – all stuck
full of pride, little and big!
What does all your scrib-
bling amount to, in comparsion with one hour here in the
garden, one living hour, when your mother sat in her chair,
and talk to us or else we were silent together -- yet
whether she talked or not, there she was, in the flesh, with
us, her very self, alive, alive!
Hein.
Living hours! These living hours of yours live just so
long as the last person who members them. And so it is,
that his is not the meanest of destinies, in whose power
it lies to give such hours immortality. Farewell Herr Haus-
dorfer, your sorrow gives you the right to misunderstand me.
next spring, when this garden of yours is once more in bloom,
we shall meet again. For you, too, will live on.
(He goes up the terrace, across which a bread path
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