When We Dead Awaken eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 81 pages of information about When We Dead Awaken.

When We Dead Awaken eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 81 pages of information about When We Dead Awaken.

IRENE.

[With a touch of jesting bitterness.] From the moment I realised that I had given away to you something rather indispensable, Arnold.  Something one ought never to part with.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Bowing his head.] Yes, that is bitterly true.  You gave me three or four years of your youth.

IRENE.

More, more than that I gave you—­spend-thrift as I then was.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

Yes, you were prodigal, Irene.  You gave me all your naked loveliness—–­

IRENE.

—­to gaze upon—–­

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

—­and to glorify—–­

IRENE.

Yes, for your own glorification.—­And the child’s.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

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.

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When We Dead Awaken from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.