LAURA. Then I must try to prevent it.

CAPTAIN. You cannot.

LAURA. Can't I? Do you really think I would trust my daughter to
wicked people to have her taught that everything her mother has
implanted in her child is mere foolishness? Why, afterward, she
would despise me all the rest of her life!

CAPTAIN. Do you think that a father should allow ignorant and
conceited women to teach his daughter that he is a charlatan?

LAURA. It means less to the father.

CAPTAIN. Why so?

LAURA. Because the mother is closer to the child, as it has been
discovered that no one can tell for a certainty who the father of a
child is.


CAPTAIN. How does that apply to this case?

LAURA. You do not know whether you are Bertha's father or not.

CAPTAIN. I do not know?

LAURA. No; what no one knows, you surely cannot know.