STRANGER. Not the kind you mean.

CONFESSOR. Then what kind?

STRANGER. I could still imagine a reconciliation between mankind
and woman--through woman herself! And indeed, through that woman
who was my wife and has now become what I once held her to be
having been purified and lifted up by sorrow and need. But ...

CONFESSOR. But what?

STRANGER. Experience teaches; the nearer, the further off: the
further from one another, the nearer one can be.

CONFESSOR. I've always known that--it was known by Dante, who all
his life possessed the soul of Beatrice; and Beethoven, who was
united from afar with Therese von Brunswick, knew it, though she
was the wife of another!

STRANGER. And yet! Happiness is only to be found in her company.

CONFESSOR. Then stay with her.

STRANGER. You're forgetting one thing: we're divorced.

CONFESSOR. Good! Then you can begin a new marriage. And it'll
promise all the more, because both of you are new people.

STRANGER. Do you think anyone would marry us?