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The Road to Damascus by August Strindberg
page 300 of 339 (88%)
window is open. It is still. The STRANGER comes in, with a piece of
paper in his hand.]

STRANGER. Now you shall hear it.

LADY (acquiescing absent-mindedly). Finished already?

STRANGER. Already? Do you mean that seriously? I've taken seven
days to write this little poem. (Silence.) Perhaps it'll bore you
to hear it?

LADY (drily). No. Certainly not. (The STRANGER sits down at the
table and looks at the LADY.) Why are you looking at me?

STRANGER. I'd like to see your thoughts.

LADY. But you've heard them.

STRANGER. That's nothing; I want to see them! (Pause.) What one
says is mostly worthless. (Pause.) May I read them? No, I see I
mayn't. You want nothing more from me. (The LADY makes a gesture as
if she were going to speak.) Your face tells me enough. Now you've
sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To
that I answer: how, my beloved? Have _I_ killed your ego, when I
wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream
off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life,
with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge and art?

LADY. I don't deny it, but my ego wasn't my own.

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