OLD MAN. No. It shall be a penance. But why come like this: as
vagabonds?

MOTHER. Perhaps they lost their way and have had much to endure.

OLD MAN. But to bring her husband! Is she lost to shame?

MOTHER. You know Ingeborg's queer nature. She thinks all she does
is fitting, if not right. Have you ever seen her ashamed, or suffer
from a rebuff? I never have. Yet she's not without shame; on the
contrary. And everything she does, however questionable, seems
natural when she does it.

OLD MAN. I've always wondered why one could never be angry with
her. She doesn't feel herself responsible, or think an insult's
directed at her. She seems impersonal; or rather two persons, one
who does nothing but ill whilst the other gives absolution. ... But
this man! There's no one I've hated from afar so much as he. He
sees evil everywhere; and of no one have I heard so much ill.

MOTHER. That's true. But it may be Ingeborg's found some mission in
this man's life; and he in hers. Perhaps they're meant to torture
each other into atonement.

OLD MAN. Perhaps. But I'll have nothing to do with at seems to me
shameful. This man, under my roof! Yet I must accept it, like
everything else. For I've deserved no less.

MOTHER. Very well then. (The LADY and the STRANGER come in.) You're
welcome.