MADAME ARNFELDT To lose a husband, or a lover or two, during one's lifetime can be vexing - but to lose one's teeth is a catastrophe!

HENRIK EGERMAN [while riding a bicycle with Fredrika] Miss Arnfeldt, for the past 11 months, although I am preparing to enter the ministry... I... I... I've been madly, hopelessly in love with my stepmother! Do you realize how many mortal sins that involves?

MADAME ARNFELDT Are you addressing me, sir - whoever you may be?

COUNT CARL-MAGNUS MALCOLM I am, madam.

MADAME ARNFELDT Then be so kind as to repeat yourself. Judging from the level of the conversation so far, you can hardly expect me to have been paying attention.

PETRA It's a very short way from the fling that's for fun to the thigh pressing under the table; It's a very short day 'til you're stuck with just one, or it has to be done on the sly; In the meanwhile; There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed; And there's many a tryst and there's many a bed; There's a lot I'll have missed, but I'll not have been dead when I die! And a person should celebrate everything passing by!

MADAME ARNFELDT Child, will you do me a favor?

FREDRIKA ARNFELDT Of course, Grandmother.

MADAME ARNFELDT Will you tell me what it's all for? Having outlived my own illusions by centuries, it would be soothing at least to pretend to share some of yours.

FREDERIK EGERMAN [Frederik has just played Russian Roulette - and almost lost. Desiree is the first person he sees when he wakes up] I don't suppose this is my heavenly reward, is it?

DESIREE ARMFELDT Hardly, dear, with me here.

FREDRIKA ARNFELDT Grandmother, I've watched and I've watched, and I haven't noticed the night smiling.

MADAME ARNFELDT Young eyes are not ideal for watching; they stray too much. The night has already smiled twice.

FREDRIKA ARNFELDT It has? Twice? For the young and for the fools?

MADAME ARNFELDT The smile for the fools was particularly broad tonight.

DESIREE ARMFELDT [Frederik has just finished telling Desiree about his wife, who is still a virgin after eleven months of marriage] A virgin?

FREDERIK EGERMAN A virgin.

DESIREE ARMFELDT Eleven months.

FREDERIK EGERMAN Eleven... months.

DESIREE ARMFELDT No wonder you dreamed of me!

FREDERIK EGERMAN Well, at least it was you I dreamed of, which would indicate a kind of retroactive fidelity, doesn't it?

DESIREE ARMFELDT At least!

FREDERIK EGERMAN Desiree... would it seem insensitive if I were to ask you... [he stops himself] I can't say it.

DESIREE ARMFELDT Say it, darling.

FREDERIK EGERMAN Would you...? [he gestures to the bedroom]

DESIREE ARMFELDT Of course. What are old friends for?

DESIREE ARMFELDT Shall I tell you why I really invited you here? When we met again and we made love, I thought, "Maybe here it is at last. A chance to turn back, to find some sort of coherent existence after so many years of muddle." Of course, there is your wife... but I thought perhaps - just perhaps, you might be in need of rescue, too?

FREDERIK EGERMAN When my eyes are open, and I look at you, I see a woman that I have loved for a long time, who entranced me all over again when I came to her rooms, who gives me such genuine pleasure, that, in spite of myself, I came here for the sheer delight of being with her again. A woman who could rescue me? Of course. But when my eyes are not open, which is most of the time, all I see is a girl in a pink dress teasing a canary, running through a sunlit garden to hug me at the gate, as if I'd come from Timbuktu, instead of the municipal courthouse three blocks away!

FREDERIK EGERMAN Desiree, I'm sorry. I never should have come. To flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved... Do try to forgive me. [He leaves her. Desiree sings the last verse in spotlight. The light fades out on her weeping quietly]

FREDERIK EGERMAN They told me at the theater where to find you.

DESIREE ARMFELDT Fredrik!

FREDERIK EGERMAN Hello, Desiree.

DESIREE ARMFELDT So it was you! I peered and peered and said, "Is it? Can it be? Is it possible?" Then of course, when you walked out after five minutes, I was sure.

FREDERIK EGERMAN Was my record that bad?

DESIREE ARMFELDT Terrible. You walked out on my Hedda in Helsingborg, and my sensational Phaedra in Eskilstuna.