MARGOT

A monologue from the play by Hermann Sudermann

NOTE: This translation by Grace Frank was first published in Roses: Four One-Act Plays. Hermann Sudermann. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. It is now a public domain work and may be performed without royalties.

MARGOT: But you mustn't think that I'm trying to make myself interesting, or that I stand her before you beautifully whitened of purified! Oh, no! What I'm going to say to you now has never been said to any one, to any man before. And you are going to despise me utterly. But I must say it -- once, once in my life -- and then the old hypocrisy can go on again. Well, I don't know what it is, but it's like a fire in me. No, worse, much worse! When I think of that frightful man, my heart fairly shrivels up. And yet -- I can never get away from it. There's always a terror, a horror in me; and yet there is always an eternal -- an eternal hunger. Yes -- a restlessness -- a search -- the whole day long. It's strongest toward twilight. Then I want to go out -- out into the wide world -- to fly to unknown lands. Then I think to myself -- out there, no one knows you; out there, there is no sin. Ah, it's as if I were lashed! And I heap such reproaches on myself because of it! Even now you have not heard the worst. I must tell you the worst, too. Well, you know how I hate that man -- yet, sometimes it seems to me that I must go to him -- into the arms of that beast.