ALICE. Have you a headache? ALLAN. No....

ALICE. Have you a headache?

ALLAN. No.

ALICE. And your chest? Pain?

ALLAN. Yes.

ALICE.: Pain—pain—as if your heart wanted to melt away. And it pulls, pulls——

[ALLAN. How do you know?]

ALICE. And then you wish to die—that you were already dead—and everything seems so hard. And you can only think of one thing—always the same—but if two are thinking of the same thing, then sorrow falls heavily on one of them. [ALLAN forgets himself and begins to pick at the handkerchief.] That's the sickness which no one can cure. You cannot eat and you cannot drink; you want only to weep, and you weep so bitterly—especially out in the woods where nobody can see you, for at that kind of sorrow all men laugh—men who are so cruel! Dear me! What do you want of her? Nothing! You don't want to kiss her mouth, for you feel that you would die if you did. When your thoughts run to her, you feel as if death were approaching. And it is death, child—that sort of death—which brings life. But you don't understand it yet! I smell violets—it is herself. [Steps closer to ALLAN and takes the handkerchief gently away from him.] It is she, it is she everywhere, none but she! Oh, oh, oh! [ALLAN cannot help burying his face in ALICE's bosom.] Poor boy! Poor boy! Oh, how it hurts, how it hurts! [Wipes off his tears with the handkerchief.]There, there! Cry —cry to your heart's content. There now! Then the heart grows lighter—But now, Allan, rise up and be a man, or she will not look at you—she, the cruel one, who is not cruel. Has she tormented you? With the Lieutenant? You must make friends with the Lieutenant, so that you two can talk of her. That gives a little ease also.

August Strindberg, The Dance of Death, Part 2, Plays: First Series, Trans. Edwin Björkman, 1912.