[Fredrik]

She lightens my sadness,

She livens my days,

She bursts with a kind of madness

My well-ordered ways.

My happiest mistake, the ache of my life:

You must meet my wife.

She bubbles with pleasure,

She glows with surprise,

Disrupts my accustomed leisure

And ruffles my ties.

I don't know even now quite how it began.

You must meet my wife, my Anne.

One thousand whims to which I give in,

Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.

I never dreamed that I could live in

So completely demented, contented a fashion.

So sunlike, so winning,

So unlike a wife.

I do think that I'm beginning

To show signs of life.

Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow--

If you met my wife, you'd know.



[Desiree (speaking):]



Dear Fredrik,

I'm just longing to meet her.

Sometime.



[Fredrik]



She sparkles...



[Desiree]



How pleasant.



[Fredrik]



She twinkles...



[Desiree]



How nice.



[Fredrik]



Her youth is a sort of present--



[Desiree]



Whatever the price.



[Fredrik]



The incandescent--what?--the--



[Desiree (offering a cigarette):]



Light?



[Fredrik]



--of my life.

You must meet my wife.



[Desiree]



Yes, I must. I really must.

Now--



[Fredrik]



She flutters.



[Desiree]



How charming.



[Fredrik]



She twitters.



[Desiree]



My word!



[Fredrik]



She floats.



[Desiree]



Isn't that alarming?

What is she, a bir