[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 b