Adolph monologue — Plays by August Strindberg: Creditors. Pariah.

No, I cannot explain anything at all. But it's possible that the thought of somebody else having possessed you may still be gnawing within me. At times it appears to me as if our love were nothing but a fiction, an attempt at self-defence, a passion kept up as a matter of honor--and I can't think of anything that would give me more pain than to have HIM know that I am unhappy. Oh, I have never seen him--but the mere thought that a person exists who is waiting for my misfortune to arrive, who is daily calling down curses on my head, who will roar with laughter when I perish--the mere idea of it obsesses me, drives me nearer to you, fascinates me, paralyses me!