4.    The Young Master has borrowed an apartment for an assignation with The Young Wife. She appears thickly veiled, very anxious, and uttering all the clichés of the tempted wife. He pretends that the apartment is his, and she allows herself to be seduced. However, he suffers a bout of impotence for which he makes grandiose excuses. She mocks and teases him; a second attempt at sex is more successful. Unnerved by the prospect of the lies she is going to have to tell her husband, she declares that she will never see him again. But they are attending the same ball the following night and will meet there.

5.    Late evening. The Young Wife is in bed. The Husband comes in and tells her that he still loves her and that the time has come once again for them to be more than ‘just good friends’. He explains that their repeated periods of sexual abstinence mean that they keep having ‘honeymoons’. She starts to ask him about the women he slept with before they were married and wonders if married women ever prostitute themselves. Having made love, he recalls the first night of their honeymoon in Venice, secure in the (false) knowledge of her fidelity.

6.    The Husband is having dinner with The Sweet Young Thing in the private room of a restaurant. She is both flirtatious and innocent, and he wants to know everything about her – especially how promiscuous she is. She swoons – declaring that someone must have drugged her wine – and they have sex. She is desperate to know if he loves her, and wants to see him again. He says that he doesn’t live in Vienna and packs her off home to her mother.

7.    The Sweet Young Thing visits The Poet’s room. It is dark but he refuses to light the lamps. He claims that he loves her and asks if she loves him in return. After having sex he says that he is Biebitz, a famous playwright (of whom she has never heard); then he informs her that he is only a shop assistant who plays the piano in a bar. She is bewildered, and he invites her to see Biebitz’s latest, declaring ‘I’ll only really know you, when I know what you think about the play.’

8.    The Poet (who really is Biebitz) is with a famous Actress in a country inn ‘two hours from Vienna’. She keeps wrong-footing him by declaring her passion for him, but also her devotion to a man called Fritz. She says that she is going to bed without him but, moments later, invites him to join her. She taunts him with who she is betraying and they have sex. He is upset that she didn’t perform in his play; she replies that she was ill, sick with longing for him.