[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