Part 54

HEDDA.

We were so absorbed in these photographs. [Shows him a picture.] Do you remember this little village?

TESMAN.

Oh, it's that one just below the Brenner Pass. It was there we passed the night--

HEDDA.

--and met that lively party of tourists.

TESMAN.

Yes, that was the place. Fancy--if we could only have had you with us, Eilert! Eh?

LOVBORG.

Answer me one thing, Hedda--

HEDDA.

Well?

LOVBORG.

Was there no love in your friendship for me either? Not a spark--not a tinge of love in it?

HEDDA.

I wonder if there was? To me it seems as though we were two good comrades--two thoroughly intimate friends. [Smilingly.] You especially were frankness itself.

LOVBORG.

It was you that made me so.

HEDDA.

As I look back upon it all, I think there was really something beautiful, something fascinating--something daring--in--in that secret intimacy--that comradeship which no living creature so much as dreamed of.

LOVBORG.

Yes, yes, Hedda! Was there not?--When I used to come to your father's in the afternoon--and the General sat over at the window reading his papers--with his back towards us--

HEDDA.

And we two on the corner sofa--

LOVBORG.

Always with the same illustrated paper before us--

HEDDA.

For want of an album, yes.