Part 83

LOVBORG.

HEDDA.

LOVBORG.

It is true, all the same.

MRS. ELVSTED.

LOVBORG.

I have torn my own life to pieces. So why should I not tear my life-work too--?

MRS. ELVSTED.

And you did this last night?

LOVBORG.

Yes, I tell you! Tore it into a thousand pieces--and scattered them on the fiord--far out. There there is cool sea-water at any rate--let them drift upon it--drift with the current and the wind. And then presently they will sink--deeper and deeper--as I shall, Thea.

MRS. ELVSTED.

Do you know, Lovborg, that what you have done with the book--I shall think of it to my dying day as though you had killed a little child.

LOVBORG.

Yes, you are right. It is a sort of child-murder.

MRS. ELVSTED.

How could you, then--! Did not the child belong to me too?

HEDDA.

MRS. ELVSTED.

HEDDA.

But you are not going away from town?

MRS. ELVSTED.

Oh, I don't know what I shall do. I see nothing but darkness before me. [She goes out by the hall door.

HEDDA.

LOVBORG.

I? Through the streets? Would you have people see her walking with me?

HEDDA.

Of course I don't know what else may have happened last night. But is it so utterly irretrievable?