Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 11).djvu/279



[With cold self-control.] How well I recognise your passionate, ungovernable spirit, Ella. No doubt it is natural enough that you should look at the thing in this light. Of course, you are a woman, and therefore it would seem that your own heart is the one thing you know or care about in the world.

Yes, yes it is.

Your own heart is the only thing that exists for you.

The only thing! The only thing! You are right there.

But you must remember that I am a man. As a woman, you were the dearest thing in the world to me. But if the worst comes to the worst, one woman can always take the place of another.

[Looks at him with a smile.] Was that your experience when you had made Gunhild your wife?

No. But the great aims I had in life helped me to bear even that. I wanted to have at my command all the sources of power in this country. All the wealth that lay hidden in the