Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 11).djvu/299

 John Gabriel Borkman—myself, and not another. And that is what I will try to explain to you.

[Shaking her head.] It is of no use. Temptations and promptings acquit no one.

They may acquit one in one's own eyes.

[With a gesture of repulsion.] Oh, let all that alone! I have thought over that black business of yours enough and to spare.

I too. During those five endless years in my cell—and elsewhere—I had time to think it over. And during the eight years up there in the gallery I have had still more ample time. I have re-tried the whole case—by myself. Time after time I have re-tried it. I have been my own accuser, my own defender, and my own judge. I have been more impartial than any one else could be—that I venture to say. I have paced up and down the gallery there, turning every one of my actions upside down and inside out. I have examined them from all sides as unsparingly, as pitilessly, as any lawyer of them all. And the final judgment I have always come to is this: the one person I have sinned against is—myself.

And what about me? What about your son?