Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 6).djvu/409

 it will be telegraphed to every corner of the country—"Surrounded by his happy family, Consul Bernick received the homage of his fellow citizens as one of the pillars of society."

Bernick.

So it will; and the crowd in the street will shout and hurrah, and insist on my coming forward into the doorway there, and I shall have to bow and thank them.

Lona.

Have to?

Bernick.

Do you think I feel happy at this moment?

Lona.

No, I do not think that you can feel altogether happy.

Bernick.

Lona, you despise me.

Lona.

Not yet.

Bernick.

And you have no right to. Not to despise me!—Lona, you cannot conceive how unspeakably alone I stand, here in this narrow, stunted society—how, year by year, I have had to put a tighter curb on my ambition for a full and satisfying life-work. What have I accomplished, for all the show it makes? Scrap-work—odds and ends. There is no room here for other and larger work. If I tried to go a step in advance of the views and ideas of the day, all my power was gone. Do you know what we are, we, who are reckoned the pillars