Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 9).djvu/353

 Wangel.

You have no choice, Ellida. You cannot be allowed to choose—I will not allow you.

Ellida.

You can never prevent my choosing; neither you nor any one else. You can forbid me to go away with him—to cast in my lot with him—if I should choose that. You can forcibly detain me here, against my will. That you can do. But the choice in my innermost soul—my choice of him and not of you,—in case I should and must choose so,—that you cannot prevent.

Wangel.

No, you are right; I cannot prevent that.

Ellida.

And then I have nothing to help me to resist! At home here there is nothing whatever to attach and bind me. I am utterly without root in your house, Wangel. The children are not mine—their hearts, I mean. They have never been mine.—When I go away—if I do go away—either with him to-night or out to Skioldvik to-morrow,—I have not a key to give up, not a direction to leave behind me, about anything in the world. You see how utterly without root I am in your house; how I have stood entirely outside of everything from the very first moment.

Wangel.

You yourself willed it so.

Ellida.

No, I did not I had no will one way or the