(THE WAITER bows and goes out.)
TEKLA. Without making up?
GUSTAV. Making up? You use such a lot of words that have lost their—meaning. Why should we make up? Perhaps you want all three of us to live together? You, if anybody, ought to make up by making good what you took away, but this you cannot do. You just took, and what you took you consumed, so that there is nothing left to restore.—Will it satisfy you if I say like this: forgive me that you tore my heart to pieces; forgive me that you disgraced me; forgive me that you made me the laughing-stock of my pupils through every week-day of seven long years; forgive me that I set you free from parental restraints, that I released you from the tyranny of ignorance and superstition, that I set you to rule my house, that I gave you position and friends, that I made a woman out of the child you were before? Forgive me as I forgive you!—Now I have torn up your note! Now you can go and settle your account with the other one!
TEKLA. What have you done with him? I am beginning to suspect—something terrible!
GUSTAV. With him? Do you still love him?
TEKLA. Yes!
GUSTAV. And a moment ago it was me! Was that also true?
TEKLA. It was true.
GUSTAV. Do you know what you are then?
TEKLA. You despise me?