The Editor (with an outburst of passion). Then may everything evil overtake me if I ever ask you or any one else for sympathy again! You have succeeded in teaching me that I can do without it! I can rise above your cowardly cruelty. (To EVJE.) You are a miserable, weak creature—and have always been, for all your apparent good-natured shrewdness! (To MRS. EVJE.) And as for you, who have often laughed so heartily at my so-called malice, and now all at once have become so severely virtuous—why, you are both like part-proprietors of my paper! You have taken all the profit you could from me, as long as it served your purpose—I have seen that for a long time! And all my pretended friends are like you—secret holders of shares in me, so as to secure their own safety and the persecution of others!—every bit as guilty as I am, only more prudent, more timid, more cowardly—!
Evje. Once more—leave this house, which you have outraged!
Mrs. Evje. And how dare you set foot in here again?
The Editor. No, I am not going until all the anger that is in my heart has turned into fear in yours! Because now I will not have done with it all! No—it is just through his death that respect for me will revive—it will be like a rampart of bayonets round me! "There goes one who can kill a man with a word, if he likes!" That will make them treat me respectfully!
Harald and the Doctor. What does he mean?
The Editor (as he hears HARALD'S voice). And you—you mountebank, who can stand up in public and seek applause before your brother's corpse is cold—don't come talking rant to me! You are more contemptible than I am! I couldn't have done that; I couldn't stand there, as you are doing now, impatient to get to your champagne and pretty speeches!—Oh, how I despise all such lying and heartlessness! (They all look at him and at each other with a questioning expression.)
Harald. Is my brother dead?
Mrs. Evje. Is his brother dead?
Gertrud. Good God, is Halvdan dead?
Evje. Is he dead? Impossible!