Harald. No—neither now nor ever.
Gertrud. And, while I was walking up and down here in the fog, I felt that though there might be all this gloom tend cold around us outside, there was the brightness and warmth of certainty in our hearts.
Harald. Yes, our love is the one certainty for me! Fog may obscure the goal I aim at, the road I have to I read, the very ground I stand on; doubts may even for a while attack my faith; but my love for you shines clear through it all!
Gertrud. Thank you, my darling! If that is so, there is nothing that we cannot overcome!
Harald. Of course, you know what took place to-day?
Gertrud. I can guess.
Harald. Is it true that you are ill? Why did you never tell me?
Gertrud. No, the doctor is not telling the truth; I am not ill! Even if I were, what matter? I should go on living as long as I could—and should have done my duty before I gave in!
Harald. That is the way to look at it!
Gertrud. But I am not ill! I suffer, it is true—and am likely to—every time you are persecuted, or my parents on my account. Because I have drawn them into all this that, they are so unfitted for, and that is why it pains me so to see how unprepared it finds them—most of all when, out of tenderness for me, they try to conceal it. But I can't alter things. We are fighting for a cause that you believe to be right, and so do I; surely that is better than never to suffer at all in any good cause. Try me! Let me share the fight with you! I am not weak; it is only that my heart is sore for those I love.