NORA.
What do you mean by that? As much of it as you can?
RANK.
Well, does that alarm you?
NORA.
It was such a strange way of putting it. Is anything likely to happen?
RANK.
Nothing but what I have long been prepared for. But I certainly didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
NORA.
[gripping him by the arm]. What have you found out? Doctor Rank, you must tell me.
RANK.
[sitting down by the stove]. It is all up with me. And it can’t be helped.
NORA.
[with a sigh of relief]. Is it about yourself?
RANK.
Who else? It is no use lying to one’s self. I am the most wretched of all my patients, Mrs Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall lie rotting in the churchyard.
NORA.
What an ugly thing to say!
RANK.
The thing itself is cursedly ugly, and the worst of it is that I shall have to face so much more that is ugly before that. I shall only make one more examination of myself; when I have done that, I shall know pretty certainly when it will be that the horrors of dissolution will begin. There is something I want to tell you. Helmer’s refined nature gives him an unconquerable disgust at everything that is ugly; I won’t have him in my sick-room.