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 church-yard.
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 of everything that is ugly; I won't have him in my sick-room.
Nora. Oh, but, Doctor Rank—