[Eagerly.] Comrades! Yes, fancy, Hedda—that is the very word he used!—Oh, I ought to feel perfectly happy; and yet I cannot; for I don't know how long it will last.

HEDDA.

Are you no surer of him than that?

MRS. ELVSTED.

[Gloomily.] A woman's shadow stands between Eilert Lovborg and me.

HEDDA.

[Looks at her anxiously.] Who can that be?

MRS. ELVSTED.

I don't know. Some one he knew in his—in his past. Some one he has never been able wholly to forget.

HEDDA.