BORKMAN.
What one?
ELLA RENTHEIM.
Erhart, of course.
BORKMAN.
Erhart?
ELLA RENTHEIM.
Erhart—your son, Borkman.
BORKMAN.
Has he really been so close to your heart?
ELLA RENTHEIM. Why else should I have taken him to me, and kept him as long as ever I could? Why?
BORKMAN.
I thought it was out of pity, like all the rest that you did.
ELLA RENTHEIM. [In strong inward emotion.] Pity! Ha, ha! I have never known pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If a poor starved child came into my kitchen, shivering, and crying, and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it. I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert within me—and without me too!
BORKMAN.
Except only for Erhart.
ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, except for your son. But I am hardened to every other living thing. You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness in life—and of a mother's sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.