MRS. BORKMAN. [With a bitter sigh.] Yes, that is true; all the world knows that.
BORKMAN. But it does not know why I did it; why I had to do it. People do not understand that I had to, because I was myself—because I was John Gabriel Borkman—myself, and not another. And that is what I will try to explain to you.
MRS. BORKMAN. [Shaking her head.] It is of no use. Temptations and promptings acquit no one.
BORKMAN.
They may acquit one in one's own eyes.
MRS. BORKMAN. [With a gesture of repulsion.] Oh, let all that alone! I have thought over that black business of yours enough and to spare.
BORKMAN. I too. During those five endless years in my cell—and elsewhere —I had time to think it over. And during the eight years up there in the gallery I have had still more ample time. I have re-tried the whole case—by myself. Time after time I have re-tried it. I have been my own accuser, my own defender, and my own judge. I have been more impartial than any one else could be—that I venture to say. I have paced up and down the gallery there, turning every one of my actions upside down and inside out. I have examined them from all sides as unsparingly, as pitilessly, as any lawyer of them all. And the final judgment I have always come to is this: the one person I have sinned against is—myself.
MRS. BORKMAN.
And what about me? What about your son?
BORKMAN.
You and he are included in what I mean when I say myself.
MRS. BORKMAN. And what about the hundreds of others, then—the people you are said to have ruined?
BORKMAN. [More vehemently.] I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry—I alone had ears for it.