BIORN. The gate open. (Goes out to the right.)
LADY INGER (to ELINA, who has already reached the door on the left). Stay here!—— —— Elina—my child—I have something to say to you alone.
ELINA. I hear you.
LADY INGER. Elina—— ——you think evil of your mother.
ELINA. I think, to my sorrow, what your deeds have forced me to think.
LADY INGER. You answer out of the bitterness of your heart.
ELINA. Who has filled my heart with bitterness? From my childhood I have been wont to look up to you as a great and high-souled woman. It was in your likeness I pictured the women we read of in the chronicles and the Book of Heroes. I thought the Lord God himself had set his seal on your brow, and marked you out as the leader of the helpless and the oppressed. Knights and nobles sang your praise in the feast-hall, and the peasants, far and near, called you the country's pillar and its hope. All thought that through you the good times were to come again! All thought that through you a new day was to dawn over the land! The night is still here; and I no longer know if I dare look for any morning to come through you.
LADY INGER. It is easy to see whence you have learnt such venomous words. You have let yourself give ear to what the thoughtless rabble mutters and murmurs about things it can little judge of.
ELINA. "Truth is in the people's mouth," was your word when they praised you in speech and song.
LADY INGER. May be so. But if indeed I had chosen to sit here idle, though it was my part to act—do you not think that such a choice were burden enough for me, without your adding to its weight?