Bernick.
Do you think I feel happy at this moment?
Lona.
No, I do not think that you can feel altogether happy.
Bernick.
Lona, you despise me.
Lona.
Not yet.
Bernick.
And you have no right to. Not to despise me!—Lona, you cannot conceive how unspeakably alone I stand, here in this narrow, stunted society—how, year by year, I have had to put a tighter curb on my ambition for a full and satisfying life-work. What have I accomplished, for all the show it makes? Scrap-work—odds and ends. There is no room here for other and larger work. If I tried to go a step in advance of the views and ideas of the day, all my power was gone. Do you know what we are, we, who are reckoned the pillars of society? We are the tools of society, neither more nor less.