Helmer.
No, stay——! [Looking through the doorway.] What are you going to do?
Nora.
[Inside.] To take off my masquerade dress.
Helmer.
[In the doorway.] Yes, do, dear. Try to calm down, and recover your balance, my scared little song-bird. You may rest secure. I have broad wings to shield you. [Walking up and down near the door.] Oh, how lovely—how cosy our home is, Nora! Here you are safe; here I can shelter you like a hunted dove whom I have saved from the claws of the hawk. I shall soon bring your poor beating heart to rest; believe me, Nora, very soon. To-morrow all this will seem quite different—everything will be as before. I shall not need to tell you again that I forgive you; you will feel for yourself that it is true. How could you think I could find it in my heart to drive you away, or even so much as to reproach you? Oh, you don’t know a true man’s heart, Nora. There is some thing indescribably sweet and soothing to a man in having forgiven his wife—honestly forgiven her, from the bottom of his heart. She becomes his property in a double sense. She is as though born again; she has become, so to speak, at once his wife and his child. That is what you shall henceforth be to me, my bewildered, helpless darling. Don’t be troubled about anything, Nora; only open your heart to me, and I will be both will and conscience to you. [Nora enters in everyday dress.] Why, what’s this? Not gone to bed? You have changed your dress?
Nora.
Yes, Torvald; now I have changed my dress.
Helmer.
But why now, so late——?