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.