Ella Rentheim.
Yes, except for your son. But I am hardened to every other living thing. You have cheated me of a mother’s joy and happiness in life—and of a mother’s sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.
Borkman.
Do you say that, Ella?
Ella Rentheim.
Who knows? It may be that a mother’s sorrows and tears were what I needed most. [With still deeper emotion.] But at that time I could not resign myself to my loss; and that was why I took Erhart to me. I won him entirely. Won his whole warm, trustful childish heart—until——Oh!
Borkman.
Until what?
Ella Rentheim.
Until his mother—his mother in the flesh, I mean—took him from me again.