Yes, if you'll only talk sensibly—
I will try to. [He moves his chair nearer.
Out with it, then, Mr. Solness.
[Confidentially.] Don't you agree with me, Hilda, that there exist special, chosen people who have been endowed with the power and faculty if desiring a thing, craving for a thing, willing a thing—so persistently and so—so inexorably—that at last it has to happen? Don't you believe that?
[With an indefinable expression in her eyes.] If that is so, we shall see, one of these days, whether I am one of the chosen.
It is not one's self alone that can do such great things. Oh, no—the helpers and the servers—they must do their part too, if it is to be of any good. But they never come of themselves. One has to call upon them very persistently—inwardly, you understand.
What are these helpers and servers?
Oh, we can talk about that some other time. For the present, let us keep to this business of the fire.
Don't you think that fire would have happened all the same—even without your wishing for it?
If the house had been old Knut Brovik's, it would never have burnt down so conveniently for him. I am sure of that; for he does not know how to call for the helpers—no, nor for the servers, either. [Rises in unrest.] So you see, Hilda—it is my fault, after all, that the lives of the two little boys had to be sacrificed. And do you think it is not my fault, too, that Aline has never been the woman she should and might have been—and that she most longed to be?