[Places himself in front of her.] Do you mean to say you don't find a kind of lurking, hidden meaning in the most innocent word I happen to say?

I do you say? I do that?

[Laughs.] Ho-ho-ho! It's natural enough, Aline! When you have a sick man on your hands—

[Anxiously.] Sick? Are you ill, Halvard?

[Violently.] A half-mad man then! A crazy man! Call me what you will.

[Feels blindly for a chair and sits down.] Halvard—for God's sake—

But you are wrong, both you and the doctor. I am not in the state that you imagine.

[He walks up and down the room. MRS. SOLNESS follows him
anxiously with her eyes. Finally he goes up to her.

[Calmly.] In reality there is nothing whatever the matter with me.

No, there isn't, is there? But then what is it that troubles you so?