“I say, Stellan, don’t you sometimes shudder at life ... and yourself?”
“When some excitement is over, I sometimes feel discomfort....”
Manne’s voice sounded childishly pleading:
“Yes, but Stellan, have you never experienced moments when you really shudder at yourself ... at all the miserable and damnable things one has done?”
“No, I have never permitted myself that luxury.”
Marine looked at him with a mien in which for the first time there was something of a stranger.
“You are a bit of a barbarian after all, my dear Stellan,” he mumbled, “You have a queer insensibility on which to fall back. I am damned if I know how it is but I have never been able to will anything when I have been with you. But I will tell you this much, I should never have entered into this folly if I had not made up my mind beforehand to escape from it all. It’s disquieting to play for a living human being.... No, away with it all....”
“My dear Manne, I can’t help it if you only drew a knave of hearts,” mumbled Stellan coldly.
“No, old boy, of course you can’t, but that’s not the point. I have felt the whole time that this was impossible. You don’t understand what a human being can feel like, Stellan. I played only because you proposed it. For twenty years I have not done anything else but what you proposed. I am a wretch. And you, Stellan, what are you? Imagine! I have known you for so long and yet I don’t even know that. It’s strange, but tonight ... I almost seem to catch a glimpse of you, after all. Yes, you are one of those who succeed in everything. You remain a Selamb. And all the same I am somehow sorry for you, Stellan. Yes, I feel damned sorry for you, because, you see, there is something in life that you would never understand if you lived to be a hundred....”
Manne had never been known to make so long a speech before. Stellan stood up and patted him on the shoulders.