Hilda: I can't understand why you should be so stupid as to go about teaching people. No one but yourself should be allowed to build.
Solness: I keep brooding on that very thought. (Calling her to the window) Look over there; that's my new house.
Hilda: It seems to have a tremendously high tower. Are there nurseries in that house, too?
Solness: Three—as there are here. But there will never be any child in them. We have had children, Aline and I, but we didn't keep them long, our two little boys. The fright Aline got when our old house was burnt down affected her health, and she failed to rear them. Yet that fire made me. I built no more churches; but cosy, comfortable homes for human beings. But my position as an artist has been paid for in Aline's happiness. I could have prevented that fire by seeing to a flue. But I didn't. And yet the flue didn't actually cause the fire. Yet it was my fault in a certain sense.
Hilda: I'm afraid you must be—ill.
Solness: I don't think I'll ever be quite of sound mind on that point.
[Ragnar enters, and begs a few kind words about his drawings to cheer his father, who is dying. Solness dismisses him almost brutally, and bids him never think of building on his own account.
Hilda (when Ragnar has gone): That was horribly ugly—and hard and bad and cruel as well.
Solness: Oh, you don't understand my position, which I've paid so dear for. (Confidentially) Hilda, don't you agree with me that there exists special chosen people, who have the power of desiring, craving a thing, until at last it has to happen? And aren't there helpers and servers who must do their part too? But they never come of themselves. One has to call them very persistently, inwardly. So the fire happened conveniently for me; but the two little boys and Aline were sacrificed. She will never be the woman she longed to be.