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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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KROGSTAD Perhaps not; but you had no right to cast me off for the sake of others, whoever the others might be. MRS. LINDEN I don’t know. I have often asked myself whether I had the right. KROGSTAD [More softly.] When I had lost you, I seemed to have no firm ground left under my feet. Look at me now. I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a spar. MRS. LINDEN Rescue may be at hand. KROGSTAD It was at hand; but then you came and stood in the way. MRS. LINDEN Without my knowledge, Nils. I did not know till today that it was you I was to replace in the Bank. KROGSTAD Well, I take your word for it. But now that you do know, do you mean to give way? MRS. LINDEN No, for that would not help you in the least. KROGSTAD Oh, help, help-! I should do it whether or no. MRS. LINDEN I have learnt prudence. Life and bitter necessity have schooled me. KROGSTAD And life has taught me not to trust fine speeches. MRS. LINDEN Then life has taught you a very sensible thing. But deeds you will trust? KROGSTAD What do you mean? MRS. LINDEN You said you were a shipwrecked man, clinging to a spar. KROGSTAD I have good reason to say so. MRS. LINDEN I too am shipwrecked, and clinging to a spar. I have no one to mourn for, no one to care for. KROGSTAD You made your own choice. MRS. LINDEN No choice was left me. KROGSTAD Well, what then? MRS. LINDEN Nils, how if we two shipwrecked people could join hands? KROGSTAD What! MRS. LINDEN Two on a raft have a better chance than if each clings to a separate spar. KROGSTAD Christina! MRS. LINDEN What do you think brought me to town? KROGSTAD Had you any thought of me? MRS. LINDEN I must have work or I can’t bear to live. All my life, as long as I can remember, I have worked; work has been my one great joy. Now I stand quite alone in the world, aimless and forlorn. There is no happiness in working for one’s self. Nils, give me somebody and something to work for. KROGSTAD I cannot believe in all this. It is simply a woman’s romantic craving for self-sacrifice. |
