Yes, by-the-bye--Mrs. Elvsted--

TESMAN.

Had you forgotten her? Eh?

HEDDA.

We were so absorbed in these photographs. [Shows him a picture.] Do you
remember this little village?

TESMAN.

Oh, it's that one just below the Brenner Pass. It was there we passed
the night--

HEDDA.

--and met that lively party of tourists.

TESMAN.

Yes, that was the place. Fancy--if we could only have had you with us,
Eilert! Eh?

[He returns to the inner room and sits beside BRACK.

LOVBORG.

Answer me one thing, Hedda--

HEDDA.

Well?

LOVBORG.

Was there no love in your friendship for me either? Not a spark--not a
tinge of love in it?

HEDDA.

I wonder if there was? To me it seems as though we were two good
comrades--two thoroughly intimate friends. [Smilingly.] You especially
were frankness itself.

LOVBORG.

It was you that made me so.

HEDDA.

As I look back upon it all, I think there was really something
beautiful, something fascinating--something daring--in--in that secret
intimacy--that comradeship which no living creature so much as dreamed
of.

LOVBORG.

Yes, yes, Hedda! Was there not?--When I used to come to your father's
in the afternoon--and the General sat over at the window reading his
papers--with his back towards us--

HEDDA.

And we two on the corner sofa--

LOVBORG.

Always with the same illustrated paper before us--

HEDDA.

For want of an album, yes.

LOVBORG.

Yes, Hedda, and when I made my confessions to you--told you about
myself, things that at that time no one else knew! There I would sit
and tell you of my escapades--my days and nights of devilment. Oh,
Hedda--what was the power in you that forced me to confess these things?

HEDDA.

Do you think it was any power in me?

LOVBORG.

How else can I explain it? And all those--those roundabout questions you
used to put to me--

HEDDA.

Which you understood so particularly well--

LOVBORG.

How could you sit and question me like that? Question me quite
frankly--

HEDDA.

In roundabout terms, please observe.

LOVBORG.

Yes, but frankly nevertheless. Cross-question me about--all that sort of
thing?

HEDDA.

And how could you answer, Mr. Lovborg?

LOVBORG.

Yes, that is just what I can't understand--in looking back upon it. But
tell me now, Hedda--was there not love at the bottom of our friendship?
On your side, did you not feel as though