ess" that
is at once so fearful and so fascinating to humanity. This is clear not
only in the text of her single scene, but in the fact that Allmers, in
the last act, treats her and his "fellow-traveller" of that night among
the mountains, not precisely as identical, but as interchangeable,
ideas. To tell the truth, I have even my own suspicions as to who is
meant by "her sweetheart," whom she "lured" long ago, and who is now
"down where all the rats are." This theory I shall keep to myself; it
may be purely fantastic, and is at best inessential. What is certain is
that death carries off Little Eyolf, and that, of all he was, only the
crutch is left, mute witness to his hapless lot.

He is gone; there was so little to bind him to life that he made not
even a moment's struggle against the allurement of the "long, sweet
sleep." Then, for the first time, the depth of the egoism which had
created and conditioned his little life bursts upon his parents'
horror-stricken gaze. Like accomplices in crime, they turn upon and
accuse each other--"sorrow makes them wicked and hateful." Allmers, as
the one whose eyes were already half opened, is the first to carry war
into the enemy's country; but Rita is not slow to retort, and presently
they both have to admit that their recriminations are only a vain
attempt to drown the voice of self-reproach. In a sort of fierce frenzy
they tear away veil after veil from their souls, until they realise that
Eyolf never existed at all, so to speak, for his own sake, but only for
the sake of their passions and vanities. "Isn't it curious," says Rita,
summing up the matter, "that we should grieve like this over a little
stranger boy?"

In blind self-absorption they have played with life and death, and now
"the great open eyes" of the stranger boy will be for ever upon them.
Allmers would fain take refuge in a love untainted by the egoism, and
unexposed to the revulsions, of passion. But not only is Asta's pity
for Rita too strong to let her countenance this desertion: she has
discovered that her relation to Allmers is _not_ "exempt from the law of
change," and she "takes flight from him--and from herself." Meanwhile
it appears that the agony which Allmers and Rita have endured in
probing their wounds has been, as Halvard Solness would say, "salutary
self-torture." The consuming fire of passion is now quenched, but "it,
has left an empty place within them," and they feel it common need "to
fill it