ad to think of. We have been the joyous children of
summer for weeks and months now. It's hard to reconcile yourself to
the dark days--just at first, I mean. For men can accli--a--acclimatise
themselves, Mrs. Wangel. Ay, indeed they can. (Bows, and goes off to the
left.)

Ellida (looking out at the fjord). Oh, this terrible suspense! This
torturing last half-hour before the decision!

Wangel. You are determined, then, to speak to him yourself?

Ellida. I must speak to him myself; for it is freely that I must make my
choice.

Wangel. You have no choice, Ellida. You have no right to choose--no
right without my permission.

Ellida. You can never prevent the choice, neither you nor anyone. You
can forbid me to go away with him--to follow him--in case I should
choose to do that. You can keep me here by force--against my will. That
you can do. But that I should choose, choose from my very soul--choose
him, and not you--in case I would and did choose thus--this you cannot
prevent.

Wangel. No; you are right. I cannot prevent that.

Ellida. And so I have nothing to help me to resist. Here, at home, there
is no single thing that attracts me and binds me. I am so absolutely
rootless in your house, Wangel. The children are not mine--their hearts,
I mean--never have been. When I go, if I do go, either with him tonight,
or to Skjoldviken tomorrow, I haven't a key to give up, an order to give
about anything whatsoever. I am absolutely rootless in your house--I
have been absolutely outside everything from the very first.

Wangel. You yourself wished it.

Ellida. No, no, I did not. I neither wished nor did not wish it. I
simply left things just as I found them the day I came here. It is you,
and no one else, who wished it.

Wangel. I thought to do all for the best for you.

Ellida. Yes, Wangel, I know it so well! But there is retribution in
that, a something that avenges itself. For now I find no binding power
here-nothing to strengthen me--nothing to help me--nothing to draw me
towards what should have been the strongest possession of us both.

Wangel. I see it, Ellida. And that is why from t-morrow you shall have
back your freedom. Henceforth, you shall live your own life.

Ellida. And you call that my own life! No! My own true life lost its
bearings when I agreed to live with you. (Clenches her hand in fear
and unrest.) And now--tonight--in half an hour, he whom I forsook is
coming--he to whom I should have cleaved f