felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it
at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be
satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I
remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren
desert within me--and without me too!

BORKMAN.
Except only for Erhart.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, except for your son. But I am hardened to every other
living thing. You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness
in life--and of a mother's sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps
that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.

BORKMAN.
Do you say that, Ella?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Who knows? It may be that a mother's sorrows and tears were
what I needed most. [With still deeper emotion.] But at that
time I could not resign myself to my loss; and that was why I
took Erhart to me. I won him entirely. Won his whole, warm,
trustful childish heart--until---- Oh!

BORKMAN.
Until what?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Until his mother--his mother in the flesh, I mean--took him from
me again.

BORKMAN.
He had to leave you in any case; he had to come to town.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[Wringing her hands.] Yes, but I cannot bear the solitude--
the emptiness! I cannot bear the loss of your son's heart!

BORKMAN.
[With an evil expression in his eyes.] H'm--I doubt whether
you have lost it, Ella. Hearts are not so easily lost to a
certain person--in the room below.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
I have lost Erhart here, and she has won him back again. Or
if not she, some one else. That is plain enough in the letters
he writes me from time to time.

BORKMAN.
Then it is to take him back with you that you have come here?

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Yes, if only it were possible----!

BORKMAN.
It is possible enough, if you have set your heart upon it. For
you have the first and strongest claims upon him.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
Oh, claims, claims! What is the use of claims? If he is not
mine of his own free will, he is not mine at all. And have him
I must! I must have my boy's heart, whole and undivided--now!

BORKMAN.
You must remember that Erhart is well into his twenties. You
could scarcely reckon on keeping his heart very long undivided,
as you express it.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
[With a melancholy smile.] It would not need to be for so very
long.

BORKMAN.
Indeed? I should have thought that when you want a thing, you
want it to the end of your days.

ELLA RENTHEIM.
So