n front of her). Ah, innocence--

Rosmer. You need fear nothing on that score. But I--

Rebecca. You least of all men!

Rosmer (pointing out of the window). The mill-race.

Rebecca. Oh, John!--(MRS. HELSETH looks in in through the door on the
left.)

Mrs. Helseth. Miss West!

Rebecca. Presently, presently. Not now.

Mrs. Helseth. Just a word, miss! (REBECCA goes to the door. MRS.
HELSETH tells her something, and they whisper together for a moment;
then MRS. HELSETH nods and goes away.)

Rosmer (uneasily). Was it anything for me?

Rebecca. No, only something about the housekeeping. You ought to go out
into the open air now, John dear. You should go for a good long walk.

Rosmer (taking up his hat). Yes, come along; we will go together.

Rebecca. No, dear, I can't just now. You must go by yourself. But shake
off all these gloomy thoughts--promise me that!

Rosmer. I shall never be able to shake them quite off, I am afraid.

Rebecca. Oh, but how can you let such groundless fancies take such a
hold on you!

Rosmer. Unfortunately they are not so groundless as you think, dear. I
have lain, thinking them over, all night. Perhaps Beata saw things
truly after all.

Rebecca. In what way do you mean?

Rosmer. Saw things truly when she believed I loved you, Rebecca.

Rebecca. Truly in THAT respect?

Rosmer (laying his hat down on the table). This is the question I have
been wrestling with--whether we two have deluded ourselves the whole
time, when we have been calling the tie between us merely friendship.

Rebecca. Do you mean, then, that the right name for it would have
been--?

Rosmer. Love. Yes, dear, that is what I mean. Even while Beata was
alive, it was you that I gave all my thoughts to. It was you alone I
yearned for. It was with you that I experienced peaceful, joyful,
passionless happiness. When we consider it rightly, Rebecca, our life
together began like the sweet, mysterious love of two children for one
another--free from desire or any thought of anything more. Did you not
feel it in that way too? Tell me.

Rebecca (struggling with herself). Oh, I do not know what to answer.

Rosmer. And it was this life of intimacy, with one another and for one
another, that we took to be friendship. No, dear--the tie between us
has been a spiritual marriage--perhaps from the very first day. That is
why I am guilty. I had no right to it--no right to it for Beata's sake.

Rebecca. No right to a happy life?