MRS. BORKMAN’S living room. The lamp is still burning on the table by the sofa. The garden room to the rear is now dark. MRS. BORKMAN, with the shawl over her head, enters through the hall door, profoundly shaken. She goes to the window and draws the curtain aside slightly; then she crosses over to sit in the armchair by the stove, but immediately springs to her feet again and goes to the bellpull and rings. For a moment she stands, waiting by the sofa. No one comes. She rings again, this time more violently. After some moments the MAID enters from the hall. She looks sleepy and ill-tempered and appears to have dressed in haste.
MRS. BORKMAN (impatiently). What’s become of you, Malene? I had to ring twice!
MAID. Yes, ma’am, I heard you.
MRS. BORKMAN. And still you didn’t come.
MAID (petulantly). Well, I had to throw on a few clothes first, I guess.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, you dress yourself up properly. And then you’ve got to run over right away and fetch my son.
MAID (staring at her in amazement). Me—fetch Mr. Erhart?
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes. Just tell him he has to come home to me at once. That I have to speak with him.
MAID (sullenly). Then I guess I better go wake the coachman in the annex.
MRS. BORKMAN. Why?
MAID. So he can harness the sleigh. It’s been an awful snowstorm tonight.
MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, that’s nothing. Hurry up and go! It’s only around the corner.
MAID. No, but, ma’am, that’s not just around the corner.
MRS. BORKMAN. Why, of course it is. Don’t you know where Mr. Hinkel’s place is?
MAID (sarcastically). Oh, I see—is that where Mr. Erhart is tonight?
MRS. BORKMAN (puzzled). Where else would he be?
MAID (suppressing a smile). Oh, I only thought he was over where he usually is.
MRS. BORKMAN. Where do you mean?
MAID. At that Mrs. Wilton’s, as they call her.
MRS. BORKMAN. Mrs. Wilton’s? My son isn’t there so often.
MAID (under her breath). There’s some say he’s there every day.
MRS. BORKMAN. That’s a pack of nonsense, Malene. Now go over to Mr. Hinkel’s and see that you get hold of him.
MAID (tossing her head). Oh, all right; I’m going.
(She is on the verge of going out down the hall, when at that instant the hall door opens, and ELLA RENTHEIM and BORKMAN appear on the threshold.)
MRS. BORKMAN (recoils a step). What does this mean?
MAID (terrified, impulsively clasping her hands). In Jesus’ name!
MRS. BORKMAN (whispering to her). Tell him to come directly, at once!
(ELLA and, behind her, BORKMAN come into the room. The MAID steals around in back of them and out the door, shutting it after her. A brief silence.)
MRS. BORKMAN (again controlled, turning to ELLA). What does he want in my room down here?
ELLA. He wants to try and reach some understanding with you, Gunhild.
MRS. BORKMAN. He’s never tried to before.
ELLA. He wants to this evening.
MRS. BORKMAN. The last time we faced each other—was in court. When I was summoned to give an explanation—
BORKMAN (approaching closer). And tonight I’m the one who’ll give an explanation.
MRS. BORKMAN (looking at him). You!
BORKMAN. Not about my offense. The whole world knows about that.
MRS. BORKMAN (with a bitter sigh). Yes, how true. The whole world knows.
BORKMAN. But it doesn’t know why I committed it. Why I had to commit it. People don’t understand that I had to because I was myself—John Gabriel Borkman—and no one else. That’s what I want to try and explain to you.
MRS. BORKMAN (shaking her head). It’s no use. Intentions acquit no one. Nor impulses, either.
BORKMAN. They can acquit a man in his own eyes.
MRS. BORKMAN (with a gesture of dismissal). Oh, let’s be done with all this! I’ve pondered all those dark dealings of yours to the limit.
BORKMAN. So have I. Through five endless years in my cell—and elsewhere—I’ve had time enough for that. And with eight years in the salon upstairs, I’ve had more than enough time. I’ve retried the whole case—all to myself. I’ve reopened the proceedings again and again. I’ve been my own prosecutor, my own defender, and my own judge. More impartially than anybody else would be—that I’ll wager. I’ve walked the floor up there, turning every detail of my actions over and over in my mind. I’ve scrutinized them backward and forward just as unsparingly and remorselessly as any lawyer. And the verdict I continually arrive at is this: that the only one I’ve committed an offense against—is myself.
MRS. BORKMAN. Not against me? Or your son?
BORKMAN. You and he are included in what I mean by myself.
MRS. BORKMAN. And what of those hundreds of others—the ones they say you ruined?
BORKMAN (more intensely). I had the power! And the relentless voices within me! The buried millions lay everywhere, deep in the mountains, all over the country, crying out to me, crying out to be freed! But not one of all the others heard. Only I, alone.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, to brand the name Borkman with dishonor.
BORKMAN. Who knows, if the others had had the power, whether they wouldn’t have acted just as I did?
MRS. BORKMAN. No one, no one besides you could have done the same.
BORKMAN. Maybe not. But then that was because they lacked my abilities. And if they had done it, they couldn’t have done it with my vision. The action would have to be different. In short, I’ve acquitted myself.
ELLA (in a softly appealing tone). Oh, how can you speak so surely, John Gabriel?
BORKMAN (nodding). Acquitted myself to that extent. But then comes the great, crushing self-accusation.
MRS. BORKMAN. What’s that?
BORKMAN. I’ve holed myself away up there and wasted eight priceless years of my life! The very day I was released, I should have moved out into reality—iron-hard, dreamless reality! I should have begun at the bottom and raised myself up to the heights again—higher than ever before—in spite of what intervened.
MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, it would just be the same life all over again—believe me.
BORKMAN (shakes his head and regards her with a didactic air). Nothing new ever happens. But whatever has happened never repeats itself, either. It’s the eye that transforms the action. The newborn eye transforms the old action. (Breaking off.) Ahh, you don’t understand that.
MRS. BORKMAN (brusquely). No, I don’t understand it.
BORKMAN. Yes, that’s the curse, exactly: that I’ve never found understanding in any human soul.
ELLA (looking at him). Never, John Gabriel?
BORKMAN. With one exception—perhaps. Long, long ago, in the days when I didn’t think I needed understanding. But since then, never, with anyone! I’ve had no one attentive enough to be near at hand, encouraging me—rousing me like a morning bell—urging me on once more to do inspired work. And confirming to me that I’ve done nothing irretrievable.
MRS. BORKMAN (laughs contemptuously). So—you need outside confirmation of that?
BORKMAN (with gathering resentment). Yes, when the whole world hisses in unison that I’m a man lost beyond recall, then I have moments when I’m almost ready to believe it myself. (Lifting his head.) But then my innermost consciousness rises triumphant again. And that acquits me!
MRS. BORKMAN (regarding him bitterly). Why did you never come and ask me for what you call understanding?
BORKMAN. What use would it have been—coming to you!
MRS. BORKMAN (with a gesture of dismissal). You’ve never loved anything outside yourself—and that’s the essence of it.
BORKMAN (with pride). I’ve loved power—
BORKMAN. The power to create human happiness for vast multitudes around me.
MRS. BORKMAN. You once had the power to make me happy. Have you used it for that?
BORKMAN (not looking at her). Someone very often has to go down—in a shipwreck.
MRS. BORKMAN. And your own son! Have you used your power, have you lived and labored, to make him happy?
BORKMAN. I don’t know him.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, that’s true. You don’t even know him.
BORKMAN (harshly). You—you, his mother, took care of that.
MRS. BORKMAN (regards him with an imperious air). Oh, you have no idea what I’ve taken care of!
BORKMAN. YOU?
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, I—I alone.
BORKMAN. Tell me.
MRS. BORKMAN. I’ve shaped your final reputation.
BORKMAN (with a short, dry laugh). My final reputation? Come now! That sounds as though I were already dead.
MRS. BORKMAN (stressing her words). And you are.
BORKMAN (slowly). Yes, maybe you’re right. (Flaring up.) But no, no! Not yet! I’ve come so close, so close to it. But now I’m awake. Revived again. Life still reaches ahead of me. I can see that new and radiant life still waits there, beckoning. And you’ll see it as well. You, too.
MRS. BORKMAN (raising her hand). No more dreams of life! Rest quietly where you lie.
ELLA (appalled). Gunhild! Gunhild, how could you—!
MRS. BORKMAN (not listening to her). I’ll raise a monument over your grave.
BORKMAN. A memorial to shame, I suppose?
MRS. BORKMAN (with swelling emotion). Oh no, it won’t be a marker of stone or metal. And no one will have a chance to carve a slurring inscription on the monument I’ll raise. It will be as if a living fence, a woven hedge of trees and bushes was planted thick, thick around your buried life. All the dark of the past will be screened away; and all remembrance of John Gabriel Borkman will vanish into oblivion.
BORKMAN (hoarsely and cuttingly). And that work of love you’ll carry out?
MRS. BORKMAN. Not through my own efforts. That’s beyond me. But I’ve trained an assistant who’ll focus his life on this one thing. His life will be so pure and brilliant and exalted that all your own grubbing in the dark will be wiped from this earth!
BORKMAN (in grim warning). If it’s Erhart you mean, you better say so right now.
MRS. BORKMAN (looking him straight in the eye). Yes, it’s Erhart. My son, that you’re willing to relinquish—in penance for your failings.
BORKMAN (with a glance at ELLA). In penance for my greatest sin.
MRS. BORKMAN (dismissing the thought). A sin only against a stranger. Remember the sin against we! (Looking exultantly at them both.) But he won’t listen to you! When I cry out to him in my need, then he’ll come! For it’s with me he wants to be! With me, and nobody else— (Abruptly listens, then cries.) There, I hear him! He’s here—he’s here! Erhart!
(ERHART BORKMAN bursts open the hall door and comes into the room. He is wearing an overcoat and a hat on his head.)
ERHART (pale and anxious). Mother—what in God’s name—! (He sees BORKMAN, standing by the doorway to the garden room, starts, and takes off his hat. A brief pause.) What do you want me for, Mother? What happened?
MRS. BORKMAN (stretching out her arms toward him). I want to see you, Erhart! I want to have you with me—always!
ERHART (stammering). Have me—? Always! What do you mean?
MRS. BORKMAN. To have you! I want to have you—because there’s someone trying to take you from me!
ERHART (falls back a step). Ah—then you know?
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes. But you know, too?
ERHART (surprised, looking at her). Do I know? Why, naturally—
MRS. BORKMAN. So! Plotting—behind my back! Erhart, Erhart!
ERHART (quickly). Mother, tell me, what is it you know?
MRS. BORKMAN. I know everything. I know that your aunt’s come here to take you away from me.
ERHART. Aunt Ella!
ELLA. Oh, listen to me a while first, Erhart!
MRS. BORKMAN (continuing). She wants me to give you over to her. She wants to assume your mother’s place, Erhart! She wants you to be her son hereafter, and not mine. She wants you to inherit everything she owns, and to drop your own name for hers instead!
ERHART. Aunt Ella, is all this true?
ELLA. Yes, it’s true.
ERHART. I didn’t know any of this till now. Why do you want me back with you?
ELLA. Because I feel I’m losing you here.
MRS. BORKMAN (harshly). Losing him to me—yes! And that’s just as it ought to be.
ELLA (looks imploringly at him). Erhart, I can’t afford to lose you. You must be aware that I’m a lonely—dying woman.
ERHART. Dying—?
ELLA. Yes, dying. Will you stay with me to the end? Commit yourself wholly to me—as if you were my own child—?
MRS. BORKMAN (breaking in). And abandon your mother and perhaps your mission in life as well? Do you want that, Erhart?
ELLA. I’m condemned to die. Answer me, Erhart.
ERHART (warmly, moved). Aunt Ella—you’ve been good to me beyond words. With you I was able to grow up in as much carefree happiness as I think any child could have known—
MRS. BORKMAN. Erhart, Erhart!
ELLA. What a blessing that you still feel that way!
ERHART. But I can’t sacrifice myself for you now. It’s impossible for me simply to give myself over to being a son to you—
MRS. BORKMAN (triumphantly). Ah, I knew it! You won’t get him! You won’t get him, Ella!
ELLA (heavily). I see. You have won him back.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, yes—he’s mine, and he’ll stay mine! It’s true, isn’t it, Erhart—the two of us still have a long way to go together?
ERHART (struggling with himself). Mother—I might just as well tell you right now—
MRS. BORKMAN (tensely). Yes?
ERHART. It’s only a short distance more we’ll be going together, you and I.
MRS. BORKMAN (as if physically struck). What does that mean?
ERHART (mustering his courage). My God, Mother—I’m young! The air here in this room—I feel it’s going to smother me completely.
MRS. BORKMAN. Here—with me!
ERHART. Yes, here with you, Mother!
ELLA. Then come with me, Erhart!
ERHART. Oh, Aunt Ella, it’s not one shade better with you. It would be different there. But not better. Not for me. It’s roses and lavender—stale indoor air, exactly like here.
MRS. BORKMAN (shaken, but with composure reestablished). The air is stale here, you say?
ERHART (with mounting impatience). Oh, I don’t know what else to call it. All this morbid concern about me, this—this idolatry, or whatever it is. I can’t take it any longer!
MRS. BORKMAN (with a look of profound solemnity). Are you forgetting what you’ve dedicated your life to, Erhart?
ERHART (vehemently). Oh, you mean what you’ve dedicated my life to! You’ve been my will! I’ve never been allowed to have one of my own. But I won’t wear these chains any longer! I’m young! You’ve got to remember that, Mother. (With a polite, respectful glance at BORKMAN.) I can’t dedicate my life to someone else’s atonement—no matter who that someone may be.
MRS. BORKMAN (gripped by a gathering dread). Who is it that’s changed you, Erhart?
ERHART (caught). Who—? Couldn’t it be that, all on my own, I—
MRS. BORKMAN. No, no, no! There’s some strange power that’s over you. You’re not under your mother’s influence anymore. Nor your—your foster mother’s, either.
ERHART (with effortful defiance). I know my own strength now, Mother. And my own will, too!
BORKMAN (approaching ERHART). Then perhaps my time has finally come.
ERHART (with a distant, formal courtesy). What—? What do you mean, sir?
MRS. BORKMAN (contemptuously). Yes, and I’d certainly like to hear.
BORKMAN (continues calmly). Listen, Erhart—would you consider going in with your father? No man can find restitution through somebody else’s career. That’s just an empty dream that’s been spun for you here—down in this stale indoor air. Even if you could manage to live a life like all the saints put together, it wouldn’t help me one particle.
ERHART (deferentially). That’s just as you say.
BORKMAN. Yes, it is. And it wouldn’t help either if I let myself wilt away in penance and contrition. I’ve tried to nurse myself along through all these years on hopes and dreams; but they’ve done me no earthly good. And now I want to shed my dreams.
ERHART (bowing slightly). And what—what will you do, sir?
BORKMAN. Reestablish myself, that’s what. Begin from the bottom again. It’s only by his present and his future that a man can expiate the past. By work—by unremitting work for everything that, in my youth, meant more to me than life itself. And that means now a thousand times more. Erhart—would you go in with your father and help me win this new life?
MRS. BORKMAN (raising her hand in warning). Don’t do it, Erhart!
ELLA (warmly). Yes, yes, do it! Oh, help him, Erhart!
MRS. BORKMAN. And that’s your advice? You—alone and dying—
ELLA. It doesn’t matter about me.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, just so I’m not the one who takes him from you.
ELLA. Precisely, Gunhild.
BORKMAN (to ERHART). What do you say?
ERHART (painfully distressed). Father, I can’t, not now. It’s totally impossible.
BORKMAN. Well, what do you want then?
ERHART (in a blaze of emotion). I’m young! I want my chance to live, for once! I want to live my own life!
ELLA. But not to give up a few short months to lighten the last days of an unhappy life.
ERHART. As much as I wish to, Aunt Ella, I can’t.
ELLA. Not for someone who loves you beyond words?
ERHART. As I live and breathe, I tell you—I can’t.
MRS. BORKMAN (looking intensely at him). And your mother can’t hold you now, either?
ERHART. Mother, I’ll always love you. But I can’t continue living for you alone. Because that isn’t life for me.
BORKMAN. Then why not come in with me! Because life is work, Erhart. Come, let’s the two of us take life on and work together!
ERHART (passionately). Yes, but I don’t want to work now! Because I’m young! I’ve never known what that meant before, but now I feel it surging through every fiber of me. I will not work! Just live, live, live!
MRS. BORKMAN (with a cry of premonition). Erhart—what will you live for?
ERHART (his eyes kindling). For happiness, Mother!
MRS. BORKMAN. And where do you think you can find that?
ERHART. I’ve found it already!
MRS. BORKMAN (in a shriek). Erhart—!
(ERHART strides quickly over to the hall door and opens it.)
ERHART (calls). Fanny—you can come in now.
(MRS. WILTON, in her winter coat, appears in the doorway.)
MRS. BORKMAN (her hands upraised). Mrs. Wilton—!
MRS. WILTON (rather shyly, with a questioning glance at ERHART). Can I then—?
ERHART. Yes, now you can. I’ve said everything.
(MRS. WILTON enters the room, ERHART closing the door after her. She bows politely to BORKMAN, who silently returns the greeting. A brief pause.)
MRS. WILTON (in a subdued, but firm voice). So the words have been said. Then, I guess I stand here as someone who’s inflicted a great catastrophe on this house.
MRS. BORKMAN (slowly, looking rigidly at her). You’ve shattered the last remnants of what I had to live for. (In an outburst.) But this—this is all so utterly impossible!
MRS. WILTON. I understand very well, Mrs. Borkman, that this must seem impossible to you.
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, you must be able to see that yourself, that it’s impossible.
MRS. WILTON. Implausible, utterly implausible—I’d prefer to call it that. But, nevertheless, it is.
MRS. BORKMAN (turning). Are you completely serious about this, Erhart?
ERHART. This is happiness to me, Mother. The greatest, loveliest happiness of life. I can’t tell you more than that.
MRS. BORKMAN (to MRS. WILTON, wringing her hands). Oh, the way you’ve inveigled and seduced my unfortunate son!
MRS. WILTON (tossing her head proudly). I’ve done nothing of the kind.
MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, haven’t you!
MRS. WILTON. No. Neither inveigled nor seduced him. Erhart’s come to me of his own free will. And I’ve met him freely halfway.
MRS. BORKMAN (eyeing her up and down with contempt). Yes! Oh yes, that I can well believe!
MRS. WILTON (restraining herself). Mrs. Borkman—there are forces in human life that you seem to know singularly little of.
MRS. BORKMAN. What forces, might I ask?
MRS. WILTON. The forces that impel two people to unite their lives indissolubly—without fearing the consequences.
MRS. BORKMAN (smiles). I thought you were already indissolubly united—to someone else.
MRS. WILTON (curtly). That someone deserted me.
MRS. BORKMAN. But he’s still living, they say.
MRS. WILTON. He’s dead to me.
ERHART (incisively). Yes, Mother, for Fanny he’s dead. Moreover, this other man has nothing to do with me.
MRS. BORKMAN (looking severely at him). You know about him, then—this other man.
ERHART. Yes, I know. I know all about it, completely!
MRS. BORKMAN. And even so, you say it has nothing to do with you?
ERHART (with airy disdain). I can only tell you, it’s happiness I want! I’m young! I want to live, live, live!
MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, you’re young, Erhart. Much too young for this.
MRS. WILTON. Don’t think, Mrs. Borkman, I haven’t told him just that. I’ve laid out my whole life story for him. I’ve reminded him repeatedly that I’m a full seven years older than he—
ERHART (interrupting). Oh, look, Fanny—I knew that at the start.
MRS. WILTON. But nothing, nothing does any good.
MRS. BORKMAN. Really? Not at all? Then why didn’t you dismiss him flat? Close your house to him? You know, you could have done that in good time.
MRS. WILTON (looks at her and says softly). I simply couldn’t, Mrs. Borkman.
MRS. BORKMAN. Why not?
MRS. WILTON. Because my happiness was at stake in him, too.
MRS. BORKMAN (scornfully). Hm—happiness, happiness—
MRS. WILTON. I’ve never before known what happiness is in life. And I can’t possibly turn it away, just because it came so late.
MRS. BORKMAN. And how long do you think this happiness will endure?
ERHART (interrupting). Short or long, Mother—what’s the difference?
MRS. BORKMAN (furious). What a blind fool you are! Can’t you see where all this is leading?
ERHART. I don’t want to consider the future. Or be farsighted in any direction! I just want the chance to live my own life for once!
MRS. BORKMAN (pained). And you call that life, Erhart!
ERHART. Yes, don’t you see how lovely she is?
MRS. BORKMAN (clenching her fists). And this burden of shame, then, I’ll have to bear, too.
BORKMAN (from the back of the room, brusquely incisive). Ha! You’re well practiced in that sort of thing, Gunhild!
ELLA (imploringly). John Gabriel—!
ERHART (similarly). Father—!
MRS. BORKMAN. Here I’m condemned to go on day by day, seeing my son with a—a—
ERHART (breaking in fiercely). You’ll see nothing like that, Mother—rest assured! I’m not staying here any longer.
MRS. WILTON (briskly and decisively). We’re going away, Mrs. Borkman.
MRS. BORKMAN (turning pale). Going away! Together, I suppose?
MRS. WILTON (nods). I’m traveling south, yes. Abroad. Together with a young girl. And Erhart’s going with us.
MRS. BORKMAN. With you—and a young girl?
MRS. WILTON. Yes. It’s that little Frida Foldal that I took into my house. I want her to go abroad and develop her music.
MRS. BORKMAN. So you’re taking her with you.
MRS. WILTON. Yes. I could hardly send the child down there all on her own.
MRS. BORKMAN (suppressing a smile). What do you say to that, Erhart?
ERHART (somewhat ill at ease, with a shrug). Well, Mother—if that’s how Fanny wants it to be, then—
MRS. BORKMAN (coldly). When will this entourage be leaving, might I ask?
MRS. WILTON. We’re departing immediately, tonight. My sleigh is waiting—over at the Hinkels’.
MRS. BORKMAN (scanning her). I see—so that was the evening party.
MRS. WILTON (smiling). Yes, no one but Erhart and me. And Frida, of course.
MRS. BORKMAN. And where is she now?
MRS. WILTON. Sitting in the sleigh, waiting.
ERHART (painfully embarrassed). Mother—I hope you understand—? I wanted to spare you—spare everyone—all of this.
MRS. BORKMAN (looks at him, deeply injured). You would have left me without saying good-bye?
ERHART. Yes. I thought it was best that way. Best on both sides. Everything was ready to go. Our bags were packed. But then when you sent that message for me, well— (Reaches his hands out toward her.) Good-bye then, Mother.
MRS. BORKMAN (averting herself, with a gesture of repulsion). Don’t touch me!
ERHART (gently). Is that your last word?
MRS. BORKMAN (austerely). Yes.
ERHART (turning). And good-bye to you, Aunt Ella.
ELLA (pressing his hands). Good-bye, Erhart! Live your life—and be as happy—just as happy as you can!
ERHART. Thanks, Aunt Ella. (Bows to BORKMAN.) Good-bye, Father. (Whispers to MRS. WILTON.) Let’s get away now, the quicker the better.
MRS. WILTON (softly). Yes, let’s.
MRS. BORKMAN (with a malevolent smile). Mrs. Wilton—do you think you’re very wise, taking that young girl along with you?
MRS. WILTON (returns the smile, half ironically, half seriously). Men are so variable, Mrs. Borkman. And women likewise. When Erhart is finished with me—and I with him—then it’ll be good for both of us that he, poor boy, has someone to fall back on.
MRS. BORKMAN. But you yourself?
MRS. WILTON. Oh, I’ll arrange for myself, don’t worry. Good-bye, all of you!
(She bows slightly and goes out the hall door. ERHART stands a moment as though faltering; then he turns and follows her.)
MRS. BORKMAN (her folded hands dropping). Childless.
BORKMAN (as if awakening into resolution). Out into the storm alone then! My hat! My coat! (He moves rapidly toward the door.)
ELLA (in terror, stopping him). John Gabriel, where are you going?
BORKMAN. Out in the storm of life, you hear. Let go, Ella!
ELLA (gripping him tightly). No, no, I won’t let you go out. You’re ill. I can see that.
BORKMAN. I said, let me go! (He tears himself loose and goes out down the hall.)
ELLA (in the doorway). Help me to hold him, Gunhild!
MRS. BORKMAN (remains standing in the middle of the room; cold and hard). There’s nobody in this world that I’m going to hold. Let them all leave me. This one and that. As far—as far as ever they want. (Suddenly, with a rending cry.) Erhart, don’t go!
(She rushes with outstretched arms toward the door. ELLA RENTHEIM stops her.)