Lona: Pooh! he is not so terribly moral.

Mrs. Bernick: What have you the audacity to say?

Lona: I have the audacity to say that Karsten is not any more particularly moral than anybody else.

Mrs. Bernick: So you still hate him as deeply as that! But what are you doing here, if you have never been able to forget that? I cannot understand how you, dare look him in the face after the shameful insult you put upon him in the old days.

Lona: Yes, Betty, that time I did forget myself badly.

Mrs. Bernick: And to think how magnanimously he has forgiven you--he, who had never done any wrong! It was not his fault that you encouraged yourself with hopes. But since then you have always hated me too.

(Bursts into tears.) You have always begrudged me my good fortune. And now you come here to heap all this on my head--to let the whole town know what sort of a family I have brought Karsten into. Yes, it is me that it all falls upon, and that is what you want. Oh, it is abominable of you! (Goes out by the door on the left, in tears.)

Lona (looking after her): Poor Betty! (BERNICK comes in from his room.

He stops at the door to speak to KRAP.)

Bernick: Yes, that is excellent, Krap--capital! Send twenty pounds to the fund for dinners to the poor. (Turns round.) Lona! (Comes forward.) Are you alone? Is Betty not coming in?

Lona: No. Would you like me to call her?

Bernick: No, no--not at all. Oh, Lona, you don't know how anxious I have been to speak openly to you--after having begged for your forgiveness.

Lona: Look here, Karsten--do not let us be sentimental; it doesn't suit us.

Bernick: You must listen to me, Lona. I know only too well how much appearances are against me, as you have learnt all about that affair with Dina's mother. But I swear to you that it was only a temporary infatuation; I was really, truly and honestly, in love with you once.

Lona: Why do you think I have come home?

Bernick: Whatever you have in your mind, I entreat, you to do nothing until I have exculpated myself. I can do that, Lona; at all events I can excuse myself.

Lona: Now you are frightened. You once were in love with me, you say.

Yes, you told me that often enough in your letters; and perhaps it was true, too--in a way--as long as you were living out in the great, free world which gave you the courage to think freely and greatly. Perhaps you found in me a little more character and strength of will and independence than in most of the folk at home here. And then we kept it secret between us; nobody could make fun of your bad taste.

Bernick: Lona, how can you think--?

Lona: But when you came back--when you heard the gibes that were made at me on all sides--when you noticed how people laughed at what they called my absurdities...

Bernick: You were regardless of people's opinion at that time.

Lona: Chiefly to annoy the petticoated and trousered prudes that one met at every turn in the town. And then, when you met that seductive young actress--

Bernick: It was a boyish escapade--nothing more; I swear to you that there was no truth in a tenth part of the rumours and gossip that went about.

Lona: Maybe. But then, when Betty came home--a pretty young girl, idolised by every one--and it became known that she would inherit all her aunt's money and that I would have nothing!

Bernick: That is just the point, Lona; and now you shall have the truth without any beating about the bush. I did not love Betty then; I did not break off my engagement with you because of any new attachment. It was entirely for the sake of the money. I needed it; I had to make sure of it.

Lona: And you have the face to tell me that?

Bernick: Yes, I have. Listen, Lona.

Lona: And yet you wrote to me that an unconquerable passion for Betty had overcome you--invoked my magnanimity--begged me, for Betty's sake, to hold my tongue about all that had been between us.

Bernick: I had to, I tell you.

Lona: Now, by Heaven, I don't regret that I forgot myself as I did that time--

Bernick: Let me tell you the plain truth of how things stood with me then. My mother, as you remember, was at the head of the business, but she was absolutely without any business ability whatever. I was hurriedly summoned home from Paris; times were critical, and they relied on me to set things straight. What did I find? I found--and you must keep this a profound secret--a house on the brink of ruin. Yes--as good as on the brink of ruin, this old respected house which had seen three generations of us. What else could I--the son, the only son--do than look about for some means of saving it?

Lona: And so you saved the house of Bernick at the cost of a woman.

Bernick: You know quite well that Betty was in love with me.

Lona: But what about me?

Bernick: Believe me, Lona, you would never have been happy with me.

Lona: Was it out of consideration for my happiness that you sacrificed me?

Bernick: Do you suppose I acted as I did from selfish motives? If I had stood alone then, I would have begun all over again with cheerful courage. But you do not understand how the life of a man of business, with his tremendous responsibilities, is bound up with that of the business which falls to his inheritance. Do you realise that the prosperity or the ruin of hundreds--of thousands--depends on him? Can you not take into consideration the fact that the whole community in which both you and I were born would have been affected to the most dangerous extent if the house of Bernick had gone to smash?

Lon: Then is it for the sake of the community that you have maintained your position these fifteen years upon a lie?

Bernick: Upon a lie?

Lona: What does Betty know of all this...that underlies her union with you?

Bernick: Do you suppose that I would hurt her feelings to no purpose by disclosing the truth?

Lona: To no purpose, you say? Well, well--You are a man of business; you ought to understand what is to the purpose. But listen to me, Karsten--I am going to speak the plain truth now. Tell me, are you really happy?

Bernick: In my family life, do you mean?

Lona: Yes.

Bernick: I am, Lona. You have not been a self-sacrificing friend to me in vain. I can honestly say that I have grown happier every year. Betty is good and willing; and if I were to tell you how, in the course of years, she has learned to model her character on the lines of my own--

Lona: Hm!

Bernick: At first, of course, she had a whole lot of romantic notions about love; she could not reconcile herself to the idea that, little by little, it must change into a quiet comradeship.

Lona: But now she is quite reconciled to that?

Bernick: Absolutely. As you can imagine, daily intercourse with me has had no small share in developing her character. Every one, in their degree, has to learn to lower their own pretensions, if they are to live worthily of the community to which they belong. And Betty, in her turn, has gradually learned to understand this; and that is why our home is now a model to our fellow citizens.

Lona: But your fellow citizens know nothing about the lie?

Bernick: The lie?

Lona: Yes--the lie you have persisted in for these fifteen years.