Helmer
[walking up and down]. He had so grown into our lives. I can‘t think of him as having gone out of them. He, with his sufferings and his loneliness, was like a cloudy background to our sunlit happiness. Well, perhaps it is best so. For him, anyway.
[Standing still.] And perhaps for us too, Nora. We two are thrown quite upon each other now. [Puts his arms round her.] My darling wife, I don‘t feel as if I could hold you tight enough. Do you know, Nora, I have often wished that you might be threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life‘s blood, and everything, for your sake. - P98
Helmer.
Now you have destroyed all my happiness.
You have ruined all my future.
It is horrible to think of!
I am in the power of an unscrupulous man; he can do what he likes with me, ask anything he likes of me, give me any orders he pleases--I dare not refuse.
And I must sink to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman! - P100
‘From this moment happiness is not the question; all that concerns us is to save the remains, the fragments, the appearance--’(Helmer, 101p) - P101
Helmer.
You have loved me as a wife ought to love her husband.
Only you had not sufficient knowledge to judge of the means you used.
But do you suppose you are any the less dear to me, because you don‘t understand how to act on your own responsibility?
No, no; only lean on me; I will advise you and direct you.
I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes.
You must not think anymore about the hard things I said in my first moment of consternation, when I thought everything was going to overwhelm me.
I have forgiven you, Nora; I swear to you I have forgiven you. - P103
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