LOVBORG.
It will not end with last night — I know that perfectly well. And the thing is that now I have no taste for that sort of life either. I won't begin it anew. She has broken my courage and my power of braving life out.
HEDDA.
[Looking straight before her.] So that pretty little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny. [Looks at him.] But all the same, how could you treat her so heartlessly.
LOVBORG.
Oh, don't say that I was heartless!
HEDDA.
To go and destroy what has filled her whole soul for months and years! You do not call that heartless!
LOVBORG.
To you I can tell the truth, Hedda.
HEDDA.
The truth?
LOVBORG.
First promise me — give me your word — that what I now confide in you Thea shall never know.
HEDDA.
I give you my word.
LOVBORG.
Good. Then let me tell you that what I said just now was untrue.
HEDDA.
About the manuscript?
LOVBORG.
Yes. I have not torn it to pieces — nor thrown it into the fiord.
HEDDA.
No, no — -. But — where is it then?
LOVBORG.
I have destroyed it none the less — utterly destroyed it, Hedda!
HEDDA.
I don't understand.
LOVBORG.
Thea said that what I had done seemed to her like a child-murder.
HEDDA.
Yes, so she said.
LOVBORG.
But to kill his child — that is not the worst thing a father can do to it.
HEDDA.
Not the worst?
LOVBORG.
Suppose now, Hedda, that a man — in the small hours of the morning — came home to his child's mother after a night of riot and debauchery, and said: "Listen — I have been here and there — in this place and in that. And I have taken our child with — to this place and to that. And I have lost the child — utterly lost it. The devil knows into what hands it may have fallen — who may have had their clutches on it."
HEDDA.
Well — but when all is said and done, you know — this was only a book — -
LOVBORG.
Thea's pure soul was in that book.
HEDDA.
Yes, so I understand.
LOVBORG.
And you can understand, too, that for her and me together no future is possible.
