ornia 
 al
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO , 
 \ . .X 
 
 1
 
 The 
 from the Sea.
 
 IN SAME SERIES. 
 A London Plane Tree. By AMY LEVY. 
 
 Wordsworth's Grave, and Other Poems. 
 By WILLIAM WATSON. 
 
 Sakuntala ; or, The Fatal Ring. By 
 KALIDASA. Translated by Sir WILLIAM 
 JONES. Introduction by Prof. RHYS DAVIDS.
 
 The 
 Lady front the 
 
 by 
 
 HENRIK IBSEN 
 
 Translated, with the Author's Permission, 
 by ELEANOR MARX-AVELING. 
 
 With Critical Introduction 
 by EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 CAMEO SERIES. 
 
 London : T. Fisher Unwin 
 Paternoster Square. 
 
 MDCCCXC.
 
 The Lady from the Sea. 
 
 T*HE name of Henrik Ibsen has now 
 become so familiar to the English public 
 that it seems almost needless to remind the 
 reader of the incidents of his life. I may, 
 however, be permitted to repeat once more 
 that the most illustrious Scandinavian writer 
 of our age was born in the little timber-port 
 of Skien, in Norway, on the 2Oth of March, 
 1828. His parents were Norwegian by 
 citizenship, but of a stock in which Danish, 
 German, and Scotch elements were curiously 
 mingled. Like Keats, he was brought up to 
 busy himself among " plasters, pills, and oint- 
 ment boxes," but soon threw off this bondage 
 of the apothecary. In 1850 he published 
 a stiff historical tragedy of "Catalina." From 
 this he rose, slowly but steadily, to poetical 
 work more characteristic of himself. He deve- 
 loped an extraordinary gift in lyrical drama,
 
 6 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 a power over rhyming dialogue not easily to 
 be matched in the literature of any country. 
 His plays in rhyme, as musical as is Apollo's 
 lute, enjoyed a great and deserved popularity. 
 In "Love's Comedy," 1863, in "Brand," 1865, in 
 ' ' Peer Gynt, ' ' 1 8 6 7 , he produced dramatic poems 
 of infinite wit and vivacity, on the adornment 
 of which he had expended all the treasures of 
 metrical art. To the dismay of his admirers, 
 he forthwith rejected rhyme and metre alto- 
 gether. 
 
 It was not an easy matter to conquer a new 
 public, but Ibsen's patience and belief in his 
 own judgment were indomitable. He has at 
 last so completely converted the world to his 
 prose that there may even be some danger of 
 his old faultless verse becoming neglected. 
 Be that as it may, his new order of writing 
 has developed into a series of seven social 
 dramas, the composition of which has exclu- 
 sively occupied their author during the last 
 fifteen years. Of this series of plays much 
 has lately been said in England, and the 
 second of them in order of publication, "Et 
 Dukkehjem," or, "A Doll's House," in a ver- 
 sion scrupulously faithful to the original, has
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 7 
 
 been played this summer before crowded 
 audiences in a London theatre. This per- 
 formance was confessedly a profoundly inter- 
 esting one. It was closely studied, vehemently 
 attacked, passionately supported. It was 
 universally conceded that the play contained 
 such elements of life, at all events, as call 
 forth eager comment, and lead to excited dis- 
 cussion. A single performance of an earlier, 
 and perhaps a cruder piece, " The Pillars of 
 Society," provoked a scarcely less lively de- 
 monstration of various opinion. Plenty more 
 of Ibsen's refreshing and invigorating breeze 
 of fresh air will doubtless be blown across 
 our jaded London stage to stir its odour of 
 the footlights. In the meantime enough has 
 been said and seen to make the general 
 character of the great Norwegian poet under- 
 stood among us. Everyone who cares for 
 theatrical literature at all has now had an 
 opportunity of testing the new product for 
 himself. 
 
 The play, of which a translation is here pre- 
 sented to the British public, is the latest of 
 the series of seven social dramas mentioned 
 above. It was brought out last Christmas
 
 TH^ LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 under the title of "Fruen fra Havet," or, "The 
 Lady from the Sea." Those who have seen 
 or read all seven plays know that they pos- 
 sess a strong general likeness to one another, 
 but that they differ greatly in their barome- 
 tric conditions. In some of them the pressure 
 of the moral atmosphere is overwhelming. In 
 some the quivering needle of the dramatic 
 instrument points to storm, as eminently in 
 "Ghosts," in "The Wild Duck," and in 
 " Rosmersholm," gloomy and sardonic pieces, 
 in which a sort of mystical pessimism is made 
 to bear upon tragic conditions of human error 
 and distress. This habit of describing by pre- 
 ference the barrenness and hopeless distrac- 
 tion of unfortunate individuals, and of leading 
 them into culs de sac, had grown in the poet, 
 to the alarm of some of his greatest admirers. 
 In " Vildanden," or the " Wild Duck," he had 
 written, in 1884, a play which is full of genius, 
 but obscure, cynical and distressing to the 
 last degree. "Rosmersholm," although its dis- 
 mal problems are solved by suicide, breathed, 
 nevertheless, an atmosphere distinctly less 
 oppressive, and now in " The Lady from 
 the Sea " Ibsen has suddenly changed his
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 9 
 
 mood, the tragic tension is relaxed, the mer- 
 cury flies back, and we have a drama which 
 is full of sympathetic passages, and which 
 closes in sunshine instead of in rain and 
 tempest. 
 
 In one of Sir Walter Scott's letters, he says ; 
 "A very intelligent young lady, born and bred 
 in the Orkney Islands, who lately came to 
 spend a season in this neighbourhood, told me 
 nothing in the mainland scenery had so much 
 disappointed her as woods and trees. She 
 found them so dead and lifeless, that she could 
 never help pining after the eternal motion and 
 variety of the ocean. And so back she has 
 gone, and I believe nothing will ever tempt 
 her from the wind-swept Orcades again." The 
 condition of instinct which Scott here de- 
 scribes is that which Ibsen has taken as the 
 central idea of his piece. The action takes 
 place in a small Norwegian town, built, as so 
 many Norse Kjobsteder are, at the head of a 
 narrow and tortuous fjord. It would be idle 
 to speculate what town in particular was in- 
 tended. But the description fits in remark- 
 ably well with Grimstad, the place where 
 Ibsen lived from 1843 to 1849, while he was
 
 io THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 studying to be an apothecary. Here there is 
 the same sluggish ripple around the town, the 
 same sleepy water-way to the genuine sea, the 
 same glittering and tossing ocean outside, the 
 same external belt of lonely skerries, with a 
 lighthouse on the largest of them. It is true 
 that a stage-direction tells us that the scene is 
 laid in the north of Norway, but this is belied 
 by the course the steamer takes in the fifth 
 act, and to realise the scene we must perhaps 
 conceive it to be somewhere on the south- 
 eastern coast between Christianssand and 
 Laurvig. 
 
 It is not necessary to tell the story in de- 
 tail. It is part of Ibsen's magnificent genius 
 for stage arrangement that the plots of his 
 plays unwind themselves without a hitch in 
 their natural evolution. The attention is 
 arrested at once ; no more is educed than the 
 memory needs to retain, and the tension of 
 excitement becomes steadily greater to the 
 close. He who has the play before him holds 
 a better thread of the plot than I can give. 
 But it may be briefly said that Dr. Wangel, 
 the town physician, after a common-place 
 happy marriage, in which two daughters were
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. n 
 
 born to him, has lost his wife. As his mother- 
 less daughters grow up, he determines, for 
 their sakes, as much as for his own, that he 
 will marry again. During a professional excur- 
 sion to the lighthouse on the outer skerry, he 
 falls in love with Ellida, the beautiful solitary 
 daughter of the lighthouse - keeper. She is 
 quite young, scarcely older than his elder child, 
 Bolette. Ellida accepts him, after having 
 frankly told him that he is not her first fancy, 
 although she now is free. They marry, and 
 they are happy ; but Ellida shows herself to 
 be psychically abnormal. She is like the girl 
 in Sir Walter Scott's letter ; she cannot 
 breathe in the town to which she has been 
 transplanted ; she pines after the motion and 
 variety of the sea, and in the absence of this 
 brilliant sedative with which she has been 
 wont to calm her nerves, her mental disease 
 grows upon her, and she becomes a neurotic 
 invalid. Gentle and unselfish, and mated to 
 a wise and tender man, she is yet melancholy, 
 restless, irritable, and unfitted to fulfil the 
 duties or enjoy the pleasures of her position. 
 The step-daughters are unable to win her 
 sympathy, and they fall away from her ; her
 
 12 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 only child has died, and since that time, in 
 her growing melancholia, she has evaded her 
 husband also. Her only enjoyment is bath- 
 ing ; her only perfectly lucid intervals are 
 those which she spends upon the ocean. Her 
 husband makes her only worse by injudicious 
 doses of morphia. Such is the condition of the 
 principal characters when the play opens. 
 
 As the piece develops, the irritant, which is 
 playing havoc with the brain of the sweet 
 and patient Ellida, is discovered. Late one 
 autumn, while the lighthouse keeper's 
 daughter was still upon her rock, the second 
 mate of an American vessel, which had taken 
 refuge in the fjord, came out and made friends 
 with her father and herself. This was a wild 
 man, a Quain from the Arctic Regions, with 
 a strange and violent personality, which at 
 once exercised an overwhelming influence over 
 Ellida. All this man's life had been spent at 
 sea ; of the sea, and of its beasts and birds, 
 was all his talk ; with his close-curling hair, 
 rich blood, and colour-changing eyes, he grew 
 to seem to Ellida no mortal man, but the 
 incarnation of the sea itself. They became 
 betrothed, but he murdered the captain of
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 13 
 
 his ship in justice slew him, according to his 
 own account and after a weird half-ceremony 
 of marriage on the solitary rock, flying from 
 the law, he left her. She has seen him no 
 more, for the attraction which he exercised 
 was a personal and direct one, and began to 
 fade immediately that she ceased to be in 
 his presence. Affection for him she had 
 never had, only the resignation to a strange 
 will, the subjection to a physical nature 
 extremely sympathetic to her the surrender 
 to a visible embodiment of her irresistible 
 master and possessor, the Ocean. 
 
 The powers of light and darkness which 
 contend for the spirit and body of Ellida are, 
 on the one hand, her husband, gentle, con- 
 scientious, tender, and a little weak, and on 
 the other, the Strange Man, with his impera- 
 tive instincts, his absence of moral purpose, 
 his determined physical attraction. The 
 Strange Man is autochthonous : he seems to 
 have sprung without recent parentage from 
 earth itself, or rather, from ocean ; he appears 
 on the stage as one fresh from u loud wastes 
 of the thunder-throated sea." It will be seen 
 that in the creation of this strange figure,
 
 14 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 Ibsen, as all realists do sooner or later, slips 
 back into the old romantic manner. The 
 fact is that his imagination has proved stronger 
 than his theory, and he is great enough to 
 refuse to be the captive, even of himself. 
 
 A more important criticism will doubtless 
 occur to the reader of the play, namely, that the 
 scene in the third act, where Ellida, Wangel, 
 and the Strange Man are brought together, 
 too closely resembles that in which they meet 
 again in the fifth act. What seems inadequate 
 to us when we read Ibsen's plays is so often 
 justified when we see them acted, that I 
 should not mention this if it had not been 
 noted by one of the poet's staunchest admirers, 
 Mr. Alfred Sinding-Larsen, who called atten- 
 tion to it as a blemish in the article he wrote 
 in the Norwegian Morgenbladet, on occasion of 
 the first performance of the play in Christiania. 
 
 The outcome of the struggle between these 
 angels of darkness and of light is the central 
 interest in "The Lady from the Sea." The 
 reader must study closely the curious and fas- 
 cinating conclusion of the" play. It is highly 
 characteristic of Ibsen, whose object is not, as 
 some of his English admirers have too rapidly
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 15 
 
 concluded, to preach this or the other foible in 
 social or philanthropic morals, but to illustrate 
 the result of liberating the individuality of a 
 person whose will is led captive by conven- 
 tion. In the case of Ellida, it will hardly be 
 advanced that any sermon is preached in the 
 course of the singular struggle which goes on 
 for her between her husband and the stranger. 
 First and foremost, Ibsen is studying the 
 effect of certain modes of procedure on the 
 nervous system of an individual under pecu- 
 liar psychical conditions. Secondly, he is 
 investigating the result of cutting away all 
 the bonds which restrain the action of a 
 woman in modern society. The world, with 
 one voice, has decided that to sever these 
 bonds is to destroy married life. Ibsen says : 
 Let us try, and let us try in a case where 
 all seems to point to disaffection and the 
 instant ruin of the matrimonial structure. 
 We try, not upon a type, but on the solitary 
 case of Ellida, and the result on this neu- 
 rotic subject is that liberty brings health, and 
 health brings love, gratitude, and duty in its 
 train. 
 
 It is an obvious criticism to say that the
 
 1 6 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 
 
 experiment was, in the highest degree, a 
 perilous one ; that Ellida might have been a 
 little more under the Strange Man's influence 
 than she was, and that, in that case, she 
 would have flown to him from the moment 
 when her husband left her free to act. The 
 reply is, as it should be in the case of the 
 final scene of the " Doll's House," that Ibsen is 
 not dealing with an order of manners, but 
 with an isolated moral case ; that he knew 
 that Ellida would choose to stay with her 
 husband, as he knew that Nora would slam 
 the front door behind her. Given his know- 
 ledge of what actuates his creations, he takes 
 the liberty of leading us up, step by step, to 
 the crises of their lives. When his disciples 
 insist that he is preaching them a sermon, he 
 is really working out a problem, and watching 
 the evolution of an experiment in character. 
 At the same time it would be going too far to 
 attempt to deny that, in " The Lady from the 
 Sea," as in his earlier creations, Ibsen is occu- 
 pied with didactic ideas. His individual cases 
 are interesting to him, as throwing light on the 
 puzzling enigma of marriage, and on the pos- 
 sibility of its outlasting the coming revolution
 
 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 17 
 
 in social ideas : and, in his portrait of Ellida 
 as so often before, in his Dora and his 
 Rebekka and his Fru Alving Ibsen shows 
 himself to us as the poet who, more than any 
 other of recent times, has endeavoured to cast 
 behind him the mere traditional estimate of 
 woman's individual capacity. In the Middle 
 Ages, women were looked upon as the tempta- 
 tation and scourge of men. In later and more 
 sentimental times, they have been regarded as 
 the guardian-angels of the wandering male. 
 The latest didacticism has used them as de- 
 coys, as sign-posts, as sleuth-hounds in the 
 cause of virtue, but always in relation to man 
 and his importance. Ibsen is the first great 
 writer who has amused himself by seriously 
 speculating what future woman may have, if 
 she shapes her life wholly without relation to 
 the prerogatives of the other sex. 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE.
 
 Persons of the Drama. 
 
 DOCTOR WANGEL. 
 
 ELLIDA WANGEL, his second wife. 
 
 BOLETTE, I his daughters by his first 
 
 HILDE (not yet grown up) J wife. 
 
 ARNHOLM (second master at a college). 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. 
 
 BALLESTED. 
 
 A STRANGER. 
 
 YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE TOWN. 
 
 TOURISTS. 
 
 VISITORS. 
 
 SCENE. Summer-time at a small fjord town, Northern 
 Norway.
 
 Act I. 
 
 * 
 
 DOCTOR WANGEL'S house, with a large verandah, L. 
 Garden in front of and around the house. Under the 
 verandah a flagstaff. In the garden (R. ) an arbour, 
 with table and chairs. Hedge, with small gate at the 
 back. Beyond a road along the seashore. An avenue 
 of trees along the road. Between the trees are seen 
 the fjord, high mountain ranges and peaks. A warm 
 and brilliantly clear summer morning. 
 
 BALLESTED, middle-aged, wearing an old velvet jacket, 
 and a broad-brimmed artist's hat, stands under the 
 flagstaff, arranging the ropes. The flag is lying on 
 the ground. A little way from him an easel, with an 
 outspread canvas. By the easel on a camp stool, 
 brushes, a palette, and box of colours. 
 
 BOLETTE WANGEL comes from the room opening on the 
 verandah. She carries a large vase with flowers, 
 which she puts down on the table. 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, Ballested, does it work 
 smoothly ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Certainly, Miss Bolette, that's 
 easy enough. May I ask do you expect any 
 visitors to-day ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, we're expecting Mr. Arn- 
 holm this morning. He got to town in the 
 night.
 
 22 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 BALLESTED. Arnholm ? Wait a minute 
 wasn't Arnholm the man who was tutor here 
 several years ago ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, it is he. 
 
 BALLESTED. Oh, really ! Is he coming 
 into these parts again ? 
 
 BOLETTE. That's why we want to have 
 the flag up. 
 
 BALLESTED. Well, that's reasonable enough. 
 
 [BOLETTE goes into the room again. A 
 little after LYNGSTRAND enters from the 
 road R., and stands still, interested by 
 the easel and painting gear. He is a 
 slender youth, poorly but carefully 
 dressed, and looks delicate.'} 
 
 LYNGSTRAND [on the other side of the hedgc~\. 
 Good morning. 
 
 BALLESTED (turning round]. Hallo ! Good 
 morning. (Hoists up flag.} That's it ! Up 
 goes the balloon. (Fastens the ropes, and then 
 busies himself about the easel.} Good morn- 
 ing, my dear sir. I really don't think I've the 
 pleasure of 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I'm sure you're a painter.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 23 
 
 BALLESTED. Of course, I am. Why shouldn't 
 I be? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I can see you are. May 
 I take the liberty of coming in a moment ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Would you like to come in 
 and see ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I should like to immensely. 
 
 BALLESTED. Oh ! there's nothing much to 
 see yet. But come in. Come a little closer. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Many thanks. (Comes in 
 through the garden gate.) 
 
 BALLESTED (painting). It's the fjord there 
 between the islands I'm working at. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. So I see. 
 
 BALLESTED. But the figure is still wanting. 
 There's not a model to be got in this town. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Is there to be a figure, too ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Yes. Here by the rocks in the 
 foreground a mermaid is to lie, half-dead. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Why is she to be half-dead ? 
 
 BALLESTED. She has wandered hither from 
 the sea, and can't find her way out again. 
 And so, you see, she lies there dying in the 
 brackish water. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Ah, I see. 
 
 BALI.ESTED. The mistress of this house
 
 24. THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 put it into my head to do something of the 
 kind. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. What shall you call the 
 picture when it's finished ? 
 
 BALLESTED. I think of calling it " The 
 Mermaid's End." 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. That's capital ! You're sure 
 to make something fine of it. 
 
 BALLESTED (looking at him). In the pro- 
 fession too, perhaps ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Do you mean a painter ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Yes. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, I'm not that ; but I'm 
 going to be a sculptor. My name is Hans 
 Lyngstrand. 
 
 BALLESTED. So you're to be a sculptor ? 
 Yes, yes ; the art of sculpture is a nice, pretty 
 art in its way. I fancy I've seen you in the 
 street once or twice. Have you been staying 
 here long ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No ; I've only been here a 
 fortnight. But I shall try to stop till the end 
 of the summer. 
 
 BALLESTED. For the bathing ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I wanted to see if I 
 could get a little stronger.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 25 
 
 BALLESTED. Not delicate, surely ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, perhaps I am a little 
 delicate ; but it's nothing dangerous. Just a 
 little tightness on the chest. 
 
 BALLESTED. Tush! a bagatelle! You 
 should consult a good doctor. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I thought of speaking 
 to Dr. Wangel one of these times. 
 
 BALLESTED. You should. (Looks out L.) 
 There's another steamer, crowded with pas- 
 sengers. It's really marvellous how travelling 
 has increased here of late years. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, there's a good deal of 
 traffic here, I think. 
 
 BALLESTED. And lots of summer visitors 
 come here too. I often fear our good town 
 will lose its individuality with all these foreign 
 goings on. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Were you born in the town ? 
 
 BALLESTED. No ; but I have accla accli- 
 matised myself. I feel united to the place by 
 the bonds of time and habit. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Then you've lived here a 
 long time ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Well about seventeen or 
 
 eighteen years. I came here with Skive's 
 
 B
 
 z 6 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 Dramatic Company. But then we got into 
 difficulties, and so the company broke up and 
 dispersed in all directions. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But you yourself remained 
 here ? 
 
 BALLESTED. I remained, and I've done 
 very well. I was then working chiefly as 
 decorative artist, don't you know. 
 
 [BOLETTE comes out with a rocking-chair, 
 which she places on the verandah."} 
 
 BOLETTE (speaking into the room). Hilde, 
 see if you can find the embroidered footstool 
 for father. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (going up to the verandah^ bows}. 
 Good-morning, Miss Wangel. 
 
 BOLETTE (by the balustrade). What ! Is it 
 you, Mr. Lyngstrand ? Good-morning. Ex- 
 cuse me one moment, I'm only (goes into 
 room). 
 
 BALLESTED. Do you know the family ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not well. I've only met 
 the young ladies now and again in company ; 
 and I had a chat with Mrs. Wangel the last 
 time we had music up at the " View." She 
 said I might come and see them.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 27 
 
 BALLESTED. Now, do you know, you ought 
 to cultivate their acquaintance. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I'd been thinking of 
 paying a visit. Just a sort of call. If only I 
 could find some excuse 
 
 BALLESTED. Excuse ! Nonsense ! (looking 
 out L.). Damn it ! (gathering- his things) the 
 steamer's by the pier already. I must get off 
 to the hotel. Perhaps some of the new arrivals 
 may want me. For I'm a hairdresser, too, 
 don't you know. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. You are certainly very many- 
 sided, sir. 
 
 BALLESTED. In small towns one has to try 
 to acclam acc/z'matise oneself in various 
 branches. If you should require anything in 
 the hair line a little pomatum or such like 
 you've only to ask for Dancing-master 
 Ballested. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Dancing-master ! 
 
 BALLESTED. President of the " Wind Band 
 Society," by your leave. We've a concert on 
 this evening up at the "View." Good-bye, 
 good-bye ! 
 
 \_He goes out with his painting gear
 
 28 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 through the garden gate, and off L. 
 HILDE comes out with the footstool. 
 BOLETTE brings more flowers. LYNG- 
 STRAND bows to HILDE from the garden 
 below.~] 
 
 HILDE (by the balustrade, not returning his 
 bow}. Bolette said you had ventured in to- 
 day. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I took the liberty of 
 coming in for a moment. 
 
 HILDE. Have you been out for a morning 
 walk ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh, no ! nothing came of the 
 walk this morning. 
 
 HILDE. Have you been bathing, then ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I've been in the water 
 a little while. I saw your mother down there. 
 She was going into her bathing-machine. 
 
 HILDE. Who was ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Your mother. 
 
 HILDE. Oh ! I see. (She puts the stool in 
 front of the rocking-chair.} 
 
 BOLETTE (interrupting}. Didn't you see 
 anything of father's boat out on the fjord ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I thought I saw a 
 sailing-boat that was steering inland.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 29 
 
 BOLETTE. I'm sure that was father. He's 
 been to visit patients on the islands. (She is 
 arranging things on the table.} 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (taking a step up the stairs to 
 the verandah}. Why, how everything 's deco- 
 rated here with flowers ! 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; doesn't it look nice ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. It looks lovely ! It looks as 
 if it were some festival day in the house. 
 
 HILDE. That's exactly what it is. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I might have guessed it ! 
 I'm sure it's your father's birthday. 
 
 BOLETTE (warningly to HILDE). H'm h'm ! 
 
 HILDE (taking no notice of her). No, mother's. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! your mother's ! 
 
 BOLETTE (in low voice, angrily). Really, 
 Hilde ! 
 
 HILDE (the sams). Let me be ! (To LYNG- 
 STRAND) I suppose you're going home to 
 breakfast now ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (going down steps}. Yes, I 
 suppose I must go and get something to eat. 
 
 HILDE. I'm sure you find the living very 
 good at the hotel ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I'm not staying at the hotel 
 now. It was too expensive for me.
 
 3o THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 HILDE. Where are you staying, then ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I'm staying up at Mrs. 
 Jensen's. 
 
 HILDE. What Mrs. Jensen's ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. The midwife. 
 
 HILDE. Excuse me, Mr. Lyngstrand, but 
 I really have other matters to attend to 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! I'm sure I ought not 
 to have said that. 
 
 HILDE. Said what ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. What I said. 
 
 HILDE (looking contemptuously at him}. I 
 don't understand you in the least. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, no. But I must say 
 good-bye for the present. 
 
 BOLETTE (comes forward to the steps). 
 Good-bye, good-bye, Mr. Lyngstrand. You 
 must excuse us now. But another day 
 when you've plenty of time and inclination 
 you really must come in and see father and 
 the rest of us. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; thanks, very much. I 
 shall be delighted. 
 
 \_Bows, and goes out through the garden 
 gate. As he goes along the road L., he 
 bows again towards the verandah .]
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 31 
 
 HILDE (in low voice}. Adieu, Monsieur ! 
 Please remember me to Mother Jensen. 
 
 BOLETTE (in a low voice, shaking her ami). 
 Hilde ! You naughty child ! Are you quite 
 crazy ? He might have heard you. 
 
 HILDE. Pshaw ! Do you think I care about 
 that ? 
 
 BOLETTE (looking out R.). Here's father ! 
 
 [WANGEL, in travelling dress, and carry- 
 ing a small bag, comes from the foot- 
 path R.] 
 
 WANGEL. See ! I'm back again, little girls ! 
 \_He enters through the garden gate."} 
 
 BOLETTE (going towards him at the bottom 
 of the garden]. Oh ! It is delightful that 
 you've come ! 
 
 HILDE (also going up to him}. Now have 
 you got off for the whole day, father ? 
 
 WANGEL. Oh ! no. I must go down to the 
 office for a little while presently, I say do 
 you know if Arnholm has come ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; he arrived in the night. 
 We sent to the hotel to enquire. 
 
 WANGEL. Then you've not seen him yet ?
 
 32 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 BOLETTE. No ; but he's sure to come here 
 this morning. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes ; he's sure to do that. 
 
 HILDE (pulling him). Father, now you 
 must look round. 
 
 WANGEL (looking towards the verandah). 
 Yes, I see well enough, child. It's quite 
 festive. 
 
 BOLETTE. Now, don't you think we've 
 arranged it nicely ? 
 
 WANGEL. I must say you have. Are are 
 we alone at home now ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes ; she's gone to 
 
 BOLETTE (interrupting quickly). Mother has 
 gone to bathe. 
 
 WANGEL (looks lovingly at Bolette, and pats 
 her head. Then he says, hesitating^) Look 
 here, little ones. Do you want to keep this 
 up all day ? And the flag hoisted, too ? 
 
 HILDE. Surely you understand that, 
 father ! 
 
 WANGEL. H'm ! Yes ; but you see 
 
 BOLETTE (looks at him and nods). Surely 
 you can understand we've been doing all this 
 in honour of Mr. Arnholm. When such a good 
 friend comes to see you for the first time
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 33 
 
 HILDE (smiling, and shaking him). Think ! 
 he who used to be Bolette's tutor, father ! 
 
 WANGEL (with a half smile]. You're a pair 
 of sly minxes. Well good heavens after 
 all, it's but natural we should remember her 
 who is no more with us. Here, Hilde (gives 
 her his bag), take that down to the office. No, 
 children. I don't like this the way, I mean. 
 This habit of every year well what can one 
 say ? I suppose it can't be managed any other 
 other way. 
 
 HILDE (about to go out of garden, and, with 
 the bag, stops short, turns, and points out). 
 Look at that gentleman coming up here. I'm 
 sure it's your tutor. 
 
 BOLETTE (looks in that direction). He ? 
 (laughs}. That is good ! Do you think that 
 middle-aged fellow is Arnholm ? 
 
 WANGEL. Wait a moment, child. Why, 
 by Jove, I do believe it is he. Yes, it cer- 
 tainly is. 
 
 BOLETTE (staring at him in quiet amaze- 
 ment). Yes ; I almost think 
 
 [ARNHOLM, in elegant morning dress, with 
 gold spectacles, and a thin cane, comes 
 along the road L. He looks over-worked.
 
 34 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 He looks in at the garden, bows in 
 friendly fashion, and enters by the gar- 
 den gate. 
 
 WANGEL (going to meet him). Welcome, 
 dear Arnholm ! Heartily welcome back to 
 your old quarters again ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Thanks, thanks, Dr. Wangel. 
 A thousand thanks. 
 
 \_They shake hands, and walk up the 
 
 garden together^ 
 
 And there are the children ! (Holds out his 
 hands and looks at ihem.} I should hardly have 
 known these two again. 
 
 WANGEL. No, I believe you. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And yet perhaps Bolette yes, 
 I should have known Bolette again. 
 
 WANGEL. Hardly, I think. Why, it is 
 eight nine years since you saw her. Ah, 
 yes ! Many a thing has changed here mean- 
 while. 
 
 ARNHOLM (looking round). I really don't see 
 it ; except that the trees have grown remark- 
 ably, and that you've set up that arbour. 
 
 WANGEL. Oh ! no outwardly. 
 
 ARNHOLM (smiling). And then, of course, 
 you've two grown-up daughters here now.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 35 
 
 WANGEL. Grown up ! Well, there's only 
 one grown up. 
 
 HILDE (aside). Just listen to father ! 
 
 WANGEL. But now let's sit down up there 
 on the verandah. It's cooler than here. Won't 
 you ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Thanks, thanks, dear doctor. 
 \They go up. WANGEL motions him to 
 the rocking chair. ,] 
 
 WANGEL. That's right ! Now make your- 
 self comfortable, and rest, for you seem rather 
 tired after your journey. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Oh, that's nothing. Here, amid 
 these surroundings 
 
 BOLETTE (to WANGEL). Hadn't we better 
 have some soda and syrup in the sitting-room ? 
 It's sure to be too hot out here soon. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, girls. Let's have some soda 
 and syrup, and perhaps a drop of cognac, too. 
 
 BOLETTE. Cognac, too ! 
 
 WANGEL. Just a little, in case anyone should 
 like some. 
 
 BOLETTE. All right. Hilde, go down to 
 the office with the bag. 
 
 [BOLETTE goes into the room, and closes 
 the door after her. HILDE takes the
 
 36 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 bag, and goes through the garden to the 
 back of the house, L.] 
 
 ARNHOLM (who has followed Bolette with his 
 
 eyes]. What a splendid . They are both 
 
 splendid girls, who've grown up here for you. 
 
 WANG-EL (sitting down). Yes ; you think so, 
 too? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Why, it's simply amazing, how 
 Bolette ! and Hilde, too ! But now, you 
 yourself, dear doctor. Do you think of stay- 
 ing here all your life ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes ; I suppose so. Why, I've 
 been born and bred here, so to say. I lived 
 here so very happily with her who left us 
 so early she whom you knew when you were 
 here before, Arnholm. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes, yes ! 
 
 WANGEL. And now I live here so happily 
 with her who has taken her place. Ah ! On 
 the whole, fate has been very good to me. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You have no children by your 
 second marriage ? 
 
 WANGEL. We had a little boy, two two 
 and a half years ago. But he didn't stay long. 
 He died when he was four five months old. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Isn't your wife at home to-day ?
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 37 
 
 WANGEL. Oh, yes. She's sure to be here 
 soon. She's down there bathing. She does 
 so every blessed day, no matter what the 
 weather. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is she ill, then ? 
 
 WANGEL. Not exactly ill, although she has 
 been extremely nervous for the last few years 
 that is to say, she is now and then. I can't 
 make out what really ails her. But to plunge 
 into the sea is her joy and delight. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes ; I remember that of old. 
 
 WANGEL (with an almost imperceptible 
 smile}. To be sure ! You knew Ellida 
 when you were teacher out there at Skjold- 
 viken. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Certainly. She used often to 
 visit at the Parsonage. But I mostly met her 
 when I went to the lighthouse to see her 
 father. 
 
 WANGEL. Those times out there, you may 
 believe me, have set deep marks upon her. 
 The people in the town here can't understand 
 her at all. They call her the " Lady from 
 the Sea." 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do they ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. And so now, you see,
 
 38 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 speak to her of the old days, dear Arnholm. 
 It will do her good. 
 
 ARNHOLM (looks at him in doubt}. Have you 
 any reason for thinking so ? 
 
 WANGEL. Assuredly I have. 
 
 ELLIDA (her voice is heard outside the gar- 
 den, R.). Are you there, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL (rising). Yes, dear. 
 
 [MRS. ELLIDA WANGEL, in a large, light 
 wrap, and with wet hair hanging loose 
 over her shoulders, comes from between 
 the trees of the arbour. ARNHOLM 
 rises."} 
 
 WANGEL (smiling, and holding out his 
 hands to her}. Ah ! So now we have our 
 Mermaid ! 
 
 ELLIDA (goes quickly up the verandah, and 
 seizes his hands}. Thank God that I see you 
 again ! When did you come ? 
 
 WANGEL. Just now ; a little while since. 
 (Pointing to ARNHOLM) But won't you greet 
 an old acquaintance ? 
 
 ELLIDA (holding out her hand to ARNHOLM). 
 So here you are ! Welcome ! And forgive 
 me for not being at home
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 39 
 
 ARNHOLM. Don't mention it don't stand 
 on any ceremony. 
 
 WANGEL. Was the water nice and fresh 
 to-day ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Fresh ! Oh ! The water here 
 never is fresh. It is so tepid and lifeless. 
 Ugh ! The water in the fjord here is sick. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Sick ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, sick. And I believe it makes 
 one sick, too. 
 
 WANGEL (smiling). You're giving our 
 bathing resort a good name ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. I should rather believe, Mrs. 
 Wangel, that you have a peculiar relation to 
 the sea, and to all that belongs to it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Perhaps ; I almost think so my- 
 self. But do you see how festively the girls 
 have arranged everything in your honour ? 
 
 WANGEL (embarrassed}. H'm (looks at his 
 watch}. Well, I suppose I must be quick 
 and 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is it really for me ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. You may be sure we don't 
 decorate like this every day. Ugh ! How 
 suffocatingly hot it is under this roof (goes 
 down into garden}. Come over here. Here
 
 40 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 at least there is a little air (sz'fs down in 
 arbour]. 
 
 ARNHOLM (going thither}. I think the air 
 quite fresh here. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, you who are used to the 
 stifling air of the town ! It's terrible there in 
 the summer, I hear. 
 
 WANGEL (who has also gone into the gar den}. 
 H'm, dear Ellida, you must just entertain 
 our friend alone for a little while. 
 
 ELLIDA. Are you busy ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, I must go down to the 
 office. And then I must change. But I won't 
 be long. 
 
 ARNHOLM (sitting down in arbour). Now, 
 don't hurry, dear doctor. Your wife and I 
 will manage to kill the time. 
 
 WANGEL (nodding). Oh, yes ! I'm sure you 
 will. Well, good-bye for the present. (He 
 goes out through the garden.} 
 
 ELLIDA (after a short pause). Don't you 
 think it's pleasant sitting out here ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I think I've a pleasant seat now. 
 
 ELLIDA. They call this my arbour, because 
 I had it fitted up, or rather Wangel did 
 for me.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 41 
 
 ARNHOLM. And you usually sit here ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, I pass most of the day here. 
 
 ARNHOLM. With the girls, I suppose ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, the girls usually sit on the 
 verandah. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And Wangel himself ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! Wangel goes to and fro 
 now he comes to me, and then he goes to his 
 children. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And is it you who wish this ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I think all parties feel most com- 
 fortable in this way. You know we can talk 
 across to one another if we happen to find 
 there is anything to say. 
 
 ARNHOLM (after thinking awhile]. When I 
 last crossed your path out at Skjoldviken, I 
 mean H'm ! That is long ago now. 
 
 ELLIDA. It's quite ten years since you were 
 there with us. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes, about that. But when I 
 think of you out there in the lighthouse ! The 
 heathen, as the old clergyman called you, be- 
 cause your father had named you, as he said, 
 after an old ship, and hadn't given you a 
 name fit for a Christian. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, what then ?
 
 42 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 ARNHOLM. The last thing I should then 
 have believed was that I should see you again 
 down here as the wife of Wangel. 
 
 ELLIDA. No ; at that time Wangel wasn't 
 at that time the girls' first mother was still 
 living. Their real mother, so 
 
 ARNHOLM. Of course, of course ! But even 
 if that had not been even if he had been 
 free still, I could never have believed this 
 would come about. 
 
 ELLIDA. Nor I. Never on earth then. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Wangel is such a good fellow. 
 So honourable. So thoroughly good and kind 
 to all men. 
 
 ELLIDA (warmly and heartily). Yes, he is 
 indeed. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But he must be so absolutely 
 different from you, I fancy. 
 
 ELLIDA. You are right there. So he is. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, but how did it happen ? 
 How did it come about ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! dear Arnholm, you mustn't 
 ask me about that. I couldn't explain it to 
 you, and even if I could you would never be 
 able to understand, in the least. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm ! (In lower tone) Have
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 43 
 
 you ever confided anything about me to 
 your husband ? Of course, I mean about 
 the useless step I allowed myself to be 
 moved to. 
 
 ELLIDA. No. You may be sure of that. 
 I've not said a word to him about about 
 what you speak of. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I am glad. I felt rather awk- 
 ward at the thought that 
 
 ELLIDA. There was no need. I have only 
 told him what is true that I liked you very 
 much, and that you were the truest and best 
 friend I had out there. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Thanks for that. But tell me 
 why did you never write to me after I had 
 gone away ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I thought that perhaps it would 
 pain you to hear from one who who could 
 not respond as you desired. It seemed like 
 re-opening a painful subject. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm. Yes, yes, perhaps you 
 were right. 
 
 ELLIDA. But why didn't you write ? 
 ARNHOLM (looks at her and smiles, half re- 
 proachfully). I make the first advance? 
 Perhaps expose myself to the suspicion of
 
 44 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr 1. 
 
 wanting to begin all over again ? After such 
 a repulse as I had had ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh no ! I understand very well. 
 Have you never since thought of forming any 
 other tie ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Never ! I have been faithful to 
 my first memories. 
 
 ELLIDA (half jestingly). Nonsense! Let 
 the sad old memories alone. You'd better 
 think of becoming a happy husband, I should 
 say. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I should have to be quick about 
 it, then, Mrs. Wangel. Remember, I'm 
 already I'm ashamed to say I'm past thirty- 
 seven. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, all the more reason for 
 being quick. (She is silent for a moment, and 
 then says, earnestly, in a low voice) But 
 listen, dear Arnholm ; now I am going to tell 
 you something that I could not have told you 
 then, to save my life. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What is it ? 
 
 ELLIDA. When you took the the useless 
 step you were just speaking of I could not 
 answer you otherwise than I did. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I know that you had nothing
 
 ACT I. THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 45 
 
 but friendship to give me ; I know that well 
 enough. 
 
 ELLIDA. But you did not know that all my 
 mind and soul were then given elsewhere. 
 
 ARNHOLM. At that time ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But it is impossible. You are 
 mistaken about the time. I hardly think you 
 knew Wangel then. 
 
 ELLIDA. It is not Wangel of whom I speak- 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not Wangel ? But at that time, 
 out there at Skjoldviken I can't remember a 
 single person whom I can imagine the possi- 
 bility of your caring for. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, I quite believe that ; 
 for it was all such bewildering madness all 
 of it. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But tell me more of this. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! it's enough if you know I 
 was bound then ; and you know it now. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And if you had not been bound ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Well ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Would your answer to my letter 
 have been different ? 
 
 ELLIDA. How can I tell ? When Wangel 
 came the answer was different.
 
 46 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What is your object, then, in 
 telling me that you were bound ? 
 
 ELLIDA (getting u/>, as if in fear and tin- 
 rest}. Because I must have someone in whom 
 to confide. No, no ; sit still. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Then your husband knows 
 nothing about this ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I confessed to him from the first 
 that my thoughts had once been elsewhere. 
 He never asked to know more, and we 
 have never touched upon it since. Besides, 
 at bottom it was simply madness. And then 
 it was over directly that is to a certain 
 extent. 
 
 ARNHOLM (rising). Only to a certain ex- 
 tent ? Not quite ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes, it is ! Oh, good 
 heavens ! Dear Arnholm, it is not what you 
 think. It is something so absolutely incom- 
 prehensible, I don't know how I could tell 
 it you. You would only think I was ill, or 
 quite mad. 
 
 ARNHOLM. My dearest lady ! Now you 
 really must tell me all about it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, then, I'll try to. How will 
 you, as a sensible man, explain to yourself
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 47 
 
 that (looks round, and breaks oft). Wait a 
 moment. Here's a visitor. 
 
 [LYNGSTRAND comes along- the road L., 
 and enters the garden. He has a flower 
 tn his button-hole, and carries a large, 
 handsome bouquet done up in paper and 
 silk ribbons. He stands somewhat hesi- 
 tatingly and undecidedly by the veran- 
 dah.'} 
 
 ELLIDA (from the arbour). Have you come 
 to see the girls, Mr. Lyngstrand ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (turning round}. Ah, madam, 
 are you there ? (bows, and comes nearer). No, 
 it's not that. It's not the young ladies. It's 
 you yourself, Mrs. Wangel. You know you 
 
 gave me permission to come and see you 
 
 ELLIDA. Of course I did. You are always 
 welcome here. 
 LYNGSTRAND. Thanks ; and as it falls out 
 
 so luckily that it's a festival here to-day 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! Do you know about that ? 
 LYNGSTRAND. Rather ! And so I should 
 like to take the liberty of presenting this to 
 Mrs. Wangel (bows, and offers her bouquef). 
 
 ELLIDA (smiling). But my dear Mr. Lyng- 
 strand, oughtn't you to give these lovely
 
 48 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 flowers to Mr. Arnholm himself? For you 
 know it's really he 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (looking uncertainly at both of 
 them}. Excuse me, but I don't know this 
 gentleman. It's only I've only come about 
 the birthday, Mrs. Wangel. 
 
 ELLIDA. Birthday ? You've made a mis- 
 take, Mr. Lyngstrand. There's no birthday 
 here to-day. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (smiling slyly). Oh ! I know 
 all about that ! But I didn't think it was to 
 be kept so dark. 
 
 ELLIDA. What do you know ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. That it is Madame's birth- 
 day. 
 
 ELLIDA. Mine ? 
 
 ARNHOLM (looks questioningly at her). To- 
 day ? Surely not. 
 
 ELLIDA (to Lyngstrand). What ever made 
 you think that ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. It was Miss Hilde who let it 
 out. I just looked in here a little while ago, 
 and I asked the young ladies why they were 
 decorating the place like this, with flowers 
 and flags. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well ?
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 49 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. And so Miss Hilde said, 
 " Why, to-day is mother's birthday." 
 
 ELLIDA. Mother's ! I see. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Aha ! (He and Ellida ex- 
 change a meaning look.} Well, now that the 
 young man knows about it 
 
 ELLIDA (to Lyngstrand). Well, now that 
 you know 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (offering her the bouquet again], 
 May I take the liberty of congratulating you. 
 
 ELLIDA (taking the flowers). My best 
 thanks. Won't you sit down a moment, Mr. 
 Lyngstrand ? (ELLIDA, ARNHOLM, and LYNG- 
 STRAND sit down in the arbour?) This birth- 
 day business was to have been kept secret, 
 Mr. Arnholm. 
 
 ARNHOLM. So I see. It wasn't for us 
 uninitiated folk ! 
 
 ELLIDA (putting down the bouquet}. Just so. 
 Not for the uninitiated. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Ton my word, I won't tell 
 a living soul about it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, it wasn't meant like that. 
 But how are you getting on ? I think you 
 look better than you did. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! I think I'm getting on
 
 50 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 famously. And by next year, if I can go 
 south 
 
 ELLIDA. And you are going south, the girls 
 tell me. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, for I've a benefactor 
 and friend at Bergen, who looks after me, and 
 has promised to help me next year. 
 
 ELLIDA. How did you get such a friend ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, it all happened so very 
 luckily. I once went to sea in one of his ships. 
 
 ELLIDA. Did you ? So you wanted to go 
 to sea ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, not at all. But when 
 mother died, father wouldn't have me knocking 
 about at home any longer, and so he sent me 
 to sea. Then we were wrecked in the English 
 Channel on our way home ; and that was very 
 fortunate for me. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What do you mean ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, for it was in the ship- 
 wreck that I got this little weakness of my 
 chest. I was so long in the ice-cold water 
 before they picked me up ; and so I had to 
 give up the sea. Yes, that was very fortunate. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Indeed ! Do you think so ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, for the weakness isn't
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 51 
 
 dangerous ; and now I can be a sculptor, as I 
 so dearly want to be. Just think ; to model 
 in that delicious clay, that yields so caressingly 
 to your fingers ! 
 
 ELLIDA. And what are you going to model ? 
 Is it to be mermen and mermaids ? Or is it 
 to be old Vikings ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, not that. As soon as 
 I can set about it, I am going to try if I 
 can produce a great work a group, as they 
 call it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; but what's the group 
 to be? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! something I've expe- 
 rienced myself. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes, yes ; always stick to 
 that. 
 
 ELLIDA. But what's it to be ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, I thought it should 
 be the young wife of a sailor, who lies sleeping 
 in strange unrest, and she is dreaming. I 
 fancy I shall do it so that you will see she is 
 dreaming. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is there anything else ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, there's to be another 
 figure a sort of apparition, as they say. It's
 
 52 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 her husband, to whom she has been faithless 
 while he was away, and he is drowned at sea. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Drowned ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, he was drowned on a 
 sea voyage. But that's the wonderful part of 
 it he comes home all the same. It is night- 
 time. And he is standing by her bed looking 
 at her. He is to stand there dripping wet, like 
 one drawn from the sea. 
 
 ELLIDA (leaning back in her chair]. What 
 an extraordinary idea ! (Shutting her eyes) 
 Oh ! I can see it so clearly, living before 
 me ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. But how on earth Mr. Mr. 
 I thought you said it was to be something you 
 had experienced. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes. I did experience that 
 that is to say, to a certain extent. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You saw a dead man ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, I don't mean I've 
 actually seen this experienced it in the 
 flesh. But still 
 
 ELLIDA (quickly, intently). Oh ! tell me 
 all you can about it ! I must understand 
 about all this.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 53 
 
 ARNHOLM (smiling]. Yes, that'll be quite 
 in your line. Something that has to do with 
 sea fancies. 
 
 ELLIDA. What was it, Mr. Lyngstrand ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, it was like this. At 
 the time when we were to sail home in the 
 brig from a town they called Halifax, we had 
 to leave the boatswain behind in the hospital. 
 So we had to engage an American instead. 
 This new boatswain 
 
 ELLIDA. The American ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes. One day he got the 
 captain to lend him a lot of old newspapers 
 and he was always reading them. For he 
 wanted to teach himself Norwegian, he said. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, and then ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. It was one evening in rough 
 weather. All hands were on deck except the 
 boatswain and myself. For he had sprained 
 his foot and couldn't walk, and I was feeling 
 rather low, and was lying in my berth. Well, 
 he was sitting there in the forecastle, reading 
 one of those old papers again. 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, well ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But just as he was sitting 
 there quietly reading, I heard him utter a sort
 
 54 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 of yell. And when I looked at him, I saw his 
 face was as white as chalk. And then he 
 began to crush and crumple the paper, and to 
 tear it into a thousand shreds. But he did it 
 so quietly, quietly. 
 
 ELLIDA. Didn't he say anything ? Didn't 
 he speak ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not directly ; but a little 
 after he said to himself, as it were : " Married 
 to another man. While I was away." 
 
 ELLIDA (closes her eyes, and says, half to 
 herself}. He said that ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes. And think he said it 
 in perfect Norwegian. That man must have 
 learnt foreign languages very easily 
 
 ELLIDA. And what then ? What else hap- 
 pened ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, now the remarkable 
 part is coming that I shall never forget as 
 long as I live. For he added, and that quite 
 quietly, too, " But she is mine, and mine she 
 shall remain. And she shall follow me, if I 
 should come home and fetch her, as a drowned 
 man from the dark sea." 
 
 ELLIDA (pouring herself out a glass of water.
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 55 
 
 Her hand trembles}. Ah ! How close it is here 
 to-day ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. And he said this with such 
 strength of will that I thought he must be the 
 man to do it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Don't you know anything about 
 what became of the man ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! madame he's certainly 
 not living now. 
 
 ELLIDA (quickly). Why do you think that? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Why ? Because we were ship- 
 wrecked afterwards in the Channel. I had 
 got into the long-boat with the captain and 
 five others. The mate got into the stern - 
 boat ; and the American was in that too, and 
 another man. 
 
 ELLIDA. And nothing has been heard of 
 them since ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not a word. The friend 
 who looks after me said so quite recently in a 
 letter. But it's just because of this, I was so 
 anxious to make it into a work of art. I see 
 the faithless sailor- wife so life-like before me, 
 and the avenger who is drowned, and who 
 nevertheless comes home from the sea. I can 
 see them both so distinctly.
 
 56 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 ELLIDA. I, too (rises). Come ; let us go 
 in or, rather, go down to Wangel. I think 
 it is so suffocatingly hot. (She goes out of the 
 arbour). 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (who has also risen}. I, for 
 my part, must ask you to excuse me. This 
 was only to be a short visit because of the 
 birthday. 
 
 ELLIDA. As you wish. (Holds out her 
 hand to him.} Good-bye, and thank you for 
 the flowers. 
 
 [LYNGSTRAND bows, and goes off through 
 the garden gate.~\ 
 
 ARNHOLM (rises, and goes up to ELLIDA). I 
 see well enough that this has gone to your 
 heart, Mrs. Wangel. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; you may well say so. Al- 
 though 
 
 ARNHOLM. But still after all, it's no more 
 than you were bound to expect. 
 
 ELLIDA (looks at him surprised). Expect ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, so it seems to me. 
 
 ELLIDA. Expect that anyone should come 
 back again ! come to life again like that !
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 57 
 
 ARNHOLM. But what on earth ! is it that 
 mad sculptor's sea story, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, dear Arnholm, perhaps it 
 isn't so mad after all ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is it that nonsense about the 
 dead man that has moved you so ? And I 
 who thought that 
 
 ELLIDA. What did you think ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I naturally thought that was 
 only a make-believe of yours. And that you 
 were sitting here grieving because you had 
 found out a family feast was being kept se- 
 cret ; because your husband and his children 
 live a life of remembrances in which you have 
 no part. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! no, no ! That may be as it 
 may. I have no right to claim my husband 
 wholly and solely for myself. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I should say you had. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. Yet, all the same, I have 
 not. That is it. Why, I, too, live in some- 
 thing from which they are shut out. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You ! (In lower tone) Do you 
 mean ? you, you do not really love your 
 husband !
 
 58 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! yes, yes ! I have learnt to 
 love him with all my heart ! And that's why 
 it is so terrible so inexplicable so absolutely 
 inconceivable ! f 
 
 ARNHOLM. Now you must and shall con- 
 fide all your troubles to me. Will you, Mrs. 
 Wan gel ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I cannot, dear friend. Not now, 
 in any case. Later, perhaps. 
 
 [BOLETTE comes out into the verandah, 
 and goes down into the garden.~\ 
 
 BOLETTE. Father's coming up from the 
 office. Hadn't we better all of us go into the 
 sitting-room ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, let us. 
 
 [W ANGEL, in other clothes, comes with 
 HiLDEfrom behind the house L.] 
 
 WANGEL. Now, then, here I am at your 
 service. And now we shall enjoy a good glass 
 of something cool. 
 
 ELLIDA. Wait a moment. (She goes into 
 the arbour and fetches the bouquet) 
 
 HILDE. I say ! All those lovely flowers ! 
 Where did you get them ?
 
 ACT I.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 59 
 
 ELLIDA. From the sculptor, Lyngstrand, 
 my dear Hilde. 
 
 HILDE (starts). From Lyngstrand ? 
 
 BOLETTE (uneasily). Has Lyngstrand been 
 here again ? 
 
 ELLIDA (with a half-smile). Yes. He came 
 here with these. Because of the birthday, 
 you understand. 
 
 BOLETTE (looks at HILDE). Oh ! 
 
 HILDE (mutters). The idiot ! 
 
 WANGEL (in painful confusion to ELLIDA). 
 H'm ! yes, well you see I must tell you, my 
 dear, good, beloved Ellida 
 
 ELLIDA (interrupting). Come, girls ! Let 
 us go and put my flowers in the water 
 together with the others. (Goes up to the 
 verandah!) 
 
 BOLETTE (to HILDE). Oh ! after all she is 
 good at heart. 
 
 HILDE (in a low tone, with angry look}. 
 Fiddlesticks ! She only does it to take in 
 father. 
 
 WANGEL (on the verandah, presses ELLIDA'S 
 hand). Thanks thanks ! My heartfelt 
 thanks for that, dear Ellida.
 
 60 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr I. 
 
 ELLIDA (arranging the flowers]. Nonsense ! 
 Should not I, too, be in it, and take part in 
 in mother's birthday ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm ! 
 
 \_He goes up to WANGEL, and ELLIDA, 
 BOLETTE, and HILDE remain in the 
 garden below. ~]
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 61 
 
 Act II. 
 * 
 
 At the "View," a shrub-covered hill behind the town. 
 A little in the background a beacon and a vane. Great 
 stones arranged as seats around the beacon, and in the 
 foreground. Farther back is seen the outer fjord, with 
 islands and outstanding headlands. The open sea is 
 not visible. It is a summer's evening, r.nd twilight. 
 A golden- red shimmer in the air and over the mountain 
 tops in the far distance. A quartette is faintly heard 
 singing below in the background R. Young townsfolk, 
 ladies and gentlemen, come up in pairs, from the R., 
 and, talking familiarly, pass out beyond the beacon L. 
 A little after BALI.ESTED enters, as guide to a party of 
 foreign tourists with their ladies. He is laden with 
 shawls and travelling bags. 
 
 BALLESTED (pointing upwards with a stick}. 
 Sehen Sie, meine Herrschaften, dort, out 
 there, liegt eine andere mountain. That 
 wollen wir also besteigen, and so herunter. 
 (He goes on with the conversation in French, 
 and leads the party offL. HILDE comes quickly 
 along the up-hill path R., stands still, and looks 
 back. Soon after BOLETTE comes up the same 
 
 BOLETTE. But, dear, why should we run 
 away from Lyngstrand ?
 
 62 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 HILDE. Because I can't bear going up-hill 
 so slowly. Look look at him crawling up ! 
 
 BOLETTE. Ah ! But you know how delicate 
 he is. 
 
 HILDE. Do you think it's very dangerous ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I certainly do. 
 
 HILDE. He went to consult father this 
 afternoon. I should like to know what father 
 thinks about him. 
 
 BOLETTE. Father told me it was a thicken- 
 ing of the lungs, or something of the sort. He 
 won't live to be old, father says. 
 
 HILDE. No ! Did he say it ? Fancy 
 that's exactly what I thought. 
 
 BOLETTE. For heaven's sake don't show it ! 
 
 HILDE. How can you imagine such a thing ? 
 (In undertone) Look, here comes Hans crawling 
 up. Don't you think you can see by the look 
 of him that he's called Hans ? 
 
 BOLETTE (whispering). Now do behave ! 
 You'd better ! 
 
 [LYNGSTRAND comes in from the R., 
 parasol in his hand.~\ 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I must beg the young ladies 
 to excuse me for not getting along as quickly 
 as they did.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 63 
 
 HILDE. Have you got a parasol too, now ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. It's your mother's. She said 
 I was to use it as a stick. I hadn't mine with 
 me. 
 
 BOLETTE. Are they down there still 
 father and the others ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; your father looked in 
 at the restaurant for a moment, and the others 
 are sitting out there listening to the music. 
 But they were coming up here presently, your 
 mother said. 
 
 HILDE (stands looking at him). I suppose 
 you're thoroughly tired out now ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I almost think I'm a 
 little tired now. I really believe I shall have 
 to sit down a moment. 
 
 \_He sits on one of the stones in the fore- 
 ground R.] 
 
 HILDE (standing in front of him). Do you 
 know there's to be dancing down there on the 
 parade ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I heard there was some 
 talk about it. 
 
 HILDE. I suppose you think dancing's great 
 fun? 
 
 BOLETTE (who begins gathering small
 
 64 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 flowers among the heather]. Oh, Hilde ! Now 
 do let Mr. Lyngstrand get his breath. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (to HILDE). Yes, Miss Hilde ; 
 I should very much like to dance if only I 
 could. 
 
 HILDE. Oh, I see ! Haven't you ever 
 learnt ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, I've not. But it wasn't 
 that I meant. I meant I couldn't because of 
 my chest. 
 
 HILDE. Because of that weakness you said 
 you suffered from ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; because of that. 
 
 HILDE. Aren't you very sorry you've that 
 weakness ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh, no ! I can't say I am 
 (smiling), for I think it's because of it that 
 everyone is so good, and friendly, and kind 
 to me. 
 
 HILDE. Yes. And then, besides, it's not 
 dangerous. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No ; it's not at all dan- 
 gerous. So I gathered from what your father 
 said to me. 
 
 HILDE. And then it will pass away as soon 
 as ever you begin travelling.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 65 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Of course it will pass away. 
 
 BOLETTE (with flowers). Look here, Mr. 
 Lyngstrand, you are to put this in your 
 button-hole. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! A thousand thanks, 
 Miss Wangel. It's really too good of you. 
 
 HILDE (looking down path R.). There they 
 are, coming along the road. 
 
 BOLETTE (also looking down}. If only they 
 know where to turn off. No ; now they're 
 going wrong. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (rising). I'll run down to the 
 turning and call out to them. 
 
 HILDE. You'll have to call out pretty loud. 
 
 BOLETTE. No ; it's not worth while. You'll 
 only tire yourself again. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh, it's so easy going down 
 hill. (Goes O/R.) 
 
 HILDE. Down hill yes (loo king after him). 
 Why, he's actually jumping ! And he never 
 remembers he'll have to come up again. 
 
 BOLETTE. Poor fellow ! 
 
 HILDE. If Lyngstrand were to propose, 
 would you accept him ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Are you quite mad ? 
 
 HILDE. Of course, I mean if he weren't
 
 66 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acx II. 
 
 troubled with that "weakness." And if he 
 weren't to die so soon, would you have him 
 then ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I think you'd better have him 
 yourself ! 
 
 HILDE. No, that I wouldn't ! Why, he 
 hasn't a farthing. He hasn't enough even to 
 keep himself. 
 
 BOLETTE. Then why are you always going 
 about with him ? 
 
 HILDE. Oh, I only do that because of the 
 weakness. 
 
 BOLETTE. I've never noticed that you in 
 the least pity him for it ! 
 
 HILDE. No, I don't. But I think it so 
 interesting. 
 
 BOLETTE. What is ? 
 
 HILDE. To look at him and make him tell 
 you it isn't dangerous ; and that he's going 
 abroad, and is to be an artist. He really 
 believes it all, and is so thoroughly happy 
 about it. And yet nothing will ever come 
 of it ; nothing whatever. For he won't live' 
 long enough. I feel that's so fascinating to 
 think of. 
 
 BOLETTE. Fascinating !
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 67 
 
 HILDE. Yes, I think it's most fascinating. 
 I take that liberty. 
 
 BOLETTE. Hilde, you really are a dreadful 
 child ! 
 
 HILDE. That's just what I want to be 
 out of spite. (Looking down?) At last ! I 
 shouldn't think Arnholm liked coming up 
 hill. (Turns round.) By the way, do you 
 know what I noticed about Arnholm at dinner ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Well ? 
 
 HILDE. Just think his hair's beginning 
 to come off right on the top of his head. 
 
 BOLETTE. Nonsense ! I'm sure that's not 
 true. 
 
 HILDE. It is ! And then he has wrinkles 
 round both his eyes. Good gracious, Bolette, 
 how could you be so much in love with him 
 when he used to read with you ? 
 
 BOLETTE (smiling). Yes. Can you believe 
 it ? I remember I once shed bitter tears be- 
 cause he thought Bolette was an ugly name. 
 
 HILDE. Only to think ! (Looking down.) 
 No ! I say, do just look down here ! There's 
 the " Mermaid " walking along and chatting 
 with him. Not with father. I wonder if 
 those two aren't making eyes at one another.
 
 68 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 BOLETTE. You ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself ! How can you stand there and say 
 such a thing of her ? Now, when every- 
 thing was beginning to be so pleasant be- 
 tween us. 
 
 HILDE. Of course just try and persuade 
 yourself of that, my child ! Oh, no ! It will 
 never be pleasant between us and her. For 
 she doesn't belong to us at all. And we don't 
 belong to her either. Goodness knows what 
 father dragged her into the house for ! I 
 shouldn't wonder if some fine day she went 
 mad under our very eyes. 
 
 BOLETTE. Mad ! How can you think such 
 a thing ? 
 
 HILDE. Oh ! it wouldn't be so extra- 
 ordinary. Her mother went mad, too. She 
 died mad I know that. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, heaven only knows what 
 you don't poke your nose into. But now 
 don't go chattering about this. Do be good 
 for father's sake. Do you hear, Hilde ? 
 
 [WANGEL, ELLIDA, ARNHOLM, and LYNG- 
 STRAND come tip from the R.] 
 
 ELLIDA (pointing to background}. Out 
 there it lies.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 69 
 
 ARNHOLM. Quite right. It must be in that 
 direction. 
 
 ELLIDA. Out there is the sea. 
 
 BOLETTE (to ARNHOLM). Don't you think 
 it is delightful up here ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. It's magnificent, I think. Glorious 
 view ! 
 
 WANGEL. I suppose you never used to 
 come up here ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, never. In my time I think 
 it was hardly accessible ; there wasn't any 
 path even. 
 
 WANGEL. And no grounds. All this has 
 been done during the last few years. 
 
 BOLETTE. And there, at the "Pilot's 
 Mount," it's even grander than here. 
 
 WANGEL. Shall we go there, Ellida ? 
 
 ELLIDA (sitting down on one of the stones R.) 
 Thanks, not I ; but you others can. I'll sit 
 here meanwhile. 
 
 WANGEL. Then I'll stay with you. The 
 girls can show Arnholm about. 
 
 BOLETTE. Would you like to go with us, 
 Mr. Arnholm ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I should like to, very much. 
 Does a path lead up there too ?
 
 7O THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh yes. There's a nice broad 
 path. 
 
 HILDE. The path is so broad that two 
 people can walk along it comfortably, arm in 
 arm. 
 
 ARNHOLM (jestingly). Is that really so, little 
 Missie. (To BOLETTE) Shall we two see if she 
 is right ? 
 
 BOLETTE (suppressing a smile). Very well, 
 let's go. (They go out L., arm in arm.} 
 
 HILDE (to LYNGSTRAND). Shall we go too ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Arm in arm ? 
 
 HILDE. Oh, why not ? For aught I care ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (taking her arm, laughing con- 
 tentedly). This is a jolly lark. 
 
 HILDE. Lark ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; because it looks ex- 
 actly as if we were engaged. 
 
 HILDE. I'm sure you've never walked out 
 arm in arm with a lady before, Mr. Lyngstrand. 
 \They go off i..-] 
 
 WANGEL (who is standing beside the beacon}. 
 Dear Ellida, now we have a moment to our- 
 selves. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; come and sit down here, 
 by me.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 71 
 
 WANGEL (sitting down}. It is so free and 
 quiet. Now we can have a little talk to- 
 gether. 
 
 ELLIDA. What about ? 
 
 WANGEL. About yourself, and then about 
 us both. Ellida, I see very well that it can't 
 go on like this. 
 
 ELLIDA. What do you propose instead ? 
 
 WANGEL. Perfect confidence, dear. A true 
 life together as before. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, if that could be ! But it is 
 so absolutely impossible ! 
 
 WANGEL. I think I understand you, from 
 certain things you have let fall now and again. 
 
 ELLIDA (passionately}. Oh, you do not ! 
 Don't say you understand ! 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. Yours is an honest nature, 
 Ellida yours is a faithful mind. 
 
 ELLIDA. It is. 
 
 WANGEL. Any position in which you 
 could feel safe and happy must be a completely 
 true and real one. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking eagerly at him). Well, 
 and then ? 
 
 WANGEL. You are not suited to be a man's 
 second wife.
 
 72 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acx II. 
 
 ELLIDA. What makes you think that ? 
 
 WANGEL. It has often flashed across me 
 like a foreboding. To-day it was clear to me. 
 The children's memorial feast you saw in 
 me a kind of accomplice. Well, yes ; a man's 
 memories, after all, cannot be wiped out not 
 so mine, anyhow. It isn't in me. 
 
 ELLIDA. I know that. Oh ! I know that 
 so well. 
 
 WANGEL. But you are mistaken all the 
 same. To you it is almost as if the children's 
 mother were still living as if she were still 
 here invisible amongst us. You think my 
 heart is equally divided between you and her. 
 It is this thought that shocks you. You see 
 something immoral in our relation, and that 
 is why you no longer can or will live with me 
 as my wife. 
 
 ELLIDA (rising). Have you seen all that, 
 Wangel seen into all this ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes ; to-day I have at last seen 
 to the very heart of it to its utmosts depths. 
 
 ELLIDA. To its very heart, you say ? Oh, 
 do not think that ! 
 
 WANGEL (rising). I see very well that there 
 is more than this, dear Ellida.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 73 
 
 ELLIDA (anxiously). You know there is 
 more? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. You cannot bear your 
 surroundings here. The mountains crush 
 you, and weigh upon your heart. Nothing is 
 open enough for you here. The heavens 
 above you are not spacious enough. The air 
 is not strong and bracing enough. 
 
 ELLIDA. You are right. Night and day, 
 winter and summer, it weighs upon me this 
 irresistible home-sickness for the sea. 
 
 WANGEL. I know it well, dear Ellida 
 (laying his hands upon her head]. And that 
 is why the poor sick child shall go home to 
 to her own again. 
 
 ELLIDA. What do you mean ? 
 
 WANGEL. Something quite simple. We 
 are going away. 
 
 ELLIDA. Going away ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. Somewhere by the open 
 sea a place where you can find a true home, 
 after your own heart. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, dear, do not think of that ! 
 That is quite impossible. You can live happily 
 nowhere on earth but here ! 
 
 WANGEL. That must be as it may. And, 
 
 D
 
 74 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 besides, do you think I can live happily here 
 without you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. But I am here. And I will stay 
 here. You have me. 
 
 WANGEL. Have I, Ellida ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! don't speak of all this. Why, 
 here you have all that you love and strive for. 
 All your life's work lies here. 
 
 WANGEL. That must be as it may, I tell 
 you. We are going away from here are 
 going somewhere out there. That is quite 
 settled now, dear Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. What do you think we should 
 gain by that ? 
 
 WANGEL. You would regain your health 
 and peace of mind. 
 
 ELLIDA. Hardly. And then you, yourself ! 
 Think of yourself, too ! What of you ? 
 
 WANGEL. I would win you back again, my 
 dearest. 
 
 ELLIDA. But you cannot do that ! No, no, 
 you can't do that, Wangel ! That is the ter- 
 rible part of it heart-breaking to think of. 
 
 WANGEL. That remains to be proved. If 
 you are harbouring such thoughts, truly there
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 75 
 
 is no other salvation for you than to go hence. 
 And the sooner the better. Now this is 
 irrevocably settled, do you hear ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No ! Then in heaven's name I 
 had better tell you everything straight out. 
 Everything just as it is. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, yes ! do. 
 
 ELLIDA. For you shall not ruin your hap- 
 piness for my sake, especially as it can't help 
 us in any way. 
 
 WANGEL. I have your word now that you 
 will tell me everything just as it is. 
 
 ELLIDA. I'll tell you everything as well as 
 I can, and as far as I understand it. Come 
 here and sit by me. (They sit down on the 
 stones.) 
 
 WANGEL. Well, Ellida, so 
 
 ELLIDA. That day when you came out 
 there and asked me if I would be yours, you 
 spoke so frankly and honestly to me about 
 your first marriage. It had been so happy, 
 you said. 
 
 WANGEL. And so it was. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes ! I am sure of that, dear ! 
 It is not for that I am referring to it now. I 
 only want to remind you that I, on my side,
 
 76 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 was frank with you. I told you quite openly 
 that once in my life I had cared for another. 
 That there had been a a kind of engagement 
 between us. 
 
 WANGEL. A kind of 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, something of the sort. Well, 
 it only lasted such a very short time. He 
 went away ; and after that I put an end to it. 
 I told you all that. 
 
 WANGEL. Why rake up all this now ? It 
 really didn't concern me ; nor have I once 
 asked you who he was ! 
 
 ELLIDA. No, you have not. You are 
 always so thoughtful for me. 
 
 WANGEL (srm'ling). Oh, in this case I could 
 guess the name well enough for myself. 
 
 ELLIDA. The name ? 
 
 WANGEL. Out in Skjoldviken and there- 
 abouts, there weren't many to choose from ; 
 or, rather, there was only a single one. 
 
 ELLIDA. You believe it was Arnholm ! 
 
 WANGEL. Well, wasn't it ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No ! 
 
 WANGEL. Not he ? Then I don't in the 
 least understand.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 77 
 
 ELLIDA. Can you remember that late in 
 the autumn a large American ship once put 
 into Skjoldviken for repairs ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, I remember it very well. 
 It was on board that ship that the captain was 
 found one morning in his cabin murdered. 
 I myself went out to make the post-mortem. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, it was you. 
 
 WANGEL. It was the second mate who had 
 murdered him. 
 
 ELLIDA. No one can say that. For it was 
 never proved. 
 
 WANGEL. There was enough against him 
 anyhow, or why should he have drowned 
 himself as he did ? 
 
 ELLIDA. He did not drown himself. He 
 sailed in a ship to the north. 
 
 WANGEL (startled). How do you know? 
 
 ELLIDA (with an effort}. Well, Wangel it 
 was this second mate to whom I was 
 betrothed. 
 
 WANGEL (springing up}. What ! Is it pos- 
 sible ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, it is so. It was to him ! 
 
 WANGEL. But how on earth, Ellida ! 
 How did you come to betrothe yourself to
 
 78 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 such a man ? To an absolute stranger ! 
 What is his name ? 
 
 ELLIDA. At that time he called himself 
 Friman. Later, in his letters he signed him- 
 self Alfred Johnston. 
 
 WANGEL. And where did he come from ? 
 
 ELLIDA. From Finmark, he said. For the 
 rest, he was born in Finland, had come to Nor- 
 way there as a child with his father, I think. 
 
 WANGEL. A Finlander, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, so he called himself. 
 
 WANGEL. What else do you know about 
 him ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Only that he went to sea very 
 young. And that he had been on long 
 voyages. 
 
 WANGEL. Nothing more ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No. We never spoke of such 
 things. 
 
 WANGEL. Of what did you speak, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. We spoke mostly about the sea. 
 
 WANGEL. Ah ! About the sea 
 
 ELLIDA. About storms and calm. Of dark 
 nights at sea. And of the sea in the glittering 
 sunshiny days we spoke also. But we spoke 
 most of the whales, and the dolphins, and the
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. y9 
 
 seals who lie out there on the rocks in the 
 midday sun. And then we spoke of the gulls, 
 and the eagles, and all the other sea birds. 
 I think isn't it wonderful ? when we talked 
 of such things it seemed to me as if both the 
 sea beasts and sea birds were one with him. 
 
 WAXGEL. And with you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; I almost thought I belonged 
 to them all, too. 
 
 WANGEL. Well, well ! And so it was that 
 you betrothed yourself to him ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. He said I must. 
 
 WANGEL. You must ? Had you no will of 
 your own, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Not when he was near. Ah ! 
 afterwards I thought it all so inexplicable. 
 
 WAXGEL. Were you often together ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No ; not very often. One day 
 he came out to our place, and looked over the 
 lighthouse. After that I got to know him, 
 and we met now and again. But then that 
 happened about the captain, and so he had to 
 go away. 
 
 WAXGEL. Yes, yes. Tell me more about 
 that. 
 
 ELLIDA. It was just daybreak when I had
 
 80 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 a note from him. He said in it I was to go 
 out to him at the Bratthammer. You know 
 the headland there between the lighthouse and 
 Skjoldviken ? 
 
 WANGEL. I know, I know ! 
 
 ELLIDA. I was to go out there at once, he 
 wrote, because he wanted to speak to me. 
 
 WANGEL. And you went ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. I could not do otherwise. 
 Well, then he told me he had stabbed the 
 captain in the night. 
 
 WANGEL. He said that himself ! Actually 
 said so ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. But he had only acted rightly 
 and justly, he said. 
 
 WANGEL. Rightly and justly ! Why did 
 he stab him, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. He wouldn't speak out about that. 
 He said it was not fit for me to hear. 
 
 WANGEL. And you believed his naked, 
 bare word ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. It never occurred to .ne to 
 do otherwise. Well, anyhow, he had to go 
 away. But now, when he was to bid me fare- 
 well . No ; you never could imagine what 
 
 he thought of
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 81 
 
 WANGEL. Well ? Tell me. 
 
 ELLIDA. He took from his pocket a key 
 ring and drew a ring that he always wore 
 from his finger, and he took a small ring I 
 had. These two he put on the key-ring. 
 And then he said we should wed ourselves to 
 the sea. 
 
 WANGEL. Wed ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, so he said. And with that 
 he threw the key-ring, and our rings, with 
 all his might, as far as he could into the 
 deep. 
 
 WANGEL. And you, Ellida, you did all 
 this? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes only think it then seemed 
 to me as if it must be so. But, thank God ! 
 he went away. 
 
 WANGEL. And when he was gone ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! You can surely understand 
 that I soon came to my senses again that I 
 saw how absolutely mad and meaningless it 
 had all been. 
 
 WANGEL. But you spoke just now of 
 letters. So you have heard from him since ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, I have heard from him. 
 First I had a few short lines from Archangel.
 
 8z THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 He only wrote he was going to America. And 
 then he told me where to send an answer. 
 
 WANGEL. And did you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. At once. I wrote him, of course, 
 that all must be at an end between us ; and 
 that he must no longer think of me, just as I 
 should no longer think of him. 
 
 WANGEL. But did he write again ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, he wrote again. 
 
 WANGEL. And what was his answer to your 
 communication ? 
 
 ELLIDA. He took no notice of it. It was 
 exactly as if I had never broken with him. He 
 wrote quite composedly and calmly that I 
 must wait for him. When he could have me 
 he would let me know, and then I was to go 
 to him at once. 
 
 WANGEL. So he would not release you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No. Then I wrote again, almost 
 word for word as I had before ; or perhaps 
 more firmly. 
 
 WANGEL. And he gave in ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, no ! Don't think that ! He 
 wrote quietly, as before not a word of my 
 having broken with him. Then I knew it was 
 useless, and so I never wrote to him again.
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 83 
 
 WANGEL. And you never heard from 
 him ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh yes ! I have had three letters 
 since then. Once he wrote to me from Cali- 
 fornia, and a second time from China. The 
 last letter I had from him was from Australia. 
 He wrote he was going to the gold-mines ; 
 but since then he has made no sign. 
 
 WANGEL. This man has had a strange 
 power over you, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes ! The terrible man ! 
 
 WANGEL. But you mustn't think of that 
 any more. Never again never ! Promise me 
 that, my dear, beloved Ellida. Now we must 
 try another treatment for you. Fresher air 
 than here within the fjords. The salt, fresh 
 air of the sea ! Dear, what say you to that ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! don't speak of it ! Don't 
 think of it ! There is no help in this for me. 
 I feel that so well. I can't shake it off not 
 even there. 
 
 WANGEL. What, dear? What do you 
 really mean ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I mean the horror of it, this 
 incomprehensible power over the mind. 
 
 WANGEL. But you have shaken it off
 
 84 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 long since when you broke with him. Why 
 all this is long past now. 
 
 ELLIDA (springing up}. No ; that it is not 
 it is not ! 
 
 WANGEL. Not past ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, Wangel, it is not past ; and 
 I fear it never will be never, in all our life. 
 
 WANGEL (in a pained voice). Do you mean 
 to say that in your innermost heart you 
 have never been able to forget this strange 
 man ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I had forgotten him ; but then it 
 was as if he had suddenly come back again. 
 
 WANGEL. How long ago is that ? 
 
 ELLIDA. It's about three years ago now, or 
 a little longer. It was just when I expected 
 the child. 
 
 WANGEL. Ah ! at that time ? Yes, Ellida 
 now I begin to understand many things. 
 
 ELLIDA. You are mistaken, dear. What 
 has come to me ? Oh ! I believe nothing on 
 earth will ever make it clear. 
 
 WANGEL (looking sadly at her). Only to 
 think that all these three years you have 
 cared for another man. Cared for another. 
 Not for me but for another !
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 85 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! you are so utterly mistaken ! 
 I care for no one but you. 
 
 WANGEL (in a subdued voice). Why, then, 
 in all this time have you not lived with me as 
 my wife ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Because of the horror that comes 
 from the strange man. 
 
 WANGEL. The horror ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, the horror. A horror so 
 terrible such as only the sea could hold. 
 For now you shall hear, Wangel. 
 
 \_The young townsfolk come back from the 
 L., bow, and pass otit R. Together with 
 them come ARNHOLM, BOLETTE, HILDE, 
 and LYNGSTRAND.] 
 
 BOLETTE (as she passes by). Well, are you 
 still walking about up here ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, it is so cool and pleasant up 
 here on the heights. 
 
 ARNHOLM. We, for our part, are going 
 down for a dance. 
 
 WANGEL. All right. We'll soon come 
 down we also. 
 
 HILDE. Good-bye, for the present ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Mr. Lyngstrand, will you wait 
 one moment ? (LYNGSTRAND stops. ARN-
 
 86 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 HOLM, BOLETTE, and HlLDE go Out R. To 
 
 LYNGSTRAND.) Are you going to dance too ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, Mrs. Wangel. I don't 
 think I dare. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, you should be careful, you 
 know your chest. You're not quite well 
 yet, you see. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not quite. 
 
 ELLIDA (with some hesitation}. How long 
 may it be now since you went on that 
 voyage ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. That time when I contracted 
 this weakness ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, that voyage you told me 
 about this morning ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh 1 it's about wait a 
 moment yes, it's a good three years now. 
 
 ELLIDA. Three years, then. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Perhaps a little more. We 
 left America in February, and we were wrecked 
 in March. It was the equinoctial gales we 
 came in for. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking at WANGEL). So it was at 
 that time 
 
 WANGEL. But, dear Ellida 
 
 ELLIDA. Well, don't let me detain you,
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 87 
 
 Mr. Lyngstrand. Now go down, but don't 
 dance. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, I'll only look on. (He 
 goes out R.) 
 
 ELLIDA. Johnston was on board too. I 
 am quite certain of it. 
 
 WANGEL. What makes you think so ? 
 
 ELLIDA (without answering). He learnt on 
 board that I had married another while he 
 was away. And so that very hour this came 
 over me. 
 
 WANGEL. The horror ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. All of a sudden I see him 
 alive right in front of me ; or, rather a little in 
 profile. He never looks at me, only he is 
 there. 
 
 WANGEL. How do you think he looks ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Exactly as when I saw him last. 
 
 WANGEL. Ten years ago ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; out there at Bratthammeren. 
 Most distinctly of all I see his breastpin, with a 
 large bluish-white pearl in it. The pearl is like 
 a dead fish's eye, and it seems to glare at me. 
 
 WANGEL. Good God ! You are more ill 
 than I thought. More ill than you yourself 
 know, Ellida.
 
 88 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr II. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes ! Help me if you can, 
 for I feel how it is drawing closer and more 
 close. 
 
 WANGEL. And you have gone about in 
 this state three whole years, bearing for your- 
 self this secret suffering, without confiding in 
 me. 
 
 ELLIDA. But I could not ; not till it be- 
 came necessary for your own sake. If I had 
 confided in you I should also have had to 
 confide to you the unutterable. 
 
 WANGEL. Unutterable ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, no ! Do not ask. Only 
 one thing, nothing more. Wangel, when shall 
 we understand that mystery of the boy's eyes ? 
 
 WANGEL. My dear love, Ellida, I assure 
 you it was only your own fancy. The child 
 had exactly the same eyes as other normal 
 children have. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, he had not. And you could 
 not see it ! The child's eyes changed colour 
 with the sea. When the fjord lay bathed in 
 sunshine, so were his eyes. And so in storm. 
 Oh, I saw it, if you did not ! 
 
 WANGEL (humouring her}. May be. But 
 even if it were true, what then ?
 
 ACT II.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 89 
 
 ELLIDA (in lower voice, and coming nearer}. 
 I have seen such eyes before. 
 
 WANGEL. Well? Where? 
 
 ELLIDA. Out at Bratthammeren, ten years 
 ago. 
 
 WANGEL (stepping back}. What does it 
 mean ? 
 
 ELLIDA (whispers, trembling). The child 
 had the Strange Man's eyes. 
 
 WANGEL (cries out reluctantly). Ellida ! 
 
 ELLIDA (clasps her hands despairingly about 
 her head}. Now you understand why I would 
 not, why I dared not, live with you as your 
 wife. (She turns siiddenly and rushes off over 
 the heights.} 
 
 WANGEL (hurrying after her and calling}. 
 Ellida, Ellida ! My poor unhappy Ellida !
 
 90 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 Act III. 
 
 A more remote part of DOCTOR WANGEL'S garden. It is 
 boggy, and overshadowed by large old trees. To the 
 right is seen the margin of a dank pond. A low, open 
 fence separates the garden from the footpath, and the 
 fjord in the background. Beyond is the range of 
 mountains, with its peaks. It is afternoon, almost 
 evening. BOLETTE sits on a stone seat, and on the seat 
 lie some books and a work-basket. HILDE and LYNG- 
 STRAND, both with fishing-tackle, walk along the bank 
 of the pond. 
 
 HILDE (making a sign to LYNGSTRAND). I 
 can see a large one. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (looking). Where ? 
 
 HILDE (pointing}. Can't you see ? He's 
 down there. Good gracious ! There's another ! 
 (looks through the trees} Out there. Now 
 he's coming to frighten him away ! 
 
 BOLETTE (looking up}. Who's coming ? 
 
 HILDE. Your tutor, Miss ! 
 
 BOLETTE. Mine ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes. Goodness knows he never 
 was mine.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 91 
 
 [ARNHOLM enters R., from between the 
 trees.~] 
 
 ARNHOLM. Are there fish in the pond now ? 
 
 HILDE. There are some very ancient carp. 
 
 ARNHOLM. No ! Are the old carp still 
 alive ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes ; they're pretty tough. But 
 now we're going to try and get rid of some of 
 them. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You'd better try out there at 
 the fjord. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No ; the pond is well so 
 to say more mysterious. 
 
 HILDE. Yes ; it's fascinating here. Have 
 you been in the sea ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes ; I've come straight from 
 the baths. 
 
 HILDE. I suppose you kept in the enclo- 
 sure ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes ; I'm not much of a swim- 
 mer. 
 
 HILDE. Can you swim on your back ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. No. 
 
 HILDE. I can. (To LYNGSTRAND.) Let's 
 try out there on the other side. 
 
 \They go off along the pond R.]
 
 92 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 ARNHOLM (coming closer to BOLETTE). Are 
 you sitting all alone here, Bolette ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; I generally do. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Isn't your mother down here in 
 the garden ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No she's sure to be out with 
 father. 
 
 - 
 
 ARNHOLM. How is she this afternoon ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I don't quite know. I forgot to 
 ask. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What books have you there ? 
 
 BOLETTE. The one's something about 
 botany. And the other's a geography. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you care about such things ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes if only I had time for it. 
 But, first of all, I've to look after the house- 
 keeping. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Doesn't your mother help you 
 your stepmother doesn't she help with 
 that? 
 
 BOLETTE. No, that's my business. Why, 
 I saw to that during the two years father 
 was alone. And so it has been since. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But you're as fond as ever of 
 reading. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, I read all the useful books
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 93 
 
 I can get hold of. One wants to know some- 
 thing about the world. For here we live so 
 completely outside of all that's going on or 
 almost. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Now don't say that, dear Bo- 
 lette. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ! I think we live very much 
 as the carp down there in the pond. They 
 have the fjord so near them, where the shoals 
 of wild fishes pass in and out. But the poor, 
 tame house-fishes know nothing, and they can 
 take no part in that. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I don't think it would fare very 
 well with them if they could get out there. 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh 1 it would be much the 
 same, I expect. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Moreover, you can't say that 
 one is so completely out of the world here 
 not in the summer anyhow. Why, nowadays 
 this is quite a rendezvous for the busy world 
 almost a terminus for the time being. 
 
 BOLETTE. Ah, yes ! you who yourself are 
 only here for the time being it is easy for 
 you to make fun of us. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I make fun ? How can you 
 think that ?
 
 94 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, all that about this being 
 a rendezvous, and a terminus for the busy 
 world that's something you've heard the 
 townsfolk here saying. Yes they're in the 
 habit of saying that sort of thing. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, frankly, I've noticed that, 
 too. 
 
 BOLETTE. But really there's not an atom 
 of truth in it. Not for us who always live 
 here. What good is it to us that the great 
 strange world comes hither for a time on its 
 way North to see the midnight sun ? We 
 ourselves have no part in that ; we see nothing 
 of the midnight sun. No ! We've got to be 
 good, and live our lives here in our carp-pond. 
 
 ARNHOLM (sitting down by her). Now tell 
 me, dear Bolette, isn't there something or 
 other something definite you are longing 
 for? 
 
 BOLETTE. Perhaps. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What is it, really ? What is it 
 you are longing for ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Chiefly to get away. 
 
 ARNHOLM. That above all, then. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes; and then to learn more. 
 To really know something about everything.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 95 
 
 ARNHOLM. When I used to teach you, 
 your father often said he would let you 
 go to college. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, poor father ! He says so 
 many things. But when it comes to the 
 point he there's no real stamina in father. 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, unfortunately you're right 
 there. He has not exactly stamina. But have 
 you ever spoken to him about it spoken 
 really earnestly and seriously ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No, I've not quite done that. 
 
 ARXHOLM. But really you ought to. Before 
 it is too late, Bolette, why don't you ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! I suppose it's because 
 there's no real stamina in me either. I cer- 
 tainly take after father in that. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm don't you think you're 
 unjust to yourself there ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No, unfortunately. Besides, 
 father has so little time for thinking of me 
 and my future, and not much desire to either. 
 He prefers to put such things away from him 
 whenever he can. He is so completely taken 
 up with Ellida. 
 
 ARNHOLM. With whom ? What ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I mean that he and my step-
 
 96 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acx III. 
 
 mother (breaking off]. Father and mother 
 
 suffice one another, as you see. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, so much the better if you 
 were to get away from here. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; but I don't think I've a 
 right to ; not to forsake father. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But, dear Bolette, you'll have to 
 do that sometime, anyhow. So it seems to me 
 the sooner the better. 
 
 BOLETTE. I suppose there is nothing else 
 for it. After all, I must think of myself, 
 too. I must try and get occupation of some 
 sort. When once father's gone I have no one 
 to hold to. But, poor father ! I dread leav- 
 ing him. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Dread ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, for father's sake. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But, good heavens ! Your step- 
 mother ? She is left to him. 
 
 BOLETTE. That's true. But she's not in 
 the least fit to do all that mother did so well. 
 There is so much she doesn't see, or that she 
 won't see, or that she doesn't care about : I 
 don't know which it is. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm, I think I understand 
 what you mean.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 97 
 
 BOLETTE. Poor father ! He is weak in 
 some things. Perhaps you've noticed that 
 yourself? He hasn't enough occupation, 
 either, to fill up his time. And then she is 
 so thoroughly incapable of helping him ; how- 
 ever, that's to some extent his own fault. 
 
 ARNHOLM. In what way ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! father always likes to see 
 happy faces about him. There must be 
 sunshine and joy in the house, he says. And 
 so I'm afraid he often gives her medicine 
 which will do her little good in the long 
 run. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you really think that ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; I can't get rid of the 
 thought. She is so odd at times. (Passion- 
 ately] But isn't it unjust that I should have 
 to stay at home here ? Really it's not of any 
 earthly use to father. Besides, I have a duty 
 towards myself, too, I think. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you know what, Bolette? 
 We two must talk these matters over more 
 carefully. 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! That won't be much use. 
 I suppose I was created to stay here in the 
 carp pond.
 
 98 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not a bit of it. It depends 
 entirely upon yourself. 
 
 BOLETTE (quickly). Do you think so ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes, believe me, it lies wholly 
 and solely in your own hands. 
 
 BOLETTE. If only that were true ! Will 
 you perhaps put in a good word for me with 
 father ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Certainly. But first of all I 
 must speak frankly and freely with you your- 
 self, dear. 
 
 BOLETTE (looks out L.). Hush ! don't let them 
 notice anything. We'll speak of this later. 
 [ELLIDA enters front the L. She has no 
 hat on, but a large shawl is thrown 
 over her head and shoulders^ 
 
 ELLIDA (with restless animation}. How 
 pleasant it is here ! How delightful it is 
 here ! 
 
 ARNHOLM (rising). Have you been for a 
 walk ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, a long, long lovely walk up 
 there with Wangel. And now we're going 
 for a sail. 
 
 BOLETTE. Won't you sit down ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, thanks ; I won't sit down.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 99 
 
 BOLETTE (making room on seat}. Here's a 
 pleasant seat. 
 
 ELLIDA (walking about}. No, no, no ! I'll 
 not sit down not sit down ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. I'm sure your walk has done 
 you good. You look quite refreshed. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, I feel so thoroughly well I 
 feel so unspeakably happy. So safe, so safe 1 
 (Looking out L.) What great steamer is that 
 coming along there ? 
 
 BOLETTE (rising, and also looking out}. It 
 must be the large English ship. 
 
 ARNHOLM. It's passing the buoy. Does it 
 usually stop here ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Only for half an hour. It goes 
 further up the fjord. 
 
 ELLIDA. And then sails away again to- 
 morrow away over the great open sea right 
 over the sea. Only think ! to be with them. 
 If one could. If only one could ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Have you never been any long 
 sea voyage, Mrs. Wangel ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Never ; only those little trips in 
 the fjord here. 
 
 BOLETTE (with a sigh}. Ah, no ! I suppose 
 we must put up with the dry land.
 
 loo THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, after all, that really is our 
 home. 
 
 ELLIDA. No ; I don't think it is. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not the land ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No ; I don't believe so. I think 
 that if only men had from the beginning 
 accustomed themselves to live on the sea, or in 
 the sea perhaps, we should be more perfect 
 than we are both better and happier. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You really think that ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. I should like to know if we 
 should not. I've often spoken to Wangel 
 about it. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, and he ? 
 
 ELLIDA, He thinks it might be so. 
 
 ARNHOLM (jestingly). Well, perhaps ! But 
 it can't be helped. We've once for all entered 
 upon the wrong path, and have become land 
 beasts instead of sea beasts. Anyhow, I suppose 
 it's too late to make good the mistake now. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, you've spoken a sad truth. 
 And I think men instinctively feel something 
 of this themselves. And they bear it about 
 with them as a secret regret and sorrow. Be- 
 lieve me herein lies the deepest cause for the 
 sadness of men. Yes, believe me, in this.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA, 101 
 
 ARNHOLM. But, my dearest Mrs. Wangel 
 I have not observed that men are so ex- 
 tremely sad. It seems to me, on the contrary, 
 that most of them take life easily and plea- 
 santly and with a great, quiet, unconscious 
 
 jy- 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! no, it is not so. The joy 
 is, I suppose, something like our joy at the 
 long pleasant summer days it has the pre- 
 sentiment of the dark days coming. And it is 
 this presentiment that casts its shadows over 
 the joy of men, just as the driving clouds cast 
 their shadow over the fjords. It lies there so 
 bright and blue and of a sudden 
 
 ARNHOLM. You shouldn't give way to such 
 sad thoughts. Just now you were so glad and 
 so bright. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes, so I was. Oh, this 
 this is so stupid of me. (Looking about her 
 uneasily^) If only Wangel would come ! He 
 promised me so faithfully he would. And yet 
 he does not come. Dear Mr. Arnholm, won't 
 you try and find him for me ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Gladly 
 
 ELLIDA. Tell him he must come here 
 directly now. For now I can't see him
 
 102 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not see him ? 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! you don't understand. When 
 he is not by me I often can't remember how 
 he looks. And then it is as if I had quite 
 lost him. That is so terribly painful. But 
 do go, please. (She paces round the bond!) 
 
 BOLETTE (to Arnholtri). I will go with you 
 you don't know the way. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Nonsense, I shall be all right. 
 BOLETTE (aside). No, no, no. I am anxious. 
 I'm afraid he is on board the steamer. 
 ARNHOLM. Afraid ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes. He usually goes to see if 
 there are any acquaintances of his. And 
 
 there's a restaurant on board 
 
 ARNHOLM. Ah ! Come then. 
 
 [He and BOLETTE go off L. ELLIDA stands 
 still awhile staring down at the pond. 
 Now and again she speaks to herself in 
 a low voice, and breaks off. Along the 
 footpath beyond the garden fence a 
 Stranger in travelling dress comes from 
 L. His hair and beard are bushy and 
 red. He has a Scotch cap on, and a 
 travelling bag with strap across his 
 shoulders.]
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 103 
 
 THE STRANGER (goes slowly along by the 
 fence and peeps into the garden. When he 
 catches sight O/"ELLIDA he stands still, looks at 
 her fixedly and searchingly, and speaks in a 
 low voice). Good evening, Ellida ! 
 
 ELLIDA (turns round with a cry). Oh 
 dear ! have you come at last ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Yes, at last. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking at him astonished and 
 frightened]. Who are you ? Do you seek 
 anyone here? 
 
 THE STRANGER. You surely know that well 
 enough, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA (starting). What is this ! How 
 do you address me ? Whom are you looking 
 for? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Well, I suppose I'm look- 
 ing for you. 
 
 ELLIDA (shuddering). Oh ! (She stares at 
 him, totters back, uttering a half-suffocating 
 cry). The eyes ! the eyes ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Are you beginning to 
 recognise me at last ? I knew you at once, 
 Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. The eyes ! Don't look at me 
 like that ! I shall cry for help !
 
 104 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Hush, hush ! Do not 
 fear. I shan't hurt you. 
 
 ELLIDA (covering her eyes with her hands). 
 Do not look at me like that, I say ! 
 
 THE STRANGER (leaning with his arms on 
 the garden fence). I came with the English 
 steamer. 
 
 ELLIDA (stealing a frightened look at him). 
 What do you want with me ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. I promised you to come 
 as soon as I could 
 
 ELLIDA. Go go away ! Never, never 
 come here again ! I wrote to you that every- 
 thing must be over between us everything ! 
 Oh ! you know that ! 
 
 THE STRANGER (imperturbably, and not an- 
 swering her). I would gladly have come to 
 you sooner ; but I could not. Now, at last I 
 am able to, and I am here, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. What is it you want with me? 
 What do you mean ? Why have you come 
 here? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Surely you know I've 
 come to fetch you. 
 
 ELLIDA (recoils in terror). To fetch me ! 
 is that what you mean ?
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 105 
 
 THE STRANGER. Of course. 
 
 ELLIDA. But surely you know that I am 
 married ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Yes, I know. 
 
 ELLIDA. And yet and yet you have come 
 to to fetch me ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Certainly I have. 
 
 ELLIDA (seizing her head with both her hands)* 
 Oh ! this misery this horror ! This horror ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Perhaps you don't want 
 to come ? 
 
 ELLIDA (bewildered}. Don't look at me 
 like that. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I was asking you if you 
 didn't want to come. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, no ! Never in all eternity ! 
 I will not, I tell you. I neither can nor will. 
 (In lower tone) I dare not. 
 
 THE STRANGER (climbs over the fence, and 
 comes into the garden}. Well, Ellida, let me 
 tell you one thing before I go. 
 
 ELLIDA (wishes to fly, but cannot. She stands 
 as one paralysed with terror, and leans for 
 support against the trunk of a tree by the pond). 
 Don't touch me ! Don't come near me ! No 
 nearer ! Don't touch me, I say !
 
 106 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 THE STRANGER (cautiously coming a few 
 steps nearer). You need not be so afraid of 
 me, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA (covering her eyes with her hands], 
 Don't look at me like that. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Do not be afraid not 
 afraid. 
 
 DOCTOR WANGEL comes through the gar- 
 den, from the L.] 
 
 WANGEL (still half-way between the trees], 
 Well, you've had to wait for me a long while. 
 
 ELLIDA (rushes towards him, clings fast to 
 his arm, and cries out}. Oh ! Wangel ! Save 
 me ! You save me if you can ! 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida ! What in heaven's 
 name 
 
 ELLIDA. Save me, Wangel ! Don't you 
 see him there ? Why, he is standing there ! 
 
 WANGEL (looking thither). That man ? 
 ( Coming nearer) May I ask you who you are, 
 and what you have come into this garden for ? 
 
 The STRANGER (motions with a nod towards 
 ELLIDA). I want to talk to her. 
 
 WANGEL. Oh ! indeed. So I suppose it 
 was you. (To ELLIDA) I hear a stranger has 
 been to the house and asked for you ?
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 107 
 
 THE STRANGER. Yes, it was I. 
 
 WANGEL. And what do you want with my 
 wife ? (turning round}. Do you know him, 
 Ellida ? 
 
 ELLIDA (in a low voice, and -wringing her 
 hands). Do I know him ! Yes, yes, yes ! 
 
 WANGEL (quickly). Well ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Why, it is he, Wangel ! he him- 
 self ! He who you know 
 
 WANGEL. What ! What is it you say ? 
 (turning) Are you the Johnston who 
 once 
 
 THE STRANGER. You may call me Johns- 
 ton for aught I care ! However, that's not 
 my name. 
 
 WANGEL. It is not ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. It is no longer. No ! 
 
 WANGEL. And what may you want with 
 my wife ? For I suppose you know the light- 
 house-keeper's daughter has been married this 
 long time, and whom she married, you of 
 course also know. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I've known it over three 
 years. 
 
 ELLIDA (eagerly). How did you come to 
 know it ?
 
 io8 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I was on my way home to 
 you, Ellida. I came across an old newspaper. 
 It was a paper from these parts, and in it there 
 was that about the marriage. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking straight in front of her). 
 The marriage ! So it was that ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. It seemed so wonderful to 
 me. For the rings why that, too, was a 
 marriage, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA (covering her face with her hands). 
 Oh! 
 
 WANGEL. How dare you ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Have you forgotten that ? 
 
 ELLIDA (feeling his look, suddenly cries out). 
 Don't stand there and look at me like that ! 
 
 WANGEL (goes up to him). You must deal 
 with me, and not with her. In short now 
 that you know the circumstances what is it 
 you really want here ? Why do you seek my 
 wife ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. I promised Ellida to come 
 to her as soon as I could. 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida again ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. And Ellida promised 
 faithfully she would wait for me until I 
 came.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 109 
 
 WANGEL. I notice you call my wife by her 
 first name. This kind of familiarity is not 
 customary with us here. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I know that perfectly. 
 But as she first, and above all, belongs to 
 
 WANGEL. To you, still 
 
 ELLIDA (draws back behind Wangel}. Oh ! 
 he will never release me ! 
 
 WANGEL. To you ? You say she belongs to 
 you ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Has she told you any- 
 thing about the two rings my ring and 
 Ellida's ? 
 
 WANGEL. Certainly. And what then ? 
 She put an end to that long ago. You have 
 had her letters, so you know this yourself. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Both Ellida and I 
 agreed that what we did should have all the 
 strength and authority of a real and full 
 marriage. 
 
 ELLIDA. But you hear, I will not ! Never 
 on earth do I wish to know anything more of 
 you. Do not look at me like that. I will not, 
 I tell you ! 
 
 WANGEL. You must be mad to think you
 
 1 io THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 can come here, and base any claim upon such 
 childish nonsense. 
 
 THE STRANGER. That's true. A claim, in 
 your sense, I certainly have not. 
 
 WANGEL. What do you mean to do, then ? 
 You surely do not imagine you can take her 
 from me by force, against her own will ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. No. What would be the 
 good of that ? If Ellida wishes to be with me 
 she must come freely. 
 
 ELLIDA (starts, crying out). Freely ! 
 
 WANGEL. And you actually believe 
 that 
 
 ELLIDA (to herself). Freely ! 
 
 WANGEL. You must have taken leave of 
 your senses ! Go your ways. We have nothing 
 more to do with you. 
 
 THE STRANGER (looking at his watch). It 
 is almost time for me to go on board again. 
 (Coming nearer?) Yes, yes, Ellida, now I 
 have done my duty. ( Coming still nearer.) 
 I have kept the word I gave you. 
 
 ELLIDA (beseechingly, drawing away). Oh ! 
 don't touch me ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. And so now you must 
 think it over till to-morrow night
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. ill 
 
 WANGEL. There is nothing to think over 
 here. See that you get away. 
 
 THE STRANGER (still to ELLIDA). Now, 
 I'm going with the steamer up the fjord. To 
 morrow night I will come again, and then I 
 shall look for you here. You must wait for me 
 here in the garden, for I prefer settling the 
 matter with you alone ; you understand ? 
 
 ELLIDA (in low, trembling tone). Do you 
 hear that, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL. Only keep calm. We shall know 
 how to prevent this visit. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Good-bye for the present, 
 Ellida. So to-morrow night 
 
 ELLIDA (imploringly). Oh ! no, no ! Do 
 not come to-morrow night ! Never come here 
 again ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. And should you then have 
 a mind to follow me over seas 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, don't look at me like that ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. I only mean that you 
 must then be ready to set out. 
 
 WANGEL. Go up to the house, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. I cannot ! Oh, help me ! Save 
 me, Wangel ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. For you must remember
 
 112 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 that if you do not go with me to-morrow all 
 is at an end. 
 
 ELLIDA (looks tremblingly at him). Then all 
 is at an end ? For ever ? 
 
 THE STRANGER (nodding). Nothing can 
 change it then, Ellida. I shall never again 
 come to this land. You will never see me 
 again, nor hear from me either. Then I shall 
 be as one dead and gone from you for ever. 
 
 ELLIDA (breathing with difficulty). Oh ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. So think carefully what 
 you do. Good-bye ! (He goes to the fence 
 and climbs over it, stands still, and says) 
 Yes, Ellida ; be ready for the journey to- 
 morrow night. For then I shall come and 
 fetch you. (He goes slowly and calmly down 
 the footpath and exit R.) 
 
 ELLIDA (looking after him for a time). 
 Freely, he said ; think he said that I must go 
 with him freely ! 
 
 WANGEL. Only keep calm. Why, he's gone 
 now, and you'll never see him again. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! how can you say that ? He's 
 coming again to-morrow night ! 
 
 WANGEL. Let him come. He shall not 
 meet you again in any case.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 113 
 
 ELLIDA (shaking her heaa). Ah, Wangel ! 
 do not believe you can prevent him. 
 
 WANGEL. I can, dearest ; only trust me. 
 
 ELLIDA (bondering, and not listening to him). 
 Now when he's been here to-morrow night 
 and then when he has gone over seas in the 
 steamer 
 
 WANGEL. Yes ; what then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I should like to know if he will 
 never, never come back again. 
 
 WANGEL. No, dear Ellida. You may be quite 
 sure of that. What should he do here after 
 this ? Now that he has learnt from your own 
 lips that you will have nothing more to do 
 with him. With that the whole thing is over. 
 
 ELLIDA (to herself). To-morrow, then, or 
 never ! 
 
 WANGEL. And should it ever occur to him 
 to come here again 
 
 ELLIDA. Well ? 
 
 WANGEL. Why, then, it is in our power to 
 make him harmless. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! do not think that ! 
 
 WANGEL. It is in our power, I tell you. If 
 you can get rid of him in no other way he 
 must expiate the murder of the captain.
 
 114 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 ELLIDA (passionately). No, no, no ! Never 
 that ! We know nothing about the murder of 
 the captain ! Nothing whatever ! 
 
 WANGEL. Know nothing ? Why he him- 
 self confessed it to you ! 
 
 ELLIDA. No, nothing of that. If you say 
 anything of it I shall deny it. He shall not 
 be imprisoned. He belongs out there to the 
 open sea. He belongs out there ! 
 
 WANGEL (looks at her and says slowly). Ah ! 
 Ellida Ellida ! 
 
 ELLIDA (clinging passionately to him). Oh ! 
 dear faithful one save me from this man ! 
 
 WANGEL (disengaging himself gently). 
 Come, come with me ! 
 
 [LYNGSTRAND and HILDE, both with fish- 
 ing tackle, come in from the R. along 
 the pond '.] 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (going quickly up to ELLIDA). 
 Now, Mrs. Wangel, you must hear something 
 wonderful. 
 
 WANGEL. What is it ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Fancy ! We've seen the 
 American ! 
 
 WANGEL. The American ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes, I saw him, too.
 
 ACT III.] THE LADY FROM THF SEA. 115 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. He was going round the 
 back of the garden, and thence on board the 
 great English steamer. 
 
 WANGEL. How do you know the man ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Why, I went to sea with 
 him once. I felt so certain he'd been drowned 
 and now he's very much alive 1 
 
 WANGEL. Do you know anything more 
 about him ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No. But I'm sure he's 
 come to revenge himself upon his faithless 
 sailor-wife. 
 
 WANGEL. What do you mean ? 
 
 HILDE. Lyngstrand's going to use him for 
 a work of art. 
 
 WANGEL. I don't understand one word. 
 
 ELLIDA. You shall hear afterwards. 
 
 [ARNHOLM and 'BOLETTE come from the L. 
 along the footpath outside the garden."} 
 
 BOLETTE (to those in the garden}. Do come 
 and see ! The great English steamer's just 
 going up the fjord. 
 
 \_A large steamer glides slowly past in 
 the distance^ 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (to HILDE behind the garden 
 fence} To-night he's sure to come to her.
 
 n6 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr III. 
 
 HILDE (nods). To the faithless sailor- wife 
 yes. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Fancy, at midnight ! 
 HILDE. That must be so fascinating. 
 ELLID A (loo king after the ship}. To-morrow, 
 then ! 
 
 WANGEL. And then never again. 
 ELLIDA (in a low, imploring tone). Oh ! 
 Wangel save me from myself ! 
 
 WANGEL (looks anxiously at her}. Ellida 
 
 I feel there is something behind this 
 
 ELLIDA. There is the temptation ! 
 WANGEL. Temptation ? 
 ELLIDA. The man is like the sea ! 
 
 [She goes slowly and thoughtfully through 
 the garden, and out L. WANGEL walks 
 uneasily by her side, watching her 
 closely.]
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 117 
 
 Act IV. 
 
 DOCTOR WANGEL'S garden-room. Doors R. and L. In the 
 background, between the windows, an open glass door, 
 leading out on to the verandah. Below this a portion of 
 the garden is visible. A sofa and table down L. To 
 R. a piano, and farther back a large flower-stand. In 
 the middle of the room a round table, with chairs. 
 On the table is a rose-tree in bloom, and other plants 
 round it. Morning. 
 
 In the room, by the table, L., BOLETTE is sitting on 
 the sofa, busy with some embroidery. LYNGSTRAND is 
 seated on a chair at the upper end of the table. In 
 the garden below BALLESTED sits painting. HILDE 
 stands by watching him. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (with his arms on the table, 
 szts silent awhile, looking at BOLETTE'S work}. 
 It must be awfully difficult to do a border like 
 that, Miss Wangel ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh, no ! It's not very difficult, 
 if only you take care to count right. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. To count ? Must you count, 
 too? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, the stitches. See ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. So you do ! Just fancy !
 
 n8 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 Why, it's almost a kind of art. Can you de- 
 sign, too ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh, yes ! When I've a copy. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not unless ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well then, after all, it's not 
 a real art ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No ; it is rather only a sort of 
 handicraft. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But still, I think that per- 
 haps you could learn art. 
 
 BOLETTE. If I haven't any talent ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; if you could always be 
 with a real true artist 
 
 BOLETTE. Do you think, then, I could 
 learn it from him ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Not exactly learn in the 
 ordinary sense ; but I think it would grow 
 upon you little by little by a kind of miracle 
 as it were, Miss Wangel. 
 
 BOLETTE. That would be wonderful. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (after a pause]. Have you 
 ever thought about I mean, have you ever 
 thought deeply and earnestly about marriage, 
 Miss Wangel ? 
 
 BOLETTE (lookingquicklyathim). About no?
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 119 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I have. 
 
 BOLETTE. Really ? Have you ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh yes ! I often think about 
 things of that sort, especially about marriage ; 
 and, besides, I've read several books about it. 
 I think marriage must be counted a sort of 
 miracle ; that a woman should gradually 
 change till she is like her husband. 
 
 BOLETTE. You mean has like interests ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, that's it. 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, but his abilities, his 
 talents, and his skill ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. H'm well I should like to 
 know if all that too 
 
 BOLETTE. Then, perhaps, you also believe 
 that everything a man has read for himself, 
 and thought out for himself, that this, too, can 
 grow upon his wife ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I think it can. Little 
 by little ; as by a sort of miracle. But, of 
 course, I know such things can only happen 
 in a marriage that is faithful, and loving, and 
 really happy. 
 
 BOLETTE. Has it never occurred to you 
 that a man too might, perhaps, be thus drawn 
 over to his wife ? Grow like her, I mean.
 
 I2o THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. A man ? No, I never thought 
 of that. 
 
 BOLETTE. But why not one as well as the 
 other ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No ; for a man has a calling 
 that he lives for ; and thafs what makes a 
 man so strong and firm, Miss Wangel. He 
 has a calling in life. 
 
 BOLETTE. Has every man ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh no ! I am thinking more 
 especially of artists. 
 
 BOLETTE. Do you think it right of an artist 
 to get married ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I think so. If he can 
 find one he can heartily love, I 
 
 BOLETTE. Still, I think he should rather 
 live for his art alone. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Of course he must ; but he 
 can do that just as well, even if he marries. 
 
 BOLETTE. But how about her ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Her ? Who ? 
 
 BOLETTE. She whom he marries. What is 
 she to live for ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. She, too, is to live for his 
 art. It seems to me a woman must feel so 
 thoroughly happy in that
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. Ml 
 
 BOLETTE. H'm, I don't exactly know 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, Miss Wangel, you 
 may be sure of that. It is not merely all the 
 honour and respect she enjoys through him ; 
 for that seems almost the least important to 
 me. But it is this that she can help him 
 to create, that she can lighten his work for 
 him, be about him and see to his comfort, and 
 tend him well, and make his life thoroughly 
 pleasant. I should think that must be per- 
 fectly delightful to a woman. 
 
 BOLETTE. Ah ! you don't yourself know 
 how selfish you are ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I, selfish ! Good heavens ! 
 Oh, if only you knew me a little better than 
 you do ! (Bending closer to her) Miss Wangel, 
 when once I am gone and that will be very 
 soon now 
 
 BOLETTE (looks pityingly at him) . Oh, don't 
 think of anything so sad ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But, really, I don't think it 
 is so very sad. 
 
 BOLETTE. What do you mean ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, you know that I set 
 out in a month. First from here, and then, of 
 course, I'm going south.
 
 122 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh, I see ! Of course. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Will you think of me some- 
 times, then, Miss Wangel ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, gladly. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (pleased}. No, promise ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I promise. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. By all that is sacred, Miss 
 Bolette ? 
 
 BOLETTE. By all that is sacred. (In a 
 changed manner) Oh, but what can come of 
 if all ? Nothing on earth can come of it ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. How can you say that ! It 
 would be so delightful for me to know you 
 were at home here thinking of me ! 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, and what else ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I don't exactly know of any- 
 thing else. 
 
 BOLETTE. Nor I either. There are so many 
 things in the way. Everything stands in the 
 way, I think. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh, another miracle might 
 come about. Some happy dispensation of 
 fortune, or something of the sort ; for I really 
 believe I shall be lucky now. 
 
 BOLETTE (eagerly). Really? You do believe 
 that?
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 123 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I believe it thoroughly. 
 And so after a few years when I come home 
 again as a celebrated sculptor, and well off, and 
 in perfect health 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, yes ! Of course, we will 
 hope so. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. You may be perfectly certain 
 about it. Only think faithfully and kindly of 
 me when I am down there in the south ; and 
 now I have your word that you will. 
 
 BOLETTE. You have (shaking her head}. 
 But, all the same, nothing will surely come 
 of it. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Oh ! yes, Miss Bolette. At 
 least this will come of it. I shall get on so 
 much more easily and quickly with my art 
 work. 
 
 BOLETTE. Do you believe that, too ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I have an inner conviction 
 of it. And I fancy it will be so cheering for 
 you, too here in this out-of-the-way place 
 to know within yourself that you are, so to 
 say, helping me to create. 
 
 BOLETTE (looking at him}. Well ; but you 
 on your side ? 
 
 LYNGSTRANG. I ?
 
 124 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 BOLETTE (looking out into the garden}- 
 Hush ! Let us speak of something else. Here's 
 Mr. Arnholm. 
 
 [ARNHOLM is seen in the garden below L. 
 He stops and talks to HILDE and 
 BALLESTED.} 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Are you fond of your old 
 teacher, Miss Bolette ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Fond of him ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I mean do you care for 
 him ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, indeed I do, for he is a 
 true friend and adviser, too and then he is 
 always so ready to help when he can. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Isn^t it extraordinary that 
 he hasn't married. 
 
 BOLETTE. Do you think it is extraordinary ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, for you say he's well- 
 to-do. 
 
 BOLETTE. He is certainly said to be so. 
 But probably it wasn't so easy to find anyone 
 who'd have him. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Why ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! He's been the teacher of 
 nearly all the young girls that he knows. He 
 says that himself.
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 125 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But what does that matter ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Why, good heavens ! One 
 
 doesn't marry a man who's been your teacher J 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Don't you think a young 
 
 girl might love her teacher ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Not after she's really grown up. 
 LYNGSTRAND. No fancy that ! 
 BOLETTE (cautioning him). Sh ! sh ! 
 
 [Meanwhile BALLESTED has been gather- 
 ing together his things, and carries 
 them out from the garden R. HILDE 
 helps him. ARNHOLM goes up the 
 verandah^ and conies into the room.'] 
 ARNHOLM. Good morning, my dear Bolette. 
 
 Good morning Mr. Mr. h'm 
 
 [He looks displeased, and nods coldly to 
 
 LYNGSTRAND, who rises.'] 
 BOLETTE (rising /, and going up to ARN- 
 HOLM). Good morning, Mr. Arnholm. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Everything all right here to- 
 day ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, thanks, quite. 
 ARNHOLM. Has your stepmother gone to 
 bathe again to-day ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No. She is upstairs in her 
 room.
 
 126 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not very bright ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I don't know, for she has locked 
 herself in. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm has she ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I suppose Mrs. Wangel was 
 very much frightened about that American 
 yesterday ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. What do you know about 
 that? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I told Mrs. Wangel that I 
 had seen him in the flesh behind the garden. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Oh ! I see. 
 
 BOLETTE (to ARNHOLM). No doubt you and 
 father sat up very late last night, talking ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes ; rather a te. We were 
 talking over serious matters. 
 
 BOLETTE. Did you put in a word for me, 
 and my affairs, too ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, dear Bolette. I couldn't 
 manage it. He was so completely taken up 
 with something else. 
 
 BOLETTE (sighs). Ah ! yes ; he always is. 
 
 ARNHOLM (looks at her meaningly). But 
 later on to-day we'll talk more fully about 
 the matter. Where's your father now ? Not 
 at home ?
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 127 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, he is. He must be down 
 in the office. I'll fetch him. 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, thanks. Don't do that. 
 I'd rather go down to him. 
 
 BOLETTE (listening L.). Wait one moment, 
 Mr. Arnholm ; I believe that's father on the 
 stairs. Yes. I suppose he's been up to look 
 after her. 
 
 [DOCTOR WANGEL comes in from the door 
 
 L.] 
 
 WANGEL (shaking ARNHOLM'S hand]. What, 
 dear friend, are you here already ? It was good 
 of you to come so early, for I should like to 
 talk a little further with you. 
 
 BOLETTE (to LYNGSTRAND). Hadn't we 
 better go down to Hilde in the garden ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I shall be delighted, Miss 
 Wan gel. 
 
 \_He and BOLETTE go down into the gar- 
 den, and pass out between the trees in 
 the background^ 
 
 ARNHOLM {following them with his eyes, 
 turns to WANGEL). Do you know anything 
 about that young man ? 
 
 WANGEL. No, nothing at all. 
 
 ARNHOLM. But do you think it right
 
 iz8 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 he should knock about so much with the 
 girls ? 
 
 WANGEL. Does he? I really hadn't no- 
 ticed it. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You ought to see to it, I think. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, I suppose you're right. 
 But, good Lord ! what's a man to do ? The 
 girls are so accustomed to look after them- 
 selves now. They won't listen to me, nor to 
 Ellida. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not to her either ? 
 
 WANGEL. No ; and besides I really cannot 
 expect Ellida to trouble about such things. 
 She's not fit for that (Breaking off). But it 
 wasn't that which we were to talk of. Now 
 tell me, have you thought the matter over 
 thought over all I told you of ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I have thought of nothing else 
 ever since we parted last night. 
 
 WANGEL. And what do you think should 
 be done ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Dear Wangel, I think you, as a 
 doctor, must know that better than I. 
 
 WANGEL. Oh ! if you only knew how 
 difficult it is for a doctor to judge rightly 
 about a patient who is so dear to him !
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 129 
 
 Besides, this is no ordinary illness. No 
 ordinary doctor and no ordinary medicines can 
 help her. 
 
 ARNHOLM. How is she to-day ? 
 
 WANGEL. I was upstairs with her just now, 
 and then she seemed to me quite calm ; but 
 behind all her moods something lies hidden 
 which it is impossible for me to fathom ; and 
 then she is so changeable, so capricious she 
 varies so suddenly. 
 
 ARNHOLM. No doubt that is the result of 
 her morbid state of mind. 
 
 WANGEL. Not altogether. When you go 
 down to the bed-rock, it was born in her. 
 Ellida belongs to the sea-folk. That is the 
 matter. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What do you really mean, my 
 dear doctor ? 
 
 WANGEL. Haven't you noticed that the 
 people from out there by the open sea are, in 
 a way, a people apart ? It is almost as if they 
 themselves lived the life of the sea. There is 
 the rush of waves, and ebb and flow too, 
 both in their thoughts and in their feelings, 
 and so they can never bear transplanting. 
 Oh ! I ought to have remembered that. It
 
 130 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 was a sin against Ellida to take her away from 
 there, and bring her here. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You have come to that opinion ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, more and more. But I 
 ought to have told myself this beforehand. 
 Oh ! I knew it well enough at bottom ! But 
 I put it from me. For, you see, I loved her 
 so ! Therefore I thought of myself first of all. 
 I was inexcusably selfish at that time ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm. I suppose every man is 
 a little selfish under such circumstances. 
 Moreover, I've never noticed that vice in 
 you, Doctor Wangel. 
 
 WANGEL (walks uneasily about the room). 
 Oh, yes ! And I have been since then, too. 
 Why, I am so much, much older than she is. 
 I ought to have been at once as a father to 
 her- and a guide. I ought to have done my 
 best to develop and enlighten her mind. Un- 
 fortunately nothing ever came of that. You 
 see, I hadn't stamina enough, for I preferred 
 her just as she was. So things went worse and 
 worse with her, and then I didn't know what 
 to do. (In a lower voice.} That was why I 
 wrote to you in my trouble, and asked you to 
 come here.
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 131 
 
 ARNHOLM (looks at him tn astonishment}. 
 What, was it for this you wrote ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes ; but don't let anyone notice 
 anything. 
 
 ARNHOLM. How on earth, dear doctor 
 what good did you expect me to be ? I don't 
 understand it. 
 
 WANGEL. No, naturally. For I was on an 
 altogether false track. I thought Ellida's heart 
 had at one time gone out to you, and that she 
 still secretly cared for you a little that per- 
 haps it would do her good to see you again, 
 and talk of her home and the old days. 
 
 ARNHOLM. So it was your wife you meant 
 when you wrote that she expected me, and 
 and perhaps longed for me. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, who else ? 
 
 ARNHOLM (hurriedly). No, no. You're right. 
 But I didn't understand. 
 
 WANGLE. Naturally, as I said, for I was on 
 an absolutely wrong track. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And you call yourself selfish ! 
 
 WANGEL. Ah ! but I had such a great sin 
 to atone for. I felt I dared not neglect any 
 means that might give the slightest relief to 
 her mind.
 
 132 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ARNHOLM. How do you really explain the 
 power this stranger exercises over her ? 
 
 WANGEL. H'm dear friend there may 
 be sides to the matter that cannot be ex- 
 plained. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you mean anything inex- 
 plicable in itself absolutely inexplicable ? 
 
 WANGEL. In any case not explicable as far 
 as we know. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you believe there is some- 
 thing in it, then ? 
 
 WANGEL. I neither believe nor deny ; I 
 simply don't know. That's why I leave it 
 alone. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes. But just one thing : her 
 extraordinary, weird assertion about the child's 
 eyes 
 
 WANGEL (eagerly], I don't believe a word 
 about the eyes. I will not believe such a 
 thing. It must be purely fancy on her part, 
 nothing else. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Did you notice the man's eyes 
 when you saw him yesterday ? 
 
 WANGEL. Of course I did. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And you saw no sort of resem- 
 blance ?
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 133 
 
 WANGEL (evasively). H'm good heavens ! 
 What shall I say ? It wasn't quite light when 
 I saw him ; and, besides, Ellida had been say- 
 ing so much about this resemblance, I really 
 don't know if I was capable of observing quite 
 impartially. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, well, may be. But that 
 other matter ? All this terror and unrest 
 coming upon her at the very time, as it seems, 
 this strange man was on his way home. 
 
 WANGEL. That oh ! that's something she 
 must have persuaded and dreamed herself into 
 since it happened. She was not seized with 
 this so suddenly all at once as she now 
 maintains. But since she heard from young 
 Lyngstrand that Johnston or Friman, or 
 whatever his name is was on his way hither, 
 three years ago, in the month of March, she 
 now evidently believes her unrest of mind 
 came upon her at that very time. 
 
 ARNHOLM. It was not so, then ? 
 
 WANGEL. By no means. There were signs 
 and symptoms of it before this time, though 
 it did happen, by chance, that in that month 
 of March, three years ago, she had a rather 
 severe attack.
 
 134 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ARNHOLM. After all, then ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, but that is easily accounted 
 for by the circumstances the condition she 
 happened to be in at the time. 
 
 ARNHOLM. So, symptom for symptom, 
 then. 
 
 WANGEL (wringing his hands]. And not 
 to be able to help her ! Not to know how to 
 counsel her ! To see no way ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Now if you could make up your 
 mind to leave this place, to go somewhere else, 
 so that she could live amid surroundings that 
 would seem more homelike to her ? 
 
 WANGEL. " Ah, dear friend ! Do you think 
 I haven't offered her that, too ? I suggested 
 moving out to Skjolviken, but she will not. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not that either ? 
 
 WANGEL. No, for she doesn't think it would 
 be any good ; and perhaps she's right. 
 
 ARNHOLM. H'm. Do you say that ? 
 
 WANGEL. Moreover, when I think it all 
 over carefully, I really don't know how I could 
 manage it. I don't think I should be justified, 
 for the sake of the girls, in going away to such 
 a desolate place. After all, they must live
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 135 
 
 where there is at least a prospect of their 
 being provided for some day. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Provided for ! Are you think- 
 ing about that already ? 
 
 WANGEL. Heaven knows, I must think of 
 that too ! But then, on the other hand, again, 
 my poor sick Ellida ! Oh, dear Arnholm ! in 
 many respects I seem to be standing between 
 fire and water ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Perhaps youVe no need to worry 
 on Bolette's account. (Breaking off.} I should 
 like to know where she where they have gone. 
 (Goes up to the open door and looks out} 
 
 WANGEL. Oh, I would so gladly make any 
 sacrifice for all three of them, if only I knew 
 
 what ! 
 
 \_Ellida enters front door L.J 
 
 ELLIDA (quickly to Wanget). Be sure you 
 don't go out this morning. 
 
 WANGEL. No, no ! of course not. I will 
 stay at home with you. (Pointing to ARNHOLM 
 who is coming towards them.} But won't you 
 speak to our friend ? 
 
 ELLIDA (turning). Oh, are you here, Mr. 
 Arnholm ? (Holding out her hand to him.} 
 Good morning.
 
 136 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Good-morning, Mrs. Wangel. 
 So you've not been bathing as usual to-day ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, no ! That is out of the 
 question to-day. But won't you sit down a 
 moment ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, thanks, not now. (Looks 
 at Wangel.) I promised the girls to go down 
 to them in the garden. 
 
 ELLIDA. Goodness knows if you'll find 
 them there. I never know where they may 
 be rambling. 
 
 WANGEL. They're sure to be down by the 
 pond. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Oh ! I shall find them right 
 enough. (Nods, and goes out across the 
 verandah into the garden?) 
 
 ELLIDA. What time is it, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL (looking at his watch). A little 
 past eleven. 
 
 ELLIDA. A little past. And at eleven 
 o'clock, or half-past eleven to-night, the steamer 
 is coming. If only that were over ! 
 
 WANGEL (going nearer to her). Dear Ellida, 
 there is one thing I should like to ask you. 
 
 ELLIDA. What is it ? 
 
 WANGEL. The evening before last up at
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 137 
 
 the " View " you said that during the last 
 three years you had so often seen him bodily 
 before you. 
 
 ELLIDA. And so I have. You may believe 
 that. 
 
 WANGEL. But, how did you see him ? 
 
 ELLIDA. How did I see him ? 
 
 WANGEL. I mean, how did he look when 
 you thought you saw him ? 
 
 ELLIDA. But, dear Wangel, why you now 
 know yourself how he looks. 
 
 WANGEL. Did he look exactly like that in 
 your imagination ? 
 
 ELLIDA. He did. 
 
 WANGEL. Exactly the same as you saw 
 him in reality yesterday evening ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, exactly. 
 
 WANGEL. Then how was it you did not at 
 once recognise him ? 
 
 ELLDDA. Did I not ? 
 
 WANGEL. No ; you said yourself after- 
 wards that at first you did not at all know who 
 the strange man was. 
 
 ELLIDA (perplexed], I really believe you are 
 right. Don't you think that strange, Wangel ? 
 Fancy my not knowing him at once !
 
 138 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 WANGEL. It was only the eyes, you said. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, yes ! The eyes the eyes. 
 
 WANGEL. Well, but at the "View" you 
 said that he always appeared to you exactly 
 as he was when you parted out there ten 
 years ago. 
 
 ELLIDA. Did I? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. 
 
 ELLIDA. Then, I suppose he did look much 
 as he does now. 
 
 WANGEL. No. On our way home, the day 
 before yesterday, you gave quite another de- 
 scription of him. Ten years ago he had no 
 beard, you said. His dress, too, was quite 
 different. And that breast-pin with the 
 pearl ? That man yesterday wore nothing of 
 the sort. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, he did not. 
 
 WANGEL (looks searchingly at her). Now 
 just think a little, dear Ellida. Or perhaps 
 you can't quite remember how he looked when 
 he stood by you at Bratthamer ? 
 
 ELLIDA (thoughtfully closing her eyes for a 
 moment}. Not quite distinctly. No, to-day I 
 can't. Is it not strange ?
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 139 
 
 WANGEL. Not so very strange after all. 
 You have now been confronted by a new 
 and real image, and that overshadows the old 
 one, so that you can no longer see it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Do you believe that, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. And it overshadows your 
 sick imaginings, too. That is why it is good 
 a reality has come. 
 
 ELLIDA. Good ? Do you think it good ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. That it has come. It may 
 restore you to health. 
 
 ELLIDA (sitting down on sofa). Wangel, 
 come and sit down by me. I must tell you all 
 my thoughts. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, do, dear Ellida. 
 
 \_He sits down on a chair on the other side 
 of the table, .] 
 
 ELLIDA. It was really a great misfortune 
 for us both that we two of all people should 
 have come together. 
 
 WANGEL (amazed). What are you saying ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh, yes, it was. And it's so 
 natural. It could bring nothing but unhappi- 
 ness, after the way in which we came 
 together. 
 
 WANGEL. What was there in that way ?
 
 140 THE LADY FJOM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ELLIDA. Listen, Wangel ; it's no use going 
 on, lying to ourselves and to one another. 
 
 WANGEL. Are we doing so ? Lying, you 
 say? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, we are ; or, at least, we sup- 
 press the truth. For the truth the pure and 
 simple truth is that you came out there and 
 bought me. 
 
 WANGEL. Bought you say bought ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! I wasn't a bit better than 
 you. I accepted the bargain. Sold myself to 
 you ! 
 
 WANGEL (looks at her full of pain}. Ellida, 
 have you really the heart to call it that ? 
 
 ELLIDA. But is there any other name for 
 it ? You could no longer bear the emptiness 
 of your house. You were on the look-out for 
 a new wife. 
 
 WANGEL. And a new mother for the child- 
 ren, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. That too, perhaps, by the way ; 
 although you didn't in the least know if I 
 were fit for the position. Why, you had 
 only seen me, and spoken to me a few times. 
 Then you wanted me, and so 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, you may call it as you will.
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 141 
 
 ELLIDA. And I, on my side why, I was 
 so helpless and bewildered, and so absolutely 
 alone. Oh ! it was so natural I should accept 
 the bargain, when you came and proposed to 
 provide for me all my life. 
 
 WANGEL. Assuredly it did not seem to me 
 a providing for you, dear Ellida. I asked you 
 honestly if you would share with me and the 
 children the little I could call my own. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, you did ; but all the same, I 
 should never have accepted ! Never have 
 accepted that at any price ! Not sold myself ! 
 Better the meanest work better the poorest 
 life after one's own choice. 
 
 WANGEL {rising). Then have the five six 
 years that we have lived together been so 
 utterly worthless to you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! don't think that, Wangel. 
 I have been as well cared for here as human 
 being could desire. But I did not enter your 
 house freely. That is the thing. 
 
 WANGEL (looking at her}. Not freely ! 
 
 ELLIDA. No. It was not freely that I went 
 with you. 
 
 WANGEL (in subdued tone}. Ah ! I re- 
 member your words of yesterday.
 
 142 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 ELLIDA. It all lies in those words. They 
 have enlightened me ; and so I see it all now. 
 
 WANGEL. What do you see ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I see that the life we two live 
 together is really no marriage. 
 
 WANGEL (bitterly). You have spoken truly 
 there. The life we now live is not a marriage. 
 
 ELLIDA. Nor was it formerly. Never not 
 from the very first (looks straight in front of 
 her}. The first that might have been a com- 
 plete and real marriage. 
 
 WANGEL. The first what do you mean ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Mine with him. 
 
 WANGEL (looks at her in astonishment). I 
 do not in the least understand you. 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! dear Wangel, let us not lie to 
 one another, nor to ourselves. 
 
 WANGEL. Well what more ? 
 
 ELLIDA. You see we can never get away 
 from that one thing that a freely given pro- 
 mise is fully as binding as a marriage. 
 
 WANGEL. But what on earth 
 
 ELLIDA (rising impetuously). Set me free, 
 Wangel ! 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida 1 Ellida ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes ! Oh ! grant me that !
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 143 
 
 Believe me, it will come to that all the same 
 after the way we two came together. 
 
 WANGEL (conquering his pain). It has come 
 to this, then ? 
 
 ELLIDA. It has come to this. It could not 
 be otherwise. 
 
 WANGEL (looking gloomily at her). So I 
 have not won you by our living together. 
 Never, never possessed you quite. 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! Wangel if only I could love 
 you, how gladly I would as dearly as 'you 
 deserve. But I feel it so well that will 
 never be. 
 
 WANGLE. Divorce, then ? It is a divorce, 
 a complete, legal divorce that you want ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Dear, you understand me so little ! 
 I care nothing for such formalities. Such 
 outer things matter nothing, I think. What 
 I want is that we should, of our own free will, 
 release each other. 
 
 WANGEL (bitterly, nods slowly). To cry off 
 the bargain again yes. 
 
 ELLIDA (quickly). Exactly. To cry off the 
 bargain. 
 
 WANGEL. And then, Ellida ? Afterwards ? 
 Have you reflected what life would be to both
 
 144 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV 
 
 of us ? What life would be to both you and 
 me? 
 
 ELLIDA. No matter. Things must turn 
 out afterwards as they may. What I beg and 
 implore of you, Wangel, is the most im- 
 portant. Only set me free ! Give me back 
 my complete freedom ! 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida, it is a fearful thing you 
 ask of me. At least give me time to collect 
 myself before I come to a decision. Let 
 us talk it over more carefully. And you 
 yourself take time to consider what you are 
 doing. 
 
 ELLIDA. But we have no time to lose with 
 such matters. I must have my freedom again 
 to-day. 
 
 WANGEL. Why to-day ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Because he is coming to-night. 
 
 WANGEL (starts). Coming ! He ! What 
 has this stranger to do with it ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I want to face him in perfect 
 freedom. 
 
 WANGEL. And what what else do you 
 intend to do ? 
 
 ELLIDA. I will not hide behind the fact 
 that I am the wife of another man ; nor make
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 145 
 
 the excuse that I have no choice, for then it 
 would be no decision. 
 
 WANGEL. You speak of a choice. Choice, 
 Ellida ! A choice in such a matter ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, I must be free to choose to 
 choose for either side. I must be able to let 
 him go away alone, or to go with him. 
 
 WANGEL. Do you know what you are 
 saying ? Go with him give your whole life 
 into his hands ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Didn't I give my life into your 
 hands, and without any ado ? 
 
 WANGEL. Maybe. But he ! He ! an abso- 
 lute stranger ! A man of whom you know so 
 little ! 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! but after all I knew you 
 even less ; and yet I went with you. 
 
 WANGEL. Then you knew to some extent 
 what life lay before you. But now ? Think ! 
 What do you know ? You know absolutely 
 nothing. Not even who or what he is. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking in front of her). That is 
 true ; but that is the terror. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, indeed, it is terrible ! 
 
 ELLIDA. That is why I feel I must plunge 
 into it. 
 
 G
 
 146 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 WANGEL (looking at her). Because it seems 
 terrible ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; because of that. 
 
 WANGEL (coming closer). Listen, Ellida. 
 What do you really mean by terrible ? 
 
 ELLIDA (reflectively). The terrible is that 
 which repels and attracts. 
 
 WANGEL. Attracts, you say ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Attracts most of all, I think. 
 
 WANGEL (slowly). You are one with the sea. 
 
 ELLIDA. That too is a terror. 
 
 WANGEL. And that terror is in you. You 
 both repel and attract. 
 
 ELLIDA. Do you think so, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL. After all, I have never really 
 known you never really. Now I am begin- 
 ning to understand. 
 
 ELLIDA. And that is why you must set me 
 free ! Free me from every bond to you and 
 yours. I am not what you took me for. Now 
 you see it yourself. Now we can part as 
 friends and freely. 
 
 WANGEL (sadly). Perhaps it would be 
 
 better for us both if we parted And yet, 
 
 I cannot ! You are the terror to me, Ellida ; 
 the attraction is what is strongest in you.
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 147 
 
 ELLIDA. Do you say that ? 
 
 WANGEL. Let us try and live through this 
 day wisely in perfect quiet of mind. I dare 
 not set you free, and release you to-day. I 
 have no right to. No right for your own sake, 
 Ellida. I exercise my right and my duty to 
 protect you. 
 
 ELLIDA. Protect ? What is there to pro- 
 tect me from ? I am not threatened by 
 any outward power. The terror lies deeper, 
 Wangel. The terror is the attraction in 
 my own mind. And what can you do against 
 that? 
 
 WANGEL. I can strengthen and urge you 
 to fight against it. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ; if I wished to fight against it. 
 
 WANGEL. Then you do not wish to ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! I don't know myself. 
 
 WANGEL. To-night all will be decided, 
 dear Ellida 
 
 ELLIDA (bursting out). Yes, think ! The 
 decision so near the decision for one's whole 
 life! 
 
 WANGEL. And then to-morrow 
 
 ELLIDA. To-morrow ! Perhaps my real 
 future will have been ruined.
 
 148 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV 
 
 WANGEL. Your real 
 
 ELLIDA. The whole, full life of freedom 
 lost lost for me, and perhaps for him also. 
 
 WANGEL (in a lower tone, seizing her wrist}. 
 Ellida, do you love this stranger ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Do I ? Oh, how can I tell ! I 
 only know that to me he is a terror, and 
 that 
 
 WANGEL. And that 
 
 ELLIDA (tearing herself away) and that it 
 is to him I^think I belong. 
 
 WANGEL (bowing his head). I begin to un- 
 derstand better. 
 
 ELLIDA. And what remedy have you for 
 that ? What advice to give me ? 
 
 WANGEL (looking sadly at her). To-mor- 
 row he will be gone, then the misfortune will 
 be averted from your head ; and then I will 
 consent to set you free. We will cry off the 
 bargain to-morrow, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah, Wangel, to-morrow ! that is 
 too late. 
 
 WANGEL (looking towards garden). The 
 children the children ! Let us spare them, 
 at least for the present.
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 149 
 
 [ARNHOLM, BOLETTE, HILDE, and LYNG- 
 STRAND come into the garden L. LYNG- 
 STRAND says good-bye in the garden, 
 and goes out L. The rest come into the 
 room.] 
 
 ARNHOLM. You must know we have been 
 making plans. 
 
 HILDE. We're going out to the fjord to- 
 night and 
 
 BOLETTE. No ; you mustn't tell. 
 
 WANGEL. We two, also, have been making 
 plans. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Ah ! really ? 
 
 WANGEL. To-morrow Ellida is going away 
 to Skjoldviken for a time. 
 
 BOLETTE. Going away ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Now, look here, that's very 
 sensible, Mrs. Wangel. 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida wants to go home again 
 home to the sea. 
 
 HILDE (springing towards ELLIDA). You 
 are going away away from us ? 
 
 ELLIDA (frightened). Hilde ! What is the 
 matter ? 
 
 HILDE (controlling her -self). Oh, it's nothing.
 
 150 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr IV. 
 
 (In a low voice turning from her.} Are only 
 you going ? 
 
 BOLETTE (anxiously). Father, I see it ; 
 you, too, are going to Skjoldviken ! 
 
 WANGEL. No, no ! Perhaps I shall run out 
 there every now and again. 
 
 BOLETTE. And come here to us ? 
 
 WANGEL. I will 
 
 BOLETTE. Every now and again ! 
 
 WANGEL. Dear child, it must be. 
 \_He crosses the room.~] 
 
 ARNHOLM (whispers}. We will talk it over 
 later, Bolette. (He crosses to WANGEL. They 
 speak in low tones up stage by the door.} 
 
 ELLIDA (aside to BOLETTE). What was the 
 matter with Hilde ? She looked quite scared. 
 
 BOLETTE. Have you never noticed what 
 Hilde goes about here, day in, day out, hun- 
 gering for ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Hungering for ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Ever since you came into the 
 house ? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no. What is it ? 
 
 BOLETTE. One loving word from you. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! If there should be something 
 for me to do here !
 
 ACT IV.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 151 
 
 [She clasps her hands together over her 
 
 head, and looks fixedly in front of her, 
 
 as if torn by contending thoughts and 
 
 emotions, WANGEL and ARNHOLM come 
 
 . across the room whispering. BOLETTE 
 
 goes to the side room R., and looks in" 
 
 Then she throws open the door.~\ 
 
 BOLETTE. Father, dear the table is laid 
 
 if you 
 
 WANGEL (with forced composure). Is it, 
 child ? That's well. Come, Arnholm ! We'll 
 go in and drink a farewell cup with the 
 " Lady from the Sea." 
 
 [They go out through the R.]
 
 152 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 Act V. 
 
 The distant part of DOCTOR WANGEL'S garden, and 
 the carp pond. The summer night gradually darkens. 
 ARNHOLM, BOLETTE, LYNGSTRAND, and HILDE in a 
 boat, punting along the shore L. 
 
 HILDE. See ! We can jump ashore easily 
 here. 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, no ; don't ! 
 LYNGSTRAND. I can't jump, Miss Hilde. 
 HILDE. Can't you jump either, Arnholm ? 
 ARNHOLM. I'd rather not try. 
 BOLETTE. Then let's land down there, by 
 the bathing steps. 
 
 [They push off R. At the same moment 
 BALLESTED comes along the footpath R., 
 carrying music-books and a French 
 horn. He bows to those in the boat, 
 turns and speaks to them. The answers 
 are heard farther and farther away.~\ 
 
 BALLESTED. What do you say? Yes, of 
 course it's on account of the English steamer ;
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 153 
 
 for this is her last visit here this year. But if 
 you want to enjoy the pleasures of melody, 
 you mustn't wait too long. (Calling out) 
 What ? (shaking his head). Can't hear what 
 you say ! 
 
 [ELLIDA, with a shawl over her head, 
 enters, followed by DOCTOR WANGEL.] 
 
 WANGEL. But, dear Ellida, I assure you 
 there's plenty of time. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, there is not ! He may 
 come any moment. 
 
 BALLESTED (outside the fence). Hallo ! 
 Good-evening, doctor ! Good-evening, Mrs. 
 Wangel. 
 
 WANGEL (noticing him). Oh ! is it you ? 
 Is there to be music to-night ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Yes ; the Wind Band Society 
 thought of making themselves heard. We've 
 no dearth of festive occasions nowadays. To- 
 night it's in honour of the English ship. 
 
 ELLIDA. The English ship ! Is she in sight 
 already ? 
 
 BALLESTED. Not yet. But you know she 
 comes from between the islands. You can't 
 see anything of her, and then she's alongside 
 of you.
 
 154 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 ELLJDA. Yes, that is so. 
 
 WANGEL (half to ELLIDA). To-night is 
 the last voyage ; then she will not come 
 again. 
 
 BALLESTED. A sad thought, doctor, and 
 that's why we're going to give them an 
 ovation, as the saying is. Ah ! yes ! ah ! 
 yes. The glad summer-time will soon be over 
 now. Soon all ways will be barred, as they 
 say in the tragedy. 
 
 ELLIDA. All ways barred yes ! 
 
 BALLESTED. It's sad to think of. We have 
 been the joyous children of summer for weeks 
 and months now. It's hard to reconcile your- 
 self to the dark days just at first, I mean. 
 For men can accli a acclimatise themselves, 
 Mrs. Wangel. Ay, indeed they can. (Bows, 
 and goes ojf"L.}. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking out at the fjord}. Oh, this 
 terrible suspense ! This torturing last half- 
 hour before the decision. 
 
 WANGEL. You are determined, then, to 
 speak to him yourself? 
 
 ELLIDA. I must speak to him myself ; for 
 it is freely that I must make my choice. 
 WANGEL. You have no choice, Ellida.
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 155 
 
 You have no right to choose no right with- 
 out my permission, 
 
 ELLIDA. You can never prevent the choice, 
 neither you nor anyone. You can forbid me 
 to go away with him to follow him in case 
 I should choose to do that. You can keep me 
 here by force against my will. That you can 
 do. But that I should choose, choose from my 
 very soul choose him, and not you in case 
 I would and did choose thus this you cannot 
 prevent. 
 
 WANGEL. No ; you are right. I cannot 
 prevent that. 
 
 ELLIDA. And so I have nothing to help me 
 to resist. Here, at home, there is no single 
 thing that attracts me and binds me. I am 
 so absolutely rootless in your house, Wangel. 
 The children are not mine their hearts, I 
 mean never have been. When I go, if I do 
 go, either with him to-night, or to Skjold- 
 viken to-morrow, I haven't a key to give up, 
 an order to give about anything whatsoever. 
 I am absolutely rootless in your house I have 
 been absolutely outside everything from the 
 very first. 
 
 WANGEL. You yourself wished it.
 
 156 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, I did not. I neither 
 wished nor did not wish it. I simply left 
 things just as I found them the day I came 
 here. It is you, and no one else, who wished 
 it. 
 
 WANGEL. I thought to do all for the best 
 for you. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, Wangel, I know it so well ! 
 But there is retribution in that, a something 
 that avenges itself. For now I find no bind- 
 ing power here nothing to strengthen me 
 nothing to help me nothing to draw me 
 towards what should have been the strongest 
 possession of us both. 
 
 WANGEL. I see it, Ellida. And that is why 
 from to-morrow you shall have back your 
 freedom. Henceforth you shall live your own 
 life. 
 
 ELLIDA. And you call that my own life ! 
 No ! My own true life lost its bearings when 
 I agreed to live with you (clenches her hand 
 in fear and unrest). And now to-night in 
 half an hour he whom I forsook is coming 
 he to whom I should have cleaved for ever, 
 even as he has cleaved to me ! Now he is 
 coming to offer me for the last and only
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 157 
 
 time the chance of living my life over again, 
 of living my own true life the life that terri- 
 fies and attracts and I can not forego that 
 not freely. 
 
 WANGEL. That is why it is necessary your 
 husband and your doctor should take the 
 power of acting from you, and act on your 
 behalf. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, Wangel, I quite understand. 
 Believe me, there are times when I think it 
 would be peace and deliverance if with all 
 my soul I could be bound to you and try 
 to brave all that terrifies and attracts. But 
 I cannot ! No, no, I cannot do that ! 
 
 WANGEL. Come, Ellida, let us walk up 
 and down together for a while. 
 
 ELLIDA. I would gladly but I dare not. 
 For he said I was to wait for him here. 
 
 WANGEL. Come ! There is time enough. 
 
 ELLIDA. Do you think so ? 
 
 WANGEL. Plenty of time, I tell you. 
 
 ELLIDA. Then let us go, for a little 
 while. 
 
 [ They pass out in the foreground R. At 
 the same time ARNHOLM and BOLETTE 
 appear by the upper bank of the pond '.]
 
 158 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 BOLETTE (noticing the two as they go out). 
 
 See there 
 
 ARNHOLM (in low voice). Hush ! Let them 
 
 go- 
 
 BoLETffe. Can you understand what has been 
 going on between them these last few days ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Have you noticed anything ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Have I not ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Anything peculiar ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, one thing and another. 
 Haven't you ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well I don't exactly know. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, you have ; only you won't 
 speak out about it. 
 
 ARNHOLM. I think it will do your step- 
 mother good to go on this little journey. 
 
 BOLETTE. Do you think so ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I should say it would be well 
 for all parties that she should get away every 
 now and then. 
 
 BOLETTE. If she does go home to Skjold- 
 viken to-morrow she will never come back 
 again to here ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. My dear Bolette, whatever makes 
 you think that ? 
 
 BOLETTE. I am quite convinced of it. Just
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 159 
 
 you wait ; you'll see that she'll not come back 
 again ; not anyhow as long as I and Hilde are 
 in the house here. 
 
 ARXHOLM. Hilde, too ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, it might perhaps be all 
 right with Hilde. For she is scarcely more 
 than a child. And I believe that at bottom 
 she worships Ellida. But, you see, it's different 
 with me a stepmother who isn't so very much 
 older than oneself ! 
 
 ARXHOLM. Dear Bolette, perhaps it might, 
 after all, not be so very long before you left. 
 
 BOLETTE (eagerly). Really ! Have you 
 spoken to father about it ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes, I have. 
 
 BOLETTE. Well, what does he say ? 
 
 ARXHOLM. H'm ! Well, your father's so 
 thoroughly taken up with other matters just 
 now 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, yes ! that's how I knew it 
 would be. 
 
 ARXHOLM. But I got this much out of him. 
 You mustn't reckon upon any help from him. 
 
 BOLETTE. No ? 
 
 ARXHOLM. He explained his circumstances 
 to me clearly ; he thought that such a thing
 
 160 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 was absolutely out of the question, impossible 
 for him. 
 
 BOLETTE (reproachfully). And you had the 
 heart to come and mock me ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I've certainly not done that, 
 dear Bolette. It depends wholly and solely 
 upon yourself whether you go away or not. 
 
 BOLETTE. What depends upon me ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Whether you are to go out into 
 the world learn all you most care for take 
 part in all you are hungering after here at 
 home live your life under brighter con- 
 ditions, Bolette. 
 
 BOLETTE (clasping her hands together). 
 Good God ! But it's impossible ! If father 
 neither can nor will and I have no one else 
 on earth to whom I could turn 
 
 ARNHOLM. Couldn't you make up your 
 mind to accept a little help from your old 
 from your former teacher ? 
 
 BOLETTE. From you, Mr. Arnholm ! 
 Would you be willing to 
 
 ARNHOLM. Stand by you ! Yes with all 
 my heart. Both with word and in deed. You 
 may count upon it. Then you accept ? Well ? 
 Do you agree ?
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 161 
 
 BOLETTE. Do I agree ! To get away to 
 see the world to learn something thoroughly ! 
 All that seemed to be a great, beautiful im- 
 possibility ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. All that may now become a 
 reality to you, if only you yourself wish it. 
 
 BOLETTE. And to all this unspeakable hap- 
 piness you will help me ! Oh, no ! Tell me, 
 can I accept such an offer from a stranger ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. You can from me, Bolette. 
 From me you can accept anything. 
 
 BOLETTE (seizing his hands]. Yes, I almost 
 think I can ! I don't know how it is, but 
 (bursting out} Oh ! I could both laugh and 
 cry for joy, for happiness ! Then I should 
 know life really after all. I began to be so 
 afraid life would pass me by. 
 
 ARNHOLM. You need not fear that, Bolette. 
 But now you must tell me quite frankly if 
 there is anything anything you are bound to 
 here. 
 
 BOLETTE. Bound to ? Nothing. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Nothing whatever ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No, nothing at all. That is 
 I am bound to father to some extent. And 
 to Hilde, too. But
 
 162 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V, 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, you'll have to leave your 
 father sooner or later. And some time Hilde 
 also will go her own way in life. That is only 
 a question of time. Nothing more. And so 
 there is nothing else that binds you, Bolette. 
 Not any kind of connection ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Nothing whatever. As far as 
 that goes, I could leave at any moment. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Well, if that is so, dear Bolette, 
 you shall go away with me ! 
 
 BOLETTE (clapping her hand). O God ! 
 what joy to think of it ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. For I hope you trust me fully ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Indeed, I do ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. And you dare to trust your- 
 self and your future fully and confidently into 
 my hands, Bolette ? Is that true ? You will 
 dare to do this ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Of course ; how could I not do 
 so ? Could you believe anything else ? You, 
 Avho have been my old teacher my teacher 
 in the old days, I mean. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Not because of that. I will 
 not consider that side of the matter ; but 
 well, so you are free, Bolette ! There is no- 
 thing that binds you, and so I ask you, if you
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 163 
 
 could if you could bind yourself to me for 
 life? 
 
 BOLETTE (steps back frightened}. What are 
 you saying ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. For all your life, Bolette. Will 
 you be my wife ? 
 
 BOLETTE (half to herself). No, no, no ! 
 That is impossible, utterly impossible ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. It is really so absolutely impos- 
 sible for you to 
 
 BOLETTE. But, surely, you cannot mean 
 what you are saying, Mr. Arnholm ! (Looking 
 at him) Or yet was that what you meant 
 when you offered to do so much for me ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. You must listen to me one 
 moment, Bolette. I suppose I have greatly 
 surprised you ! 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! how could such a thing 
 from you how could it but but surprise me ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. Perhaps you are right. Of 
 course, you didn't you could not know it 
 was for your sake I made this journey. 
 
 BOLETTE. Did you come here for for my 
 sake ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I did, Bolette. In the spring I 
 received a letter from your father, and in it
 
 164 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 there was a passage that made me think h'm 
 that you held your former teacher in in a 
 little more than friendly remembrance. 
 
 BOLETTE. How could father write such a 
 thing ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. He did not mean it so. But 
 I worked myself into the belief that here 
 was a young girl longing for me to come 
 again. No, you mustn't interrupt me, dear 
 Bolette ! And you see, when a man like my- 
 self, who is no longer quite young, has such a 
 belief or fancy, it makes an overwhelming 
 impression. There greAv within me a living, 
 a grateful affection for you ; I thought I must 
 come to you, see you again, and tell you I 
 shared the feelings that I fancied you had 
 for me. 
 
 BOLETTE. And now you know it is not so ! 
 that it was a mistake ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. It can't be helped, Bolette. 
 Your image, as I bear it within myself, will 
 always be coloured and stamped with the im- 
 pression that this mistake gave me. Perhaps 
 you cannot understand this ; but still it is so. 
 
 BOLETTE. I never thought such a thing 
 possible.
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 165 
 
 ARNHOLM. But now you have seen that it 
 is possible, what do you say now, Bolette? 
 Couldn't you make up your mind to be yes 
 to be my wife ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! it seems so utterly im- 
 possible, Mr. Arnholm. You, who have been 
 my teacher ! I can't imagine ever standing 
 in any other relation towards you. 
 
 ARXHOLM. Well, well, if you think you 
 really cannot. Then our old relations remain 
 unchanged, dear Bolette. 
 
 BOLETTE. What do you mean ? 
 
 ARXHOLM. Of course, to keep my promise 
 all the same. I will take care you get out 
 into the world, and see something of it. Learn 
 some things you really want to know ; live 
 safe and independent. Your future I shall 
 provide for also, Bolette. For in me you will 
 always have a good, faithful, trustworthy 
 friend. Be sure of that. 
 
 BOLETTE. Good heavens ! Mr. Arnholm, 
 all that is so utterly impossible now. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is that impossible too ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Surely you can see that ! After 
 what you have just said to me, and after my 
 answer oh ! you yourself must see that it is
 
 1 66 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 impossible for me now to accept so very much 
 from you. I can accept nothing from you 
 nothing after this. 
 
 ARNHOLM. So you would rather stay at 
 home here, and let life pass you by ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! it is such dreadful misery 
 to think of that. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Will you renounce knowing 
 something of the outer world ? Renounce 
 bearing your part in all that you yourself say 
 you are hungering for ? To know there is so 
 infinitely much, and yet never really to under- 
 stand anything of it ? Think carefully, 
 Bolette. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, yes ! You are right, Mr. 
 Arnholm. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And then, when one day your 
 father is no longer here, then perhaps to be 
 left helpless and alone in the world ; or live 
 to give yourself to another man whom you, 
 perhaps, will also feel no affection for 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh, yes ! I see how true all you 
 say is. But still and yet perhaps 
 
 ARNHOLM (quickly). Well ? 
 
 BOLETTE (looking at htm hesitatingly). Per- 
 haps it might not be so impossible after all.
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 167 
 
 ARNHOLM. What, Bolette ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Perhaps it might be possible 
 to accept what you proposed to me. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Do you mean that, after all, 
 you might be willing to that, at all events, 
 you could give me the happiness of helping 
 you as a steadfast friend ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No, no, no. Never that, for 
 that would be utterly impossible now. No 
 Mr. Arnholm rather take me. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Bolette ! You will ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes, I believe I will. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And after all you will be my 
 wife ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes ; if you still think that 
 that you will have me. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Think ! (seizing her hand.} Oh, 
 thanks, thanks, Bolette. All else that you 
 said your former doubts these do not 
 frighten me. If I do not yet possess your 
 whole heart, I shall know how to conquer it. 
 Oh, Bolette, I will wait upon you hand and 
 foot ! 
 
 BOLETTE. And then I shall see something 
 of the world ? Shall live ! You have pro- 
 mised me that ?
 
 1 68 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 ARNHOLM. And will keep my promise. 
 
 BOLETTE. Arid I may learn everything I 
 want to ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. I, myself, will be your teacher 
 as formerly, Bolette. Do you remember the 
 last school year ? 
 
 BOLETTE (quietly and absently). To think 
 to know one's self free, and to get out into 
 the strange world, and then, not to need to be 
 anxious for the future not to be harassed 
 about one's stupid livelihood ! 
 
 ARNHOLM. No, you will never need to 
 waste a thought upon such matters. And 
 that's a good thing, too, in its way, dear Bo- 
 lette, isn't it ? Eh ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Indeed it is. That is certain. 
 
 ARNHOLM (putting his arms about her}. 
 Oh, you will see how comfortably and easily 
 we shall settle down together ! And how well, 
 and safely, and trustfully we two shall get on 
 with one another, Bolette. 
 
 BOLETTE. Yes. I also begin to I believe 
 really it will answer (looks out R., and hur- 
 riedly frees herself}. Oh, don't say ^anything 
 about this. 
 
 ARNHOLM. What is it, dear ?
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 169 
 
 BOLETTE. Oh ! it's that poor (pointing) 
 see out there. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Is it your father ? 
 
 BOLETTE. No. It's the young sculptor, 
 He's down there with Hilde. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Oh, Lyngstrand ! What's really 
 the matter with him ? 
 
 BOLETTE. Why, you know how weak and 
 delicate he is. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Yes. Unless it's simply im- 
 aginary. 
 
 BOLETTE. No, it's real enough ! He'll not 
 last long. But perhaps that's best for him. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Dear, why should that be 
 best? 
 
 BOLETTE. Because because nothing 
 would come of his art anyhow. Let's go 
 before they come. 
 
 ARNHOLM. Gladly, my dear Bolette. 
 
 \_Hilde and Lyngstrand appear by the pond.~\ 
 
 HILDE. Hi, hi ! Won't your honours wait 
 for us ? 
 
 ARNHOLM. Bolette and I would rather go 
 on a little in advance. 
 
 \_He and BOLETTE exit L.] 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (laughs quietly). It's very
 
 170 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V- 
 
 delightful here now. Everybody goes about 
 in pairs always two and two together. 
 
 HILDE (looking after them). I could almost 
 swear he's proposing to her. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Really? Have you noticed 
 anything ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes. It's not very difficult if you 
 keep your eyes open. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. But Miss Bolette won't have 
 him. I'm certain of that. 
 
 HILDE. No. For she thinks he's got so 
 dreadfully old-looking, and she thinks he'll 
 soon get bald. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. It's not only because of that. 
 She'd not have him anyhow. 
 
 HILDE. How can you know ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Well, because there's some- 
 one else she's promised to think of. 
 
 HILDE. Only to think of ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. While he is away, yes.. 
 
 HILDE. Oh ! then I suppose it's you she's 
 to think of. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Perhaps it might be. 
 
 HILDE. She promised you that ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes think she promised me 
 that ! But mind you don't tell her you know.
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 171 
 
 HILDE. Oh ! I'll be mum ! I'm as secret 
 as the grave. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I think it's awfully kind of 
 her. 
 
 HILDE. And when you come home again 
 are you going to be engaged to her, and 
 then marry her ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. No, that wouldn't very well 
 do. For I daren't think of such a thing dur- 
 ing the first years. And when I shall be able 
 to, she'll be rather too old for me, I fancy. 
 
 HILDE. And yet you wish her to think of 
 you ? 
 
 LNYGSTRAND. Yes ; that's so useful to me. 
 You see, I'm an artist. And she can very 
 well do it, because she herself has no real call- 
 ing. But all the same, it's kind of her. 
 
 HILDE. Do you think you'll be able to get 
 on more quickly with your work if you know 
 that Bolette is here thinking of you ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I fancy so. To know 
 there is a spot on earth where a young, gentle, 
 reserved woman is quietly dreaming about 
 you I fancy it must be so so well, I 
 really don't exactly know what to call it. 
 
 HILDE. Perhaps you mean fascinating ?
 
 172 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Aer V. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Fascinating ! Oh, yes ! 
 Fascinating was what I meant, or something 
 like it (looks fit her for a moment). You are 
 so clever, Miss Hilde. Really you are very 
 clever. When I come home again you'll be 
 about the same age as your sister is now. 
 Perhaps, too, you'll look like your sister looks 
 now. And perhaps, too, you'll be of the same 
 mind she is now. Then, perhaps, you'll be 
 both yourself and your sister in one form, so 
 to say. 
 
 HILDE. Would you like that ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. I hardly know. Yes ; I al- 
 most think I should. But now, for this sum- 
 mer I would rather you were like yourself 
 alone, and exactly as you are. 
 
 HILDE. Do you like me best as I am ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, I like you immensely 
 as you are. 
 
 HILDE. H'm. Tell me, you who are an 
 artist, do you think I'm right always to wear 
 bright-coloured summer dresses ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; I think you're quite 
 right ! 
 
 HILDE. You think bright colours suit me, 
 then?
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 173 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. They suit you charmingly 
 to my taste. 
 
 HILDE. But tell me, as an artist, how do 
 you think I should look in black ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. ; In black, Miss Hilde ? 
 
 HILDE. Yes, all in black. Do you think I 
 should look well ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Black's hardly suitable for 
 the summer. However, you'd probably look 
 remarkably well in black, especially with your 
 appearance. 
 
 HILDE (looking straight in front of her}. 
 All in black, up to the throat ; black frilling 
 round that, black gloves, and a long black veil 
 hanging down behind. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. If you were dressed so, Miss 
 Hilde, I should wish I were a painter, and I'd 
 paint you as a young, beautiful, sorrowing 
 widow ! 
 
 HILDE. Or as a young, sorrowing, betrothed 
 girl! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes, that would be better 
 still. But you can't wish to be dressed like 
 that? 
 
 HILDE. I hardly know ; but I think it's 
 fascinating.
 
 174 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Fascinating ? 
 
 HILDE. Fascinating to think of, yes. (Sud- 
 denly pointing L.) Oh, just look there ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (looking). The great English 
 steamer ; and right by the pier ! 
 
 [W ANGEL and ELLIDA come in past the 
 pond.~\ 
 
 WANGEL. No ; I assure you, dear Ellida, 
 you are mistaken. (Seeing the others.} What, 
 are you two here ? It's not in sight yet ; is 
 it, Mr. Lyngstrand ? 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. The great English ship ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND (painting}. There she is al- 
 ready, doctor. 
 
 ELLIDA. I knew it. 
 
 WANGEL. Come ! 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Come like a thief in the night, 
 as one might say, so quietly and noiselessly. 
 
 WANGEL. You must go to the pier with 
 Hilde. Be quick ! I'm sure she wants to hear 
 the music. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. Yes ; we were just going 
 there, doctor. 
 
 WANGEL. Perhaps we'll follow you. We'll 
 come directly.
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 175 
 
 HILDE (whispering to LYNGSTRAND). They're 
 hunting in couples, too ! 
 
 [HiLDE and LYNGSTRAND go out through 
 the garden L. Music is heard in the 
 distance out at the fjord during the 
 following^ 
 
 ELLIDA. Come ! He is here ! Yes, yes I 
 feel it. 
 
 WANGEL. You'd better go in, Ellida. Let 
 me talk with him alone. 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! that's impossible impossible 
 I say. ( With a cry) Ah ! do you see him, 
 Wan gel ? 
 
 [The STRANGER enters from the L., and 
 remains on the pathway outside the 
 
 THE STRANGER (bowing). Good evening. 
 You see I am here again, Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, yes. The time has come now. 
 
 THE STRANGER. And are you ready to 
 start, or not ? 
 
 WANGEL. You can see for yourself that 
 she is not. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I'm not asking about a 
 travelling dress, or anything of that kind, nor 
 about packed trunks. All that is needed for
 
 176 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 a journey I have with me on board. I've also 
 secured a cabin for her. (To Ellida) So I ask 
 you if you are ready to go with me, to go with 
 me freely ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Oh ! do not ask me ! Do not 
 tempt me ! 
 
 [A ship's bell is heard in the distance.'] 
 
 THE STRANGER. That is the first bell for 
 going on board. Now you must say "Yes" 
 or " No." 
 
 ELLIDA (wringing her hands). To decide 
 decide for one's whole life. Never to be able 
 to undo it again ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Never. In half an hour 
 it will be too late. 
 
 ELLIDA (looking shyly and searchingly at 
 hint). Why is it you hold to me so reso- 
 lutely ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Don't you feel, as I do, 
 that we two belong together ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Do you mean because of the vow ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. Vows bind no one, neither 
 man nor woman. If I hold so steadfastly to 
 you, it is because I cannot do otherwise. 
 
 ELLIDA (in a low, trembling voice}. Why 
 didn't you come before ?
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 177 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida ! 
 
 ELLIDA (bursting out}. Ah ! All that at- 
 tracts, and tempts, and lures into the unknown! 
 All the strength of the sea concentrated in 
 this one thing ! 
 
 [The STRANGER climbs over the fence. ~\ 
 
 ELLIDA (stepping back to WANGEL). What 
 is it ? What do you want ? 
 
 THE STRANGER. I see it and I hear it in 
 you, Ellida. After all you will choose me in 
 the end. 
 
 WANGEL (going towards him). My wife 
 has no choice here. I am here both to choose 
 for her and to defend her. Yes, defend ! If 
 you do not go away from here away from 
 
 this land and never come back again 
 
 Do you know to what you are exposing your- 
 self? 
 
 ELLIDA. No, no, Wangel, not that ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. What will you do to 
 me ? 
 
 WANGEL. I will have you arrested as a 
 criminal, at once, before you go on board ; 
 for I know all about the murder at Skjold- 
 viken. 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! Wangel, how can you ?
 
 178 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I was prepared for that, 
 and so (takes a revolver from his breast 
 pocket] I provided myself with this. 
 
 ELLIDA (throwing herself in front of him), 
 No, no ; do not kill him ! better kill me! 
 
 THE STRANGER. Neither you nor him, 
 don't fear that. This is for myself, for I will 
 live and die a free man. 
 
 ELLIDA (with growing excitement}. Wan- 
 gel, let me tell you this tell it you so that he 
 may hear it. You can indeed keep me here ! 
 You have the means and the power to do it. 
 And you intend to do it. But my mind all 
 my thoughts, all the longings and desires of 
 my soul these you cannot bind ! These will 
 rush and press out into the unknown that I 
 was created for, and that you have kept from 
 me ! 
 
 WANGEL (in quiet sorrow}. I see it, El- 
 lida. Step by step you are slipping from me. 
 The craving for the boundless, the infinite, 
 the unattainable will drive your soul into the 
 darkness of night at last. 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes ! I feel it hovering over me 
 like black noiseless wings. 
 
 WANGEL. It shall not come to that. No
 
 ACT V. THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 179 
 
 other deliverance is possible for you. I at 
 least can see no other. And so so I cry off 
 our bargain at once. Now you can choose 
 your own path in perfect perfect freedom. 
 
 ELLIDA (stares at him awhile as if stricken 
 dumb}. Is it true true what you say ? 
 Do you mean that mean it with all your 
 heart ? 
 
 W ANGEL. Yes with all my sorrowing 
 heart I mean it. 
 
 ELLIDA. And can you do it ? Can you 
 let it be so ? 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, I can. Because I love you 
 so dearly. 
 
 ELLIDA (in a low, trembling voice). And have 
 I come so near so close to you ? 
 
 WANGEL. The .years and the living to- 
 gether have done that. 
 
 ELLIDA (clasping her hands together). And 
 I who so little understood this ! 
 
 WANGEL. Your thoughts went elsewhere. 
 And now now you are completely free of 
 me and mine and and mine. Now your own 
 true life may resume its real bent again, for 
 now you can choose in freedom, and on your 
 own responsibility, Ellida.
 
 180 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 ELLIDA (clasps her head with her hands, and 
 stares at WANGEL). In freedom, and on my 
 own responsibility ! Responsibility, too ? That 
 changes everything. 
 
 \The ship bell rings again. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Do you hear, Ellida ? It 
 has rung now for the last time. Come. 
 
 ELLIDA (turns towards him, looks firmly at 
 htm, and speaks in a resolute voice). I shall 
 never go with you after this ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. You will not ! 
 
 ELLIDA (clinging to WANGEL). I shall never 
 go away from you after this. 
 
 WANGEL. Ellida, Ellida ! 
 
 THE STRANGER. So it is over ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes. Over for all time. 
 
 THE STRANGER. I see. There is some- 
 thing here stronger than my will. 
 
 ELLIDA. Your will has not a shadow of 
 power over me any longer. To me you are as 
 one dead who has come home from the sea, 
 and who returns to it again. I no longer 
 dread you. And I am no longer drawn to 
 you. 
 
 THE STRANGER. Good-bye, Mrs. Wangel ! 
 (He swings himself over the fenced) Hence-
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 181 
 
 forth you are nothing but a shipwreck in my 
 life that I have tided over. (He goes out L.) 
 
 WANGEL (looks at her for a while}. Ellida, 
 your mind is like the sea it has ebb and 
 flow. Whence came the change ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Ah ! don't you understand that 
 the change came was bound to come when I 
 could choose in freedom ? 
 
 WANGEL. And the unknown ? It no 
 longer lures you ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Neither lures nor frightens me. 
 I could have seen it gone out into it, if 
 eonly I myself had willed it. I could hav 
 chosen it. And that is why I could also re- 
 nounce it. 
 
 WANGEL. I begin to understand little by 
 little. You think and conceive in pictures 
 in visible figures. Your longing and aching 
 for the sea, your attraction towards this 
 strange man, these were the expression of an 
 awakening and growing desire for freedom ; 
 nothing else. 
 
 ELLIDA. I don't know about that. But 
 you have been a good physician for me. You 
 found, and you dared to use the right remedy 
 the only one that could help me.
 
 i8z THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, in utmost need and danger 
 we doctors dare much. And now you are 
 coming back to me again, Ellida ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, dear, faithful Wangel now 
 I am coming back to you again. Now I can. 
 For now I come to you freely, and on my own 
 responsibility. 
 
 WANGEL (looks lovingly at her). Ellida ! 
 Ellida ! To think that now we can live 
 wholly for one another 
 
 ELLIDA. And with common memories. 
 Yours, as well as mine. 
 
 WANGEL. Yes, indeed, dear. 
 
 ELLIDA. And for our children, Wangel ? 
 
 WANGEL. You call them ours ! 
 
 ELLIDA. They who are not mine yet, but 
 whom I shall win. 
 
 WANGEL. Ours ! (gladly and quickly kisses 
 her hands). I cannot speak my thanks for 
 those words ! 
 
 [HILDE, BALLESTED, LYNGSTRAND, ARN- 
 HOLM, and BOLETTE come into the gar- 
 den, L. At the same time a number of 
 young townspeople and visitors pass 
 along the footpath^ 
 
 HILDE (aside to LYNGSTRAND.) See ! Why,
 
 ACT V.] THE LADY FROM THE SEA. 183 
 
 she and father look exactly as if they were 
 a betrothed couple ! 
 
 BALLESTED (who has overheard}. It is sum- 
 mer time, little missie. 
 
 ARNHOLM (looking at WANGEL and ELLIDA). 
 The English steamer is putting off. 
 
 BOLETTE (going to the fence). You can see 
 her best from here. 
 
 LYNGSTRAND. The last voyage this year. 
 
 BALLESTED. Soon all the sea-highways will 
 be closed, as the poet says. It is sad, Mrs. 
 Wangel. And now we're to lose you also for 
 a time. To-morrow you're off to Skjoldviken, 
 I hear. 
 
 WANGEL. No ; nothing will come of that. 
 We two have changed our minds to-night. 
 
 ARNHOLM (looking from one to the other). 
 Oh ! really ! 
 
 BOLETTE (coming forward}. Father, is that 
 true? 
 
 HILDE {going towards ELLIDA). Are you 
 going to stay with us after all ? 
 
 ELLIDA. Yes, dear Hilde, if you'll have 
 me. 
 
 HILDE (struggling between tears and laugh- 
 ter). Fancy ! Have you !
 
 184 THE LADY FROM THE SEA. [Acr V. 
 
 ARNHOLM (to ELLIDA). But this is quite a 
 surprise 
 
 ELLIDA (smiling, earnestly). Well, you see, 
 
 Mr. Arnholm Do you remember we 
 
 talked about it yesterday ? When you have 
 once become a land-creature you can no longer 
 find your way back again to the sea, nor to the 
 sea-life either. 
 
 BALLESTED. Why, that's exactly the case 
 with my mermaid. 
 
 ELLIDA. Something like yes. 
 
 BALLESTED. Only with this difference 
 that the mermaid dies of it, while human 
 beings can acclam acclimatise themselves. 
 Yes, yes. I assure you, Mrs. Wangel, they 
 can ac-cli-matise themselves. 
 
 ELLIDA. In freedom they can, Mr. Balle- 
 sted. 
 
 WANGEL. And when they act on their own 
 responsibility, dear Ellida. 
 
 ELLIDA (quickly holding out her hand to 
 him). Exactly. 
 
 [The great steamer glides noiselessly out 
 beyond the fjord. The music is heard 
 nearer land.~\
 
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