Father. He loves her! (Embraces his wife.) What more is there to say, then? Everything is as it should be. Come along and have a glass of sherry!
Axel. No, everything is not as it should be. I can get her gratitude sometimes in a lucky moment, but not her heart. If I am fond of a certain thing, she is not. If I wish a thing, she wishes the opposite--for instance, if it's only a question of going to a ball, she won't take any pleasure in it unless her mother can go too.
Mother. Good heavens, is it nothing but that!
Laura. No, mother, it is nothing else; it is this ball.
Father. Then for any sake go to the ball! You are a couple of noodles. Come along, now.
Axel. The ball? It is not the ball. I don't care a bit about the ball.
Laura. No, that is just it, mother. When he gets what he wants, it turns out that it wasn't what he wanted at all, but something quite different. I don't understand what it is.
Axel. No, because it is not a question of any one thing, but of our whole relations to one another. Love is what I miss; she does not know what it means, and never will know--as long as she remains at home here. (A pause.)
Mother (slowly). As long as she remains at home?
Father (coming nearer to him, and trembling slightly). What do you mean by that?
Axel. It will be only when Laura finds she can no longer lean upon her parents, that she may possibly come to lean upon me.
Axel. If she is to be something more than a good daughter--if she is to be a good wife--Laura must go away from here.
Axel. It would be wronging her whom I love so deeply, it would be wronging myself, and wronging you who mean so well, if now, when the power is in my hands, I had not the spirit to make use of it. Here, Laura lives only for you; when you die, life will be over for her. But that is not what marriage means, that is not what she promised at the altar, and that is what I cannot submit to. To go on like this will only make us all unhappy; and that is why Laura must go with me! (The MOTHER starts forward; LAURA goes to MATHILDE.)
Axel. I am in deadly earnest, and no one can shake my resolution.
Mother. Then Heaven have mercy on us! (A pause.)
Father. You know, Axel, that God gave us five children; and you know, too, that He took four away from us again. Laura is now our only child, our only joy.