RANK [sitting down by the stove]. It is all up with me. And it can’t be helped.

NORA [with a sigh of relief]. Is it about yourself?

RANK. Who else? It is no use lying to one’s self. I am the most wretched of all my patients, Mrs. Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall lie rotting in the churchyard.

NORA. What an ugly thing to say!

RANK. The thing itself is cursedly ugly, and the worst of it is that I shall have to face so much more that is ugly before that. I shall only make one more examination of myself; when I have done that I shall know pretty certainly when it will be that the horrors of dissolution will begin. There is something I want to tell you. Helmer’s refined nature gives him an unconquerable disgust at everything that is ugly; I won’t have him in my sickroom.

NORA. Oh, but, Doctor Rank——

RANK. I won’t have him there. Not on any account. I bar my door to him. As soon as I am quite certain that the worst has come I shall send you my card with a black cross on it, and then you will know that the loathsome end has begun.

NORA. You are quite absurd today. And I wanted you so much to be in a really good humor.

RANK. With death stalking beside me? To have to pay this penalty for another man’s sin! Is there any justice in that? And in every single family, in one way or another, some such inexorable retribution is being exacted.

NORA [putting her hands over her ears]. Rubbish! Do talk of something cheerful.

RANK. Oh, it’s a mere laughing matter, the whole thing. My poor innocent spine has to suffer for my father’s youthful amusements.

NORA [sitting at the table on the left]. I suppose you mean that he was too partial to asparagus and pâté de foie gras, don’t you?

RANK. Yes, and to truffles.

NORA. Truffles, yes. And oysters too, I suppose?

RANK. Oysters, of course; that goes without saying.

NORA. And heaps of port and champagne. It is sad that all these nice things should take their revenge on our bones.

RANK. Especially that they should revenge themselves on the unlucky bones of those who have not had the satisfaction of enjoying them.

NORA. Yes, that’s the saddest part of it all.

RANK [with a searching look at her]. Hm!

NORA [after a short pause]. Why did you smile?

RANK. No, it was you that laughed.

NORA. No, it was you that smiled, Doctor Rank!