"You are a murderer and you have committed the one mortal sin.... You have killed the love life in me. Do you understand what that means? The Bible speaks of a mysterious sin for which there is no forgiveness. I have never understood what it could be; but now I understand. The great, unpardonable sin is to murder the love life in a human soul.... You have done that. I have never rightfully understood until this evening what has really happened to me. That you deserted me and turned to Gunhild instead--I took that to be mere common fickleness on your part, and the result of heartless scheming on hers. I almost think I despise you a little in spite of everything. But now I see it! You deserted the woman you loved! Me, me, me! What you held dearest in the world you were ready to barter away for gain. That is the double murder you have committed! The murder of your own soul and mine!" And again, "You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness in life--and a mother's sorrows and tears as well." Then Ella tells Borkman that sorrow and disease have broken her down, and she intends leaving her fortune to Erhart, the only one she loves; her spiritual son, but he must give up the name of Borkman and take that of Rentheim. Mrs. Borkman appears at this juncture, and there is another clash as the curtain falls on three wretched people. Act III treads closely on the heels of the preceding one, for the action of the entire play takes place during one dull winter's evening; and if there is unity of time, unity of place, there is unity of character, for like some vast but closely knitted polyphonic composition, the piece contains not a line, not a character, that is wasted or undeveloped. It is as far as form simply magnificent; an object lesson to young dramatists. But as to its theme; ah, I, too, would be sorry to see our stage always filled with these crabbed, sour, mean, loveless, and sad-visaged people! Little wonder that joyous Erhart Borkman, the selfish son of a union barren of love, goes away in Act III, after a climax that simply cuts into your nerves. Father and mother--oh, the agony of that poor, old, weak, deserted woman--appeal to him, but with Mrs. Wilton and a young girl, a daughter of the old clerk, he goes out into the world to see life, to seek love, to enjoy, to enjoy, to enjoy! It is the new laughing at the despair of the old, and the curtain falls on a group that seems frozen with antique grief. Of Act IV and Borkman's death--his soul had been dead since he went to prison--I shall say but little. The end is silver-tipped with symbolical hintings, but there is nothing dark or devious for even the commonest comprehension. The spiritual director of the Théâtre de l'œuvre, M. Lugné-Poë, once wrote of Ibsen thus:--