During eight whole years, and more—ever since the day we first met—we have never exchanged one serious word about serious things. HELMER. Was I always to trouble you with the cares you could not help me to bear? NORA. I am not talking of cares. I say that we have never yet set ourselves seriously to get to the bottom of anything. HELMER. Why, my dearest Nora, what have you to do with serious things? NORA. There we have it! You have never understood me.—I have had great injustice done me, Torvald; first by father, and then by you. HELMER. What! By your father and me?—By us, who have loved you more than all the world? NORA [_Shaking her head._] You have never loved me. You only thought it amusing to be in love with me. HELMER. Why, Nora, what a thing to say! NORA. Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I said nothing about them, because he wouldn’t have liked it. He used to call me his doll-child, and played with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house—— HELMER. What an expression to use about our marriage! NORA. [_Undisturbed._] I mean I passed from father’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to—I don’t know which—both ways, perhaps; sometimes one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It is your fault that my life has come to nothing. HELMER. Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you are! Have you not been happy here? NORA. No, never. I thought I was; but I never was. HELMER. Not—not happy! NORA. No; only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a play-room. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa’s doll-child. And the children, in their turn, have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as the children did when I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald. HELMER. There is some truth in what you say, exaggerated and overstrained though it be. But henceforth it shall be different. Play-time is over; now comes the time for education. NORA. Whose education? Mine, or the children’s?