the whole case--by myself. Time after time I have re-tried it. I have been my own accuser, my own defender, and my own judge. I have been more impartial than any one else could be--that I venture to say. I have paced up and down the gallery there, turning every one of my actions upside down and inside out. I have examined them from all sides as unsparingly, as pitilessly, as any lawyer of them all. And the final judgment I have always come to is this: the one person I have sinned against is--myself. MRS. BORKMAN. And what about me? What about your son? BORKMAN. You and he are included in what I mean when I say myself. MRS. BORKMAN. And what about the hundreds of others, then--the people you are said to have ruined? BORKMAN. [More vehemently.] I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry--I alone had ears for it. MRS. BORKMAN. Yes, to the branding of the name of Borkman. BORKMAN. If the others had had the power, do you think they would not have acted exactly as I did? MRS. BORKMAN. No one, no one but you would have done it! BORKMAN. Perhaps not. But that would have been because they had not my brains. And if they had done it, it would not have been with my aims in view. The act would have been a different act. In short, I have acquitted myself. ELLA RENTHEIM. [Softly and appealingly.] Oh, can you say that so confidently, Borkman? BORKMAN. [Nodding.] Acquitted myself on that score. But then comes the great, crushing self-accusation. MRS. BORKMAN.