MRS. BORKMAN. What is that? BORKMAN. I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world--out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew--higher than ever before--in spite of all that lay between. MRS. BORKMAN. Oh, it would have been the same thing over again; take my word for that. BORKMAN. [Shakes his head, and looks at her with a sententious air.] It is true that nothing new happens; but what has happened does not repeat itself either. It is the eye that transforms the action. The eye, born anew, transforms the old action. [Breaking off.] But you do not understand this. MRS. BORKMAN. [Curtly.] No, I do not understand it. BORKMAN. Ah, that is just the curse--I have never found one single soul to understand me. ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looking at him.] Never, Borkman? BORKMAN. Except one--perhaps. Long, long ago. In the days when I did not think I needed understanding. Since then, at any rate, no one has understood me! There has been no one alive enough to my needs to be afoot and rouse me--to ring the morning bell for me--to call me up to manful work anew. And to impress upon me that I had done nothing inexpiable. MRS. BORKMAN. [With a scornful laugh.] So, after all, you require to have that impressed on you from without? BORKMAN. [With increasing indignation.] Yes, when the whole world hisses in chorus that I have sunk never to rise again, there come moments when I almost believe it myself. [Raising his head.] But then my inmost assurance rises again triumphant; and that acquits me. MRS. BORKMAN.