Status Updates From Rosmerholm

God forgive the sinful creatures--if they are not in each other's arms! (Gives a wild scream.) Ah!--they are over--both of them! Over into the mill-race! Help! help! (Her knees tremble, she holds on shakily to the back of a chair and can scarcely get her words out.) No. No help here. The dead woman has taken them.

Rosmer (sitting down wearily on the couch). Oh, let me be! I see the
whole thing clearly now. I have been like a glove in your hands.

Kroll (in a subdued voice). I believe you could bewitch any one--if you
set yourself to do it.

Rebecca. And you say I set myself to do it!

Rebecca (impetuously). Oh, these are nothing but prejudices you have
inherited--these doubts, these fears, these scruples! You have a legend
here that your dead return to haunt you in the form of white horses.
This seems to me to be something of that sort.

Rosmer. You may be sure she did not fail to notice that we read the
same books; that we sought one another's company, and discussed every
new topic together. But I cannot understand it--because I was always so
careful to spare her. When I look back, it seems to me that I did everything I could to keep her apart from our lives. Or did I not,
Rebecca?

Kroll. I never knew, till yesterday evening, that it was a case of an
apostate man and an "emancipated" woman living together.

Rebecca. I have read several of them. My foster-father had them.

Brendel. My dear lady, then you have wasted your time. They are simply
trash, allow me to tell you.

Rebecca. Really?

Brendel. Those you have read, yes. My really important works no man or
woman knows anything about. No one--except myself.

Rebecca. How is that?

Brendel. Because they are not yet written.

Kroll. Yes, don't you think that is a nice sort of intellectual pabulum
for future public servants? But the saddest part of it is that it is
all the most promising boys in the class that have conspired together
and hatched this plot against me. It is only the duffers and dunces
that have held aloof from it.