Helmer (turning over letters absently).  You must break them of it—­bad habit!  What a lot o’ lettersh! double usual quantity. (Opens KROGSTAD’s.) By Jove! (Reads it and falls back completely sobered.) What have you got to say to this?

Nora (crying aloud.) You shan’t save me—­let me go!  I won’t be saved!

Helmer.  Save you, indeed!  Who’s going to save Me?  You miserable little criminal. (Annoyed.) Ugh—­ugh!

Nora (with hardening expression).  Indeed, TORVALD, your singing-bird acted for the best!

Helmer.  Singing-bird!  Your father was a rook—­and you take after him.  Heredity again!  You have utterly destroyed my happiness. (Walks round several times.) Just as I was beginning to get on, too!

Nora.  I have—­but I will go away and jump into the water.

Helmer.  What good will that do me?  People will say I had a hand in this business (bitterly).  If you must forge, you might at least put your dates in correctly!  But you never had any principle! (A ring.) The front-door bell! (A fat letter is seen to fall into the box; HELMER takes it, opens it, sees enclosure, and embraces NORA.) KROGSTAD won’t split.  See, he returns the forged I.O.U.!  Oh, my poor little lark, what you must have gone through!  Come under my wing, my little scared song-bird....  Eh? you won’t! Why, what’s the matter now?

Nora (with cold calm).  I have wings of my own, thank you, TORVALD, and I mean to use them!

Helmer.  What—­leave your pretty cage, and (pathetically) the old cock bird, and the poor little innocent eggs!

Nora.  Exactly.  Sit down, and we will talk it over first. (Slowly.) Has it ever struck you that this is the first time you and I have ever talked seriously together about serious things?

Helmer.  Come, I do like that!  How on earth could we talk about serious things when your mouth was always full of macaroons?

Nora (shakes her head).  Ah, TORVALD, the mouth of a mother of a family should have more solemn things in it than macaroons!  I see that now, too late.  No, you have wronged me.  So did Papa.  Both of you called me a doll, and a squirrel, and a lark!  You might have made something of me—­and instead of that, you went and made too much of me—­oh, you did!

Helmer.  Well, you didn’t seem to object to it, and really I don’t exactly see what it is you do want!

Nora.  No more do I—­that is what I have got to find out.  If I had been properly educated, I should have known better than to date poor Papa’s signature three days after he died.  Now I must educate myself.  I have to gain experience, and get clear about religion, and law, and things, and whether Society is right or I am—­and I must go away and never come back any more till I am educated!