It is all up with me. And it can’t be helped.
NORA (gripping him by the arm). What have you found out? Doctor Rank, you must tell me.
RANK (sitting down by the stove). It is all up with me. And it can’t be helped.
NORA (with a sigh of relief). Is it about yourself?
RANK. Who else? It is no use lying to one’s self. I am the most wretched of all my patients, Mrs. Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall lie rotting in the church-yard.
NORA. What an ugly thing to say!
RANK. The thing itself is cursedly ugly, and the worst of it is that I shall hav e to face so much more that is ugly before that. I shall only make one more examination of myself; when I have done that, I shall know pretty certainly when it will be that the horrors of dissolution will begin. There is something I want to tell you. Helmer’s refined nature gives him an unconquerable disgust of everything that is ugly; I won’t have him in my sick-room.
NORA. Oh, but, Doctor Rank—
RANK. I won’t have him there. Not on any account. I bar my door to him. As soon as I am quite certain that the worst has come, I shall send you my card with a black cross on it, and then you will know that the loathsome end has begun.
