However, it turns out that by his nearest friends he means his dogs, and the minds of his hearers are put somewhat more at ease. During their conversation the Sister of Mercy has prepared a slight repast for her mistress at one of the tables outside the pavilion. The unsustaining qualities of the food excite Ulfheim’s merriment. He speaks with a lofty disparagement of such effeminate diet. He is a realist in his appetite.
ULFHEIM {rising}. Spoken like a woman of spirit, madam. Come with me, then! They [his dogs] swallow whole, great, thumping meat-bones — gulp them up and then gulp them down again. Oh, it’s a regular treat to see them!
On such half-gruesome, half-comic invitation Maja goes out with him, leaving her husband in the company of the strange lady who enters from the pavilion. Almost simultaneously the Professor and the lady recognize each other. The lady has served Rubek as model for the central figure in his famous masterpiece, ‘The Resurrection Day’. Having done her work for him, she had fled in an unaccountable manner, leaving no traces behind her. Rubek and she drift into familiar conversation. She asks him who is the lady who has just gone out. He answers, with some hesitation, that she is his wife. Then he asks if she is married. She replies that she is married. He asks her where her husband is at present.
RUBEK. And where is he now?
IRENE. Oh, in a churchyard somewhere or other, with a fine, handsome monument over him; and with a bullet rattling in his skull.
RUBEK. Did he kill himself?
IRENE. Yes, he was good enough to take that off my hands.
RUBEK. Do you not lament his loss, Irene?
IRENE {not understanding}. Lament? What loss?
RUBEK. Why, the loss of Herr von Satow, of course.
IRENE. His name was not Satow.
RUBEK. Was it not?
IRENE. My second husband is called Satow. He is a Russian.
RUBEK. And where is he?
IRENE. Far away in the Ural Mountains. Among all his gold-mines.
RUBEK. So he lives there?
IRENE {shrugs her shoulders}. Lives? Lives? In reality I have killed him.
RUBEK {starts}. Killed — !
IRENE. Killed him with a fine sharp dagger which I always have with me in bed —
Rubek begins to understand that there is some meaning hidden beneath these strange words. He begins to think seriously on himself, his art, and on her, passing in review the course of his life since the creation of his masterpiece, ‘The Resurrection Day’. He sees that he has not fulfilled the promise of that work, and comes to realize that there is something lacking in his life. He asks Irene how she has lived since they last saw each other. Irene’s answer to his query is of great importance, for it strikes the key note of the entire play.
IRENE {rises slowly from her chair and says quiveringly}. I was dead for many years. They came and bound me — lacing my arms together at my back. Then they lowered me into a grave-vault, with iron bars before the loophole. And with padded walls, so that no one on the earth above could hear the grave-shrieks.
In Irene’s allusion to her position as model for the great picture, Ibsen gives further proof of his extraordinary knowledge of women. No other man could have so subtly expressed the nature of the relations between the sculptor and his model, had he even dreamt of them.
IRENE. I exposed myself wholly and unreservedly to your gaze {more softly} and never once did you touch me ….
