ULFHEIM. But don’t you see that the storm is upon us? Don’t you hear the blasts of wind ?
RUBEK {listening}. They sound like the prelude to the Resurrection Day.
* * * *
MAJA {drawing ULFHEIM away}. Let us make haste and get down.
As he cannot take more than one person at a time, Ulfheim promises to send aid for Rubek and Irene, and, seizing Maja in his arms, clambers rapidly but warily down the path. On the desolate mountain plateau, in the growing light, the man and the woman are left together — no longer the artist and his model. And the shadow of a great change is stalking close in the morning silence. Then Irene tells Arnold that she will not go back among the men and women she has left; she will not be rescued. She tells him also, for now she may tell all, how she had been tempted to kill him in frenzy when he spoke of their connection as an episode of his life.
RUBEK {darkly}. And why did you hold your hand?
IRENE. Because it flashed upon me with a sudden horror that you were dead already — long ago.
But, says Rubek, our love is not dead in us, it is active, fervent and strong.
IRENE. The love that belongs to the life of earth — the beautiful, miraculous life of earth — the inscrutable life of earth — that is dead in both of us.
There are, moreover, the difficulties of their former lives. Even here, at the sublimest part of his play, Ibsen is master of himself and his facts. His genius as an artist faces a]l, shirks nothing. At the close of The Master Builder, the greatest touch of all was the horrifying exclamation of one without, ‘O! the head is all crushed in.’ A lesser artist would have cast a spiritual glamour over the tragedy of Bygmester Solness. In like manner here Irene objects that she has exposed herself as a nude before the vulgar gaze, that Society has cast her out, that all is too late. But Rubek cares for such considerations no more. He flings them all to the wind and decides.
RUBEK {throwing his arms violently around her}. Then let two of the dead — us two — for once live life to its uttermost, before we go down to our graves again.
IRENE {with a shriek}. Arnold!
RUBEK. But not here in the half-darkness. Not here with this hideous dank shroud flapping around us!
IRENE {carried away by passion}. No, no — up in the light and in all the glittering glory! Up to the Peak of Promise!
RUBEK. There we will hold our marriage-feast, Irene — oh! my beloved!
IRENE {proudly}. The sun may freely look on us, Arnold.
RUBEK. All the powers of light may freely look on us — and all the powers of darkness too {seizes her hand} — will you then follow me, oh my grace-given bride!
IRENE {as though transfigured}. I follow you, freely and gladly, my lord and master!
RUBEK {drawing her along with him}. We must first pass through the mists, Irene, and then —
IRENE. Yes, through all the mists, and then right up to the summit of the tower that shines in the sunrise.
{The mist-clouds close in over the scene. RUBEK and IRENE, hand in hand, climb up over the snowfield to the right and soon disappear among the lower clouds. Keen storm-gusts hurtle and whistle through the air.}
{The SISTER OF MERCY appears upon the rubble-slope to the left. She stops and looks around silently and searchingly.}
{MAJA can be heard singing triumphantly far in the depths below.}
MAJA. I am free! I am free! I am free!
