ELIS. Pardon me, but do they intend to accuse my mother?
LINDKVIST. We will go a step further first—I take it that you don't know the Governor personally?
ELIS. No, and I don't want to know him.
[Lindkvist takes out paper again and shakes it warningly at Elis.]
LINDKVIST. Don't, don't say that. The Governor and your father were friends in their youth, and he wishes to see and know you. You see. "As ye sow," and so forth, in everything—everything. Won't you go to see him?
ELIS. No.
LINDKVIST. But the Governor
ELIS. Let us change the subject.
LINDKVIST. You must speak courteously to me, as I am defenseless. You have public opinion on your side, and I have only justice on mine. What have you got against the Governor? He doesn't like this and that, what some people would call pleasure.—But that belongs to his eccentricities, and we needn't exactly respect his eccentricities, but we can overlook them and hold to fundamental facts as human beings; and in the crises of human life we must swallow each other skin and hair, as the saying goes. But will you go to see the Governor?
ELIS. Never.