BERTHA. Help me. She wants to hurt me.

CAPTAIN. Who wants to hurt you? Tell me! Speak!

BERTHA. Grandmother! But it's my fault for I deceived her.

CAPTAIN. Tell me more.

BERTHA. Yes, but you mustn't say anything about it. Promise me you
won't.

CAPTAIN. Tell me what it is then.

[Nurse goes.]

BERTHA. In the evening she generally turns down the lamp and then
she makes me sit at a table holding a pen over a piece of paper.
And then she says that the spirits are to write.

CAPTAIN. What's all this--and you have never told me about it?

BERTHA. Forgive me, but I dared not, for Grandmother says the
spirits take revenge if one talks about them. And then the pen
writes, but I don't know whether I'm doing it or not. Sometimes it
goes well, but sometimes it won't go at all, and when I am tired
nothing comes, but she wants it to come just the same. And tonight
I thought I was writing beautifully, but then grandmother said it
was all from Stagnelius, and that I had deceived her, and then she
got terribly angry.