I have drifted in a stupor since last that night when Nora left me.  It was not sadness, but the terrible confusion is what took me.  I had lived my life as it should be led.  I treated my wife as she should be treated.  I even gave her much more money than I should have.  I praised her all the time—she must have known I loved her.  Why else would I give her my pet names?  She was the most beautiful of all the women I know, and I let her know that.  What was this talk of finding herself, couldn’t she find herself in me—under my roof, with our children—our children which were looked after by our maids, and loved and played with by Nora?
I of course went back to work the next day, the next day, the next day, on and on my work consumed me in my confusion.  I went because I was strong.  Because I was a man, I went.  I went to work, my hair disheveled, my face unshaven, my clothes always clean and nice-looking.  I went about at work, working with papers, working with people.  There was a look in my eye that scared people though, frightened them…  They could have consoled me, but there was no consolation, they could see that.

I didn’t—I don’t—talk to my children anymore.  They are a painful reminder of what is now gone, what can never be and what I’ve done.
I sit alone in this cold, dark place.  Awaiting something—but what, I dare not yet speak of, nor think of—it is too terrible.  I must sit here awhile—I must think this through, what I have done, and what I am to do.

The happenings of Krogstad and Mrs. Linde were quite strange—quite alien to me.  When I learned of their love, I struggled to comprehend.  How is it that others can find happiness when my entire world is torn asunder?  Not only did Nora fall out of love with me, but it feels like I have never known it.  She never loved me.  I cannot bear the thought of our marriage, I once thought it one of joy, love and contentment, but I know this was not so now.  I loved, yet she never did.  I showered her with praise and adoration, always keeping control of things so that they did not get out of hand.  She always had the appropriate money.  I set the appropriate restrictions so that we could have a stable life.  I have always worked terribly hard at everything, and our marriage was no different.  Why was what I worked for, and cherished most my greatest failure?
I thought I was appeasing her with that trip to Italy—I had neglected her a bit before then, and I was ill, but now I know she did it herself.  Lying, deceiving, and conniving against me— to help me, to work for me?  I cannot stand this—the thought that I owe her something.  Was that perhaps what she feared?  No, no that is only practical—everyone wants to have their influence on the world be more in giving, in always being owed, never owing others.  Then you can have true influence.  You can die happy, knowing the world benefited from your stay there.
Outwardly, I recovered, after a while.  But inwardly, I obsessed.  I spent the time at my house up in the room Nora and I shared, obsessing over her.  Mrs. Linde had come over the day after Nora left, just as Nora had told me, and took Nora’s personal things.  Not everything was taken, and in my possession was a forgotten dress and some letters—among other things.  I kept them close to me, holding them, and smelling her on them.  I held the letters, and imagined her hand as it caressed the pen, and the paper under it—her small, beautiful hands, on her small, beautiful frame.  I spent hours and hours, holding that dress, feeling those papers, all the while staring beyond the window, looking in vain for her figure.  After months of that, I came out of my apathy with a goal—I had to find her.  I visited Mrs. Linde, and I talked with Krogstad—yes I spoke to him, despite my loathing, I pretended to forgive—all with the aim toward finding out about Nora.  I visited them both, and searched their house (as they were now married) quickly as they found brief distraction.  I found little and at the terror that I could possibly never see her again, my mind began to shift.
I longed to be able to touch her again, to see her face, to smell her hair, to feel her love.  I had changed though, I no longer wished to give her praise, and I no longer wanted to hear her twitter.  She had caused me such terrible pain in the past year, I could not bear to see her happy and unaffected by all of those months.  I wanted her to understand what she had done to me, the terrible progression of despair over the past year.  The only way I could make her love me again was to make her feel as I did, so we could understand the horror she did to me.  The only route was pain.
One day, I came to the house of Linde, hoping to find perhaps some papers, or some other clue as to Nora’s whereabouts, upon entering the house, I saw her.  I had entered in such a way so she didn’t notice me.  Her hair was just as beautiful as it ever was, her shoulders just as wonderful, her frame as small and gracious as it was the day I saw her last.  I stood there, my eyes unbelieving at my fortune—I had found her at last, at the time when I most despaired, she had appeared.  I could finally let her know how she made me feel in those terrible months.  I had to take her, tear her world asunder as she had done mine, and we would be in union at last.  There was no longer possible any connection of abstract love.  She never felt that for me, and I foolishly believed in the power of it.  We could be together in body, and I could hope for a connection of minds, as I made her to feel my terror, horror, rage, and sorrow over the last year.
Her presence filled me with nothing but rage.  How could she have lived these last months with no effect upon her visage?  Why was she just as beautiful as ever?  I desired nothing more than to change that image, to make her feel my pain that was so terrible.  
She turned about, and gave a start, out of amazement someone else was in the room, at seeing me, and seeing my rage.  She uttered a soft syllable, and a hasty laugh.  She spoke to me something of greeting, feigning nonchalance, but I could see the contortion in her face as she looked upon mine.  She was disgusted with what I had become—she thought herself something higher, something better than the scum which I was.  I needed to bring her down, to bring her to my level, to see what she had done to me.  I lunged forward—her scream was stifled by my own as I threw her to the floor…
Blood spread and clothing strewn about me, they found only one person still in this world, still in that room.

So here I sit, in this darkened place, freezing and dark, waiting for Society’s revenge for my crimes.  She died the day we wed, and I died the day I killed her.