; and I am
the last to approve the life he led in his young days, if report did not
wrong him. But a wife is not appointed to be her husband's judge. It was
your duty to bear with humility the cross which a Higher Power had, in
its wisdom, laid upon you. But instead of that you rebelliously throw
away the cross, desert the backslider whom you should have supported, go
and risk your good name and reputation, and--nearly succeed in ruining
other people's reputation into the bargain.

MRS. ALVING. Other people's? One other person's, you mean.

MANDERS. It was incredibly reckless of you to seek refuge with me.

MRS. ALVING. With our clergyman? With our intimate friend?

MANDERS. Just on that account. Yes, you may thank God that I possessed
the necessary firmness; that I succeeded in dissuading you from your
wild designs; and that it was vouchsafed me to lead you back to the path
of duty, and home to your lawful husband.

MRS. ALVING. Yes, Pastor Manders, that was certainly your work.

MANDERS. I was but a poor instrument in a Higher Hand. And what a
blessing has it not proved to you, all the days of your life, that I
induced you to resume the yoke of duty and obedience! Did not everything
happen as I foretold? Did not Alving turn his back on his errors, as
a man should? Did he not live with you from that time, lovingly and
blamelessly, all his days? Did he not become a benefactor to the whole
district? And did he not help you to rise to his own level, so that you,
little by little, became his assistant in all his undertakings? And a
capital assistant, too--oh, I know, Mrs. Alving, that praise is due to
you.--But now I come to the next great error in your life.

MRS. ALVING. What do you mean?

MANDERS. Just as you once disowned a wife's duty, so you have since
disowned a mother's.

MRS. ALVING. Ah--!

MANDERS. You have been all your life under the dominion of a pestilent
spirit of self-will. The whole bias of your mind has been towards
insubordination and lawlessness. You have never known how to endure any
bond. Everything that has weighed upon you in life you have cast away
without care or conscience, like a burden you were free to throw off at
will. It did not please you to be a wife any longer, and you left your
husband. You found it troublesome to be a mother, and you sent your
child forth among strangers.

MRS. ALVING. Yes, that is true. I did so.

MANDERS. And thus you have become a stranger to him.

MR