on all the rest of your life? Did things not turn out as I
foretold to you? Did not your husband turn from straying in the
wrong path, as a man should? Did he not, after that, live a life
of love and good report with you all his days? Did he not become
a benefactor to the neighbourhood? Did he not so raise you up to
his level, so that by degree you became his fellow-worker in all
his undertakings--and a noble fellow-worker, too. I know, Mrs.
Alving; that praise I will give you. But now I come to the second
serious false step in your life.

Mrs. Alving. What do you mean?

Manders, Just as once you forsook your duty as a wife, so, since
then, you have forsaken your duty as a mother.

Mrs. Alving. Oh--!

Manders. You have been overmastered all your life by a disastrous
spirit of willfulness. All your impulses have led you towards what
is undisciplined and lawless. You have never been willing to
submit to any restraint. Anything in life that has seemed irksome
to you, you have thrown aside recklessly and unscrupulously, as
if it were a burden that you were free to rid yourself of if you
would. It did not please you to be a wife any longer, and so you
left your husband. Your duties as a mother were irksome to you,
so you sent your child away among strangers.

Mrs. Alving. Yes, that is true; I did that.

Menders. And that is why you have become a stranger to him.