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.

MRS. ALVING. No! no! I am not.