Mrs. Alving (going to the window). Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.
Manders. Mrs. Alving, it is very wicked of you to say that.
Mrs. Alving. That may be so; but I don't attach importance to those obligations and considerations any longer. I cannot! I must struggle for my freedom.
Manders. What do you mean?
Mrs. Alving (taping on the window panes). I ought never to have concealed what sort of a life my husband led. But I had not the courage to do otherwise then—for my own sake, either. I was too much of a coward.
Manders. A coward?
Mrs. Alving. If others had known anything of what happened, they would have said: "Poor man, it is natural enough that he should go astray, when he has a wife that has run away from him."
Manders. They would have had a certain amount of justification for saying so.
Mrs. Alving (looking fixedly at him). If I had been the woman I ought, I would have taken Oswald into my confidence and said to him: "Listen, my son, your father was a dissolute man"—
Manders. Miserable woman.