MRS. ALVING. Well, then, Pastor Manders—I will tell you the truth. I have sworn to myself that one day you should know it—you alone!
MANDERS. What is the truth, then?
MRS. ALVING. The truth is that my husband died just as dissolute as he had lived all his days.
MANDERS. [Feeling after a chair.] What do you say?
MRS. ALVING. After nineteen years of marriage, as dissolute—in his desires at any rate—as he was before you married us.
MANDERS. And those-those wild oats—those irregularities—those excesses, if you like—you call "a dissolute life"?
MRS. ALVING. Our doctor used the expression.
MANDERS. I do not understand you.
MRS. ALVING. You need not.
MANDERS. It almost makes me dizzy. Your whole married life, the seeming union of all these years, was nothing more than a hidden abyss!