MRS. ALVING. Well, I can't help it; I must have done with all this constraint and insincerity. I can endure it no longer. I must work my way out to freedom.
MANDERS. What do you mean by that?
MRS. ALVING. [Drumming on the window frame.] I ought never to have concealed the facts of Alving's life. But at that time I dared not do anything else—I was afraid, partly on my own account. I was such a coward.
MANDERS. A coward?
MRS. ALVING. If people had come to know anything, they would have said—"Poor man! with a runaway wife, no wonder he kicks over the traces."
MANDERS. Such remarks might have been made with a certain show of right.
MRS. ALVING. [Looking steadily at him.] If I were what I ought to be, I should go to Oswald and say, "Listen, my boy: your father led a vicious life—"
MANDERS. Merciful heavens—!
MRS. ALVING.—and then I should tell him all I have told you—every word of it.
MANDERS. You shock me unspeakably, Mrs. Alving.