nings, and at night, I had to make myself his boon companion
in his secret orgies up in his room. There I have had to sit alone with
him, to clink glasses and drink with him, and to listen to his ribald,
silly talk. I have had to fight with him to get him dragged to bed--

MANDERS. [Moved.] And you were able to bear all this!

MRS. ALVING. I had to bear it for my little boy's sake. But when the
last insult was added; when my own servant-maid--; then I swore to
myself: This shall come to an end! And so I took the reins into my own
hand--the whole control--over him and everything else. For now I had a
weapon against him, you see; he dared not oppose me. It was then I sent
Oswald away from home. He was nearly seven years old, and was beginning
to observe and ask questions, as children do. That I could not bear. It
seemed to me the child must be poisoned by merely breathing the air of
this polluted home. That was why I sent him away. And now you can see,
too, why he was never allowed to set foot inside his home so long as his
father lived. No one knows what that cost me.

MANDERS. You have indeed had a life of trial.

MRS. ALVING. I could never have borne it if I had not had my work. For
I may truly say that I have worked! All the additions to the estate--all
the improvements--all the labour-saving appliances, that Alving was so
much praised for having introduced--do you suppose he had energy for
anything of the sort?--he, who lay all day on the sofa, reading an old
Court Guide! No; but I may tell you this too: when he had his better
intervals, it was I who urged him on; it was I who had to drag the
whole load when he relapsed into his evil ways, or sank into querulous
wretchedness.

MANDERS. And it is to this man that you raise a memorial?

MRS. ALVING. There you see the power of an evil conscience.

MANDERS. Evil--? What do you mean?

MRS. ALVING. It always seemed to me impossible but that the truth must
come out and be believed. So the Orphanage was to deaden all rumours and
set every doubt at rest.

MANDERS. In that you have certainly not missed your aim, Mrs. Alving.

MRS. ALVING. And besides, I had one other reason. I was determined that
Oswald, my own boy, should inherit nothing whatever from his father.

MANDERS. Then it is Alving's fortune that--?

MRS. ALVING. Yes. The sums I have spent upon the Orphanage, year by
year, make up the amount--I have reckoned it up precisely--the amount
which made Lieuten