-? But, at
any rate, I will not have any tampering wide Regina. He shall not go and
wreck the poor girl's life.

MANDERS. No; good God--that would be terrible!

MRS. ALVING. If I knew he was in earnest, and that it would be for his
happiness--

MANDERS. What? What then?

MRS. ALVING. But it couldn't be; for unfortunately Regina is not the
right sort of woman.

MANDERS. Well, what then? What do you mean?

MRS. ALVING. If I weren't such a pitiful coward, I should say to him,
"Marry her, or make what arrangement you please, only let us have
nothing underhand about it."

MANDERS. Merciful heavens, would you let them marry! Anything so
dreadful--! so unheard of--

MRS. ALVING. Do you really mean "unheard of"? Frankly, Pastor Manders,
do you suppose that throughout the country there are not plenty of
married couples as closely akin as they?

MANDERS. I don't in the least understand you.

MRS. ALVING. Oh yes, indeed you do.

MANDERS. Ah, you are thinking of the possibility that--Alas! yes, family
life is certainly not always so pure as it ought to be. But in such a
case as you point to, one can never know--at least with any certainty.
Here, on the other hand--that you, a mother, can think of letting your
son--

MRS. ALVING. But I cannot--I wouldn't for anything in the world; that is
precisely what I am saying.

MANDERS. No, because you are a "coward," as you put it. But if you were
not a "coward," then--? Good God! a connection so shocking!

MRS. ALVING. So far as that goes, they say we are all sprung from
connections of that sort. And who is it that arranged the world so,
Pastor Manders?

MANDERS. Questions of that kind I must decline to discuss with you, Mrs.
Alving; you are far from being in the right frame of mind for them. But
that you dare to call your scruples "cowardly"--!

MRS. ALVING. Let me tell you what I mean. I am timid and faint-hearted
because of the ghosts that hang about me, and that I can never quite
shake off.

MANDERS. What do you say hangs about you?

MRS. ALVING. Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was
as though ghosts rose up before me. But I almost think we are all of us
ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our
father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas,
and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they
cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take
up a newspa