met with immorality in artists' circles? 

 Manders. No, thank heaven, I don't! 

 Oswald. Well, then, I shall have the pleasure of telling you. I have met with it when someone or other of your model husbands and fathers have come out there to have a bit of a look round on their own account, and have done the artists the honour of looking them up in their humble quarters. Then we had a chance of learning something, I can tell you. These gentlemen were able to instruct us about places and things that we had never so much as dreamt of. 

 Manders. What? Do you want me to believe that honourable men when they get away from home will— 

 Oswald. Have you never, when these same honourable men come home again, heard them deliver themselves on the subject of the prevalence of immorality abroad? 

 Manders. Yes, of course, but— 

 Mrs. Alving. I have heard them, too. 

 Oswald. Well, you can take their word for it, unhesitatingly. Some of them are experts in the matter. (Putting his hands to his head.) To think that the glorious freedom of the beautiful life over there should be so besmirched! 

 Mrs. Alving. You mustn't get too heated, Oswald; you gain nothing by that. 

 Oswald. No, you are quite right, mother. Besides, it isn't good for me. It's because I am so infernally tired, you know. I will go out and take a turn before dinner. I beg your pardon, Mr. Manders. It is impossible for you to realise the feeling; but it takes me that way (Goes out by the farther door on the right.) 

 Mrs. Alving. My poor boy! 

 Manders. You may well say so. This is what it has brought him to! (MRS. ALVING looks at him, but does not speak.) He called himself the prodigal son. It's only too true, alas—only too true! (MRS. ALVING looks steadily at him.) And what do you say to all this? 

 Mrs. Alving. I say that Oswald was right in every single word he said. 

 Manders. Right? Right? To hold such principles as that? 

 Mrs. Alving. In my loneliness here I have come to just the same opinions as he, Mr. Manders. But I have never presumed to venture upon such topics in conversation. Now there is no need; my boy shall speak for me. 

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