from a union of that description, so we are told. And who was it that was responsible for this state of things, Mr. Manders? 

 Manders. I can't discuss such questions with you, Mrs. Alving; you are by no means in the right frame of mind for that. But for you to dare to say that it is cowardly of you—! 

 Mrs. Alving. I will tell you what I mean by that. I am frightened and timid, because I am obsessed by the presence of ghosts that I never can get rid of. 

 Manders. The presence of what? 

 Mrs. Alving. Ghosts. When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts before my eyes. I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us. 

 Manders. Ah!—there we have the outcome of your reading. Fine fruit it has borne—this abominable, subversive, free-thinking literature! 

 Mrs. Alving. You are wrong there, my friend. You are the one who made me begin to think; and I owe you my best thanks for it. 

 Menders. I! 

 Mrs. Alving. Yes, by forcing me to submit to what you called my duty and my obligations; by praising as right and lust what my whole soul revolted against, as it would against something abominable. That was what led me to examine your teachings critically. I only wanted to unravel one point in them; but as soon as I had got that unravelled, the whole fabric came to pieces. And then I realised that it was only machine-made. 

 Manders (softly, and with emotion). Is that all I accomplished by the hardest struggle of my life? 

 Mrs. Alving. Call it rather the most ignominious defeat of your life. 

 Manders. It was the greatest victory of my life, Helen; victory over myself. 

 Mrs. Alving. It was a wrong done to both of us. 

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