in the church registers, and afterwards keeping back from me for years the information which you owed it both to me and to your sense of the truth to divulge. Your conduct has been absolutely inexcusable, Engstrand, and from today everything is at an end between us. 

 Engstrand (with a sigh). Yes, I can see that's what it means. 

 Manders. Yes, because how can you possibly justify what you did? 

 Engstrand. Was the poor girl to go and increase her load of shame by talking about it? Just suppose, sir, for a moment that your reverence was in the same predicament as my poor Joanna. 

 Manders. I! 

 Engstrand. Good Lord, sir, I don't mean the same predicament. I mean, suppose there were something your reverence was ashamed of in the eyes of the world, so to speak. We men ought not judge a poor woman too hardly, Mr. Manders. 

 Manders. But I am not doing so at all. It is you I am blaming. 

 Engstrand. Will your reverence grant me leave to ask you a small question? 

 Manders. Ask away. 

 Engstrand. Shouldn't you say it was right for a man to raise up the fallen? 

 Manders. Of course it is. 

 Engstrand. And isn't a man bound to keep his word of honour? 

 Manders. Certainly he is; but— 

 Engstrand. At the time when Joanna had her misfortune with this Englishman—or maybe he was an American or a Russian, as they call 'em—well, sir, then she came to town. Poor thing, she had refused me once or twice before; she only had eyes for good-looking men in those days, and I had this crooked leg then. Your reverence will remember how I had ventured up into a dancing-saloon where seafaring men were revelling in drunkenness and intoxication, as they say. And when I tried to exhort them to turn from their evil ways— 

 Mrs. Alving (coughs from the window). Ahem! 

 Manders. I know, Engstrand, I 

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