Svava. But you keep harping on that one string.
Mrs. Riis. What note do you want me to strike, then?
Svava. The note your dear good mother would have struck--quite a different one altogether.
Mrs. Riis. It is one thing to teach your child how to make a proper choice in life, but--
Svava. But quite another thing to put into practice what you teach?
Mrs. Riis. No; I was going to say that life itself is quite another thing. In daily life, and especially in married life, it is sometimes advisable to make allowances.
Svava. Yes, on points that do not really matter.
Mrs. Riis. Only on points that do not matter?
Svava. Yes--personal peculiarities, and things like that, which after all are only excrescences; but not on points that concern one's moral growth.
Svava. On those points too?--But isn't it just for the sake of our own self-development that we marry? What else should we marry for?
Svava. No, indeed I shall not; because I do not intend to marry on such conditions.
Mrs. Riis. You should have said that sooner. It is too late now.
Svava (sitting upright). Too late? If I had been married twenty years, I would have done just the same! (Lies down again.)
Mrs. Riis. Heaven help you, then!--You haven't an idea, not the smallest idea, what a net you are entangled in! But you will find it out, as soon as you begin to struggle in earnest. Or do you really want your father and me to throw away all that we have worked for here?--to begin all over again in a foreign country? Because he has repeatedly said, during the last day or two, that he will not be mixed up in the scandal that would be the result of your breaking this off. He would go abroad, and I should have to go with him. Ah, you wince at the thought of that!--Think of all your friends, too. It is a serious matter to have been set on such an eminence as you were at your betrothal party. It is like being lifted up high on a platform that others are carrying on their shoulders; take care you do not fall down from it! That is what you will do, if you offend their principles of right behaviour.
Svava. Is that sort of thing a principle of right behaviour?
Mrs. Riis. I do not say that. But undoubtedly, one their principles of right behaviour--and perhaps the most important--is that all scandal must be avoided. No one relishes being disgraced, Svava--particularly the most influential people in a place. And least of all, by a long way, do people relish their own child being disgraced.