Well, I’ll tell you what _my_ duties as a wife were: spending more than my husband could get decently; making him overwork to pay my extravagances; keeping him until four in the morning at silly affairs, knowing he must work while I slept it off; flirting with every idle attractive man I met, letting him think I was a fragile flower plucked by a hand of a savage who could not appreciate my fairy fragrance! Those—and neglecting my one child until she grew up to be an encyclopædia of all a woman should _not_ be—those were _my_ wifely duties! FANNY Mother! You are shocking everybody! MAGNUS Not me, Loo! MRS. FELIX If I had brought you up properly instead of leaving you to snobbish servants and fashionable incubators, you might be some man’s blessing instead of curse! Plain words, Fanny! May they start you thinking and keep you from ruining the mind and killing the body of some good man like your father, who died a bankrupt, and—though our fashionable physician friends made it look otherwise—a suicide! (_To the others_)—All of you knew this? MAGNUS Yes— [_Vanillity bows his head._ JUDGE CRITTY (_clearing his throat_) Why— FANNY (_tears in her voice_) Mother, you are brutal! Brutal! Brutal! MRS. FELIX No. _You_ are _going_ to be. FANNY I believe you hate me. MRS. FELIX I hate myself when I see what I was yesterday in you today. I hate myself for letting that yesterday live in you instead of killing it when you were a child. I only saw myself as I was just before your father decided to finish things. Knowing he would lose me anyhow, he told me how fatal his love for me had been. “A beautiful poisonous orchid,” he called me—(_breaks down_) Fanny, Fanny, Fanny! FANNY (_coldly_) Mother, don’t make a scene! MRS. FELIX (_drying her eyes_) Useless—useless— MAGNUS (_rising_) It was all my fault. I should never have made the offer— MRS. FELIX It was the first _real_ thing you ever did. MAGNUS I mean the first offer—the _selfish_ one—the _burying_ one— MRS. FELIX Cancel it! MAGNUS It is cancelled! FANNY (_almost murderously_) Mother, when we get home, I will pack and go to Aunt Clara’s. In the future please don’t concern yourself about me any more than about any other young woman of your acquaintance.—Shall we go? MRS. FELIX But the boy in there— FANNY No need to disturb him. He is busy, and no doubt happy—I will break the bad news in a letter. MRS. FELIX You break the engagement? FANNY Oh, no, indeed! He’ll soon find some other steel manufacturer or somebody of the sort to offer him just as much. MAGNUS (_quieting Mrs. Felix’s frantic interrogation_) I see—the bad news is breaking my word? [_Fanny nods._ MAGNUS You told him, and he accepted? FANNY I talked to him for an hour over the telephone this morning— MRS. FELIX He accepted—so easily— FANNY Easily!—I told him he must either accept or lose me—and rang off. Two minutes later he was frantically accepting— MAGNUS