considers that there was never anything degrading in her conduct; and this we are asked to accept as sufficient.  It was a daring policy to dangle before our eyes an explanation, which always receded as we advanced towards it, and proved in the end to be wholly unexplanatory.  The success of the play, however, was sufficient to show that, in light comedy, at any rate, a secret may with impunity be kept, even to the point of tantalization.[2]

Let us now look at a couple of cases in which the keeping of a secret seems pretty clearly wrong, inasmuch as it diminishes tension, and deprives the audience of that superior knowledge in which lies the irony of drama.  In a play named Her Advocate, by Mr. Walter Frith (founded on one of Grenville Murray’s French Pictures in English Chalk), a K.C. has fallen madly in love with a woman whose defence he has undertaken.  He believes passionately in her innocence, and, never doubting that she loves him in return, he is determined to secure for her a triumphant acquittal.  Just at the crucial moment, however, he learns that she loves another man; and, overwhelmed by this disillusion, he has still to face the ordeal and plead her cause.  The conjuncture would be still more dramatic if the revelation of this love were to put a different complexion on the murder, and, by introducing a new motive, shake the advocate’s faith in his client’s innocence.  But that is another matter; the question here to be considered is whether the author did right in reserving the revelation to the last possible moment.  In my opinion he would have done better to have given us an earlier inkling of the true state of affairs.  To keep the secret, in this case, was to place the audience as well as the advocate on a false trail, and to deprive it of the sense of superiority it would have felt in seeing him marching confidently towards a happiness which it knew to be illusory.

The second case is that of La Douloureuse, by M. Maurice Donnay.  Through two acts out of the four an important secret is so carefully kept that there seems to be no obstacle between the lovers with whom (from the author’s point of view) we are supposed to sympathize.  The first act is devoted to an elaborate painting of a somewhat revolting phase of parvenu society in Paris.  Towards the end of the act we learn that the sculptor, Philippe Lauberthie, is the lover of Helene Ardan, a married woman; and at the very end her husband, Ardan, commits suicide.  This act, therefore, is devoted, not, as the orthodox formula goes, to raising an obstacle between the lovers, but rather to destroying one.  In the second act there still seems to be no obstacle of any sort.  Helene’s year of widowhood is nearly over; she and Philippe are presently to be married; all is harmony, adoration, and security.  In the last scene of the act, a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand appears on the horizon.  We find that Gotte des Trembles, Helene’s bosom friend, is also in love with Philippe, and is determined to let him know it.  But Philippe resists her blandishments with melancholy austerity, and when the curtain falls on the second act, things seem to be perfectly safe and in order.  Helene a widow, and Philippe austere—­what harm can Gotte possibly do?