For a third example of interest carefully carried forward, I turn to a recent Norwegian play, The Idyll, by Peter Egge.  At the very rise of the curtain, we find Inga Gar, wife of an author and journalist, Dr. Gar, reading, with evident tokens of annoyance and distaste, a new book of poems by one Rolfe Ringve.  Before her marriage, Inga was an actress of no great talent; Ringve made himself conspicuous by praising her far beyond her merits; and when, at last, an engagement between them was announced, people shrugged their shoulders and said:  “They are going to regularize the situation.”  As a matter of fact (of this we have early assurance), though Ringve has been her ardent lover, Inga has neither loved him nor been his mistress.  Ringve being called abroad, she has, during his absence, broken off her engagement to him, and has then, about a year before the play opens, married Dr. Gar, to whom she is devoted.  While Gar is away on a short lecture tour, Ringve has published the book of love-poems which we find her reading.  They are very remarkable poems; they have already made a great stir in the literary world; and interest is all the keener for the fact that they are evidently inspired by his passion for Inga, and are couched in such a tone of intimacy as to create a highly injurious impression of the relations between them.  Gar, having just come home, has no suspicion of the nature of the book; and when an editor, who cherishes a grudge against him, conceives the malicious idea of asking him to review Ringve’s masterpiece, he consents with alacrity.  One or two small incidents have in the meantime shown us that there is a little rift in the idyllic happiness of Inga and Gar, arising from her inveterate habit of telling trifling fibs to avoid facing the petty annoyances of life.  For instance, when Gar asks her casually whether she has read Ringve’s poems, a foolish denial slips out, though she knows that the cut pages of the book will give her the lie.  These incidents point to a state of unstable equilibrium in the relations between husband and wife; wherefore, when we see Gar, at the end of the act, preparing to read Ringve’s poems, our curiosity is very keen as to how he will take them.  We feel the next hour to be big with fate for these two people; and we long for the curtain to rise again upon the threatened household.  The fuse has been fired; we are all agog for the explosion.

In Herr Egge’s place, I should have been inclined to have dropped my curtain upon Gar, with the light of the reading-lamp full upon him, in the act of opening the book, and then to have shown him, at the beginning of the second act, in exactly the same position.  With more delicate art, perhaps, the author interposes a little domestic incident at the end of the first act, while leaving it clearly impressed on our minds that the reading of the poems is only postponed by a few minutes.  That is the essential point:  the actual moment upon which the curtain falls is