would have made Rabelais chuckle.  We had the most flagitiously erotic passages (rendered in costume) from opera and opera bouffe, living reproductions of the tragic pose of Paolo and Francesca that would hare inspired Cabanel anew; of ‘Ginevra Da Siena,’ of ’Vivien,’—­a carnival of the carnal! where nurseries were robbed to supply the mimic ballet, and where bald-headed clergyman, and white-haired mothers in Israel clapped and encored.  One fair forsaken dame, whose indignant spouse was seeking a divorce, came to the footlights in an artistic garment so decollete that a man sitting behind me whispered to his friend:  ’What pictures does she suggest to you?  “Phryne before the Judges”—­or Long’s “Thisbe?” She languorously waved a floral fan of crimson carnations, and recited with all of Siddons’ grace and Rachel’s fire selections from a book of poems, that were so many dynamite bombs of vice smothered in roses.  Amid tumultuous applause, she gave as encore something that contained a fragment of Feydeau, and its closing words woke up my drowsy soul, like a clap of thunder:  ’Ce que les poetes appellent l’amour, et les moralistes l’adultere!’ Leo, there is a moral somnambulism more frightful than that which leads to midnight promenades on the combs of roofs, and the borders of Goat Island; so I wiped my tears away, and after that day, began to read the billet doux and wear the flowers of my ’consolation prize’.”

“You do not love him, and your marriage will degrade you in your own estimation.  Your bridal vows will be perjury, an insult to your God, and a foul terrible wrong against the man who trusts your truthfulness.  According to our church, wedlock is a ’holy ordinance’; and to me an unloving wife is unhallowed; is a blot on her sex, only a few degrees removed from unmarried mothers.  You know the difference between friendship and love, and when you go to the altar, and give the former in exchange for the latter, the base counterfeit for the true gold, you are consciously and premeditatedly dishonest.”

“Thanks, for your clearness of diction, your perspicuity which leaves no cobweb of misty doubt wherewith to drape my shivering moral deformity!  To ‘see ourselves as others see us’ is as disappointing as the result of plunging one’s hand into the ’grab-bag’, but at least it brings the stimulating tingle of a new sensation.  Suppose each knows perfectly well that as regards the true gold, both are equally bankrupt?  There is a queer moral fungus called ‘honesty among thieves’, and we both know that we never sang snatches from Offenbach to each other, through pink ‘bisc’ lips.  He loved quite desperately a mignonne of a blonde, with heavenly blue eyes and cherubic yellow hair, who, not knowing his expectations from a California uncle, jilted him for a rich Cuban.  Look you, Leo, because I cannot wear Kohinoor, must I disport myself without any diamond necklace?  Since he can never own ‘La Peregrina,’ must he eschew pearl studs in his shield front?  We distinctly understand that we are not first prizes; but perhaps we may be something better than total blanks in the lottery, even though we quite realize the difference between love and friendship.  Do you?  Portia should know every jot and tittle of the law, and all the subtle shades of evidence, before she lifts her voice in court.”