dupes and victims.
It is natural, however, that this adventurer--who has kept a
gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes
to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position--should thus strive
to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justification is one of the
first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces
one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave--that
prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal
depravity--can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and
innocent gayety.

_Forget Me Not_ tells a thin story, but its story has been made to yield
excellent dramatic pictures, splendid moments of intellectual combat,
and affecting contrasts of character. The dialogue, particularly in the
second act, is as strong and as brilliant as polished steel. In that
combat of words Genevieve Ward's acting was delicious with trenchant
skill and fascinating variety. The easy, good-natured, bantering air
with which the strife began, the liquid purity of the tones, the
delicate glow of the arch satire, the icy glitter of the thought and
purpose beneath the words, the transition into pathos and back again
into gay indifference and deadly hostility, the sudden and terrible mood
of menace, when at length the crisis had passed and the evil genius had
won its temporary victory--all those were in perfect taste and
consummate harmony. Seeing that brilliant, supple, relentless,
formidable figure, and hearing that incisive, bell-like voice, the
spectator was repelled and attracted at the same instant, and thoroughly
bewildered with the sense of a power and beauty as hateful as they were
puissant. Not since Ristori acted Lucretia Borgia has the stage
exhibited such an image of imperial will, made radiant with beauty and
electric with flashes of passion. The leopard and the serpent are fatal,
terrible, and loathsome; yet they scarcely have a peer among nature's
supreme symbols of power and grace. Into the last scene of _Forget Me
Not_,--when at length Stephanie is crushed by physical fear, through
beholding, unseen by him, the man who would kill her as a malignant and
dangerous reptile,--Genevieve Ward introduced such illustrative
"business," not provided by the piece, as greatly enhanced the final
effect. The backward rush from the door, on seeing the Corsican avenger
on the staircase, and therewithal the incidental, involuntary cry of
t