s love
for the week, the understanding being that the affair is to terminate
as it began, brusquely, without arriere-pensee. But she loves Gerardo.
She clamours to be taken to Brussels. She will desert husband,
children, social position, she will ruin her future to be with the man
she adores. She is mad with the despair of parting. He is inexorable.
He gently reminds her of their agreement. His contract does not permit
him to travel in company with ladies, nor may he scandalise the
community in which he resides. Tenors, too, must be circumspect.

She swears she will kill herself. He smiles and bids her remember her
family. She does shoot herself, and he sends for a policeman,
remembering that an arrest by superior force will but temporarily
abrogate his contract. No policeman is found by the distracted hotel
servants, and, exclaiming: "To-morrow evening I must sing Tristan in
Brussels," the conscientious artist hurries away to his train, leaving
the lifeless body of his admirer on the sofa. Played by a versatile
actor, this piece ought to make a success in America, though the
biting irony of the dialogue and the cold selfishness of the hero
might not be "sympathetic" to our sentiment-loving audiences. The poet
has protested in print against the alteration of the end of this
little piece, _i. e._, one acting version made the impassioned lady
only a pretended suicide, which quite spoils the motivation.

Ibsen must have felt sick when such an artist as Duse asked him to let
her make Nora in Doll's House return to her family. But he is said to
have consented. Wedekind consented, because he was ill, but he made
his protest, and justly so.

The Marquis of Keith is a larger canvas. It is a modern rogues'
comedy. Barry Lyndon is hardly more entertaining. The marquis is the
son of an humble tutor in the house of a count whose son later figures
as Ernest Scholtz. The marquis is a swindler in the grand manner. He
is a Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, for he has lived in the United
States, but instead of a lively sketch is a full-length portrait
painted by a master. You like him despite his scampishness. He is
witty. He has a heart--for his own woes--and seems intensely
interested in all the women he loves and swindles. He goes to Munich,
where he invents a huge scheme for an exhibition palace and fools
several worthy and wealthy brewers, but not the powerful Consul
Casimir, the one man necessary to his comprehensive operation. When