he ears of a young violinist, a dear friend, who is
summering with him. Unconventional folk, all of them. Hauptmann gets
his character relief by setting off the town visitors with a
background of natives, fishermen, working people. I wish there had
been more of them, for with their uncouth accent, salt speech, and
unconscious humour they are more refreshing than the city folk.
Gabriel arrives. He looks sadly in need of sea air. I suppose Theodore
Loos, who played the part, was coached by the dramatist, so I dare not
criticise the validity of his interpretation. I only know that he did
not make the character sympathetic; perhaps that were an
impossibility. In a word, with his mixture of vapid idealism and
old-fashioned fatalism, he proved monotonous to me. The sculptor is a
formidable bore, the antique raisonneur of French drama, preaching at
every pore every chance he has. The actor who played him, Hans Marr,
made up as a mixture of Lenbach the painter--when he was about
forty-five--and the painter, etcher, and sculptor, Max Klinger. The
violinist was Lina Lossen, and excellent in the part.

Act II is a capitally arranged interior of the inn, with the wooden
shoes of the servant maid clopping around, where the inevitable
happens. Hanna Elias, accompanied by a young Russian girl--whose
German accent furnishes mild humour--promptly swoops down on the
anaemic painter. There is brief resistance on his part. She tells him
she can't, can't live without him--oh, thrice-familiar feminine
music!--and with a double sob that shakes you in your seat the pair
embrace. Curtain. The next act is frittered away in talk, the
principal object seemingly to show how much the sculptor hates Hanna.
In Act IV Gabriel is ill. He has had a fall, but it is really a heart
attack. A doctor, an old friend, is summoned from a neighbouring
island. Unfortunately Mrs. Schilling, the neglected wife is informed
by the not very tactful doctor that her husband is ill. She rushes up
from Berlin, and the best, indeed the only, dramatic scene then
ensues. She is not permitted to see the sick man. She demands the
reason. She is naturally not told, for Hanna is nursing him. She can't
understand, and it is the difficult task of Lucie Heil, the violinist,
to get her away before the fat is in the fire. Unfortunately, at that
critical moment, Hanna Elias walks calmly from Gabriel's sleeping
chamber. The row is soon on. Hanna was enacted by an emotional
actress, Til