hen at the
broken fragments of glass. She takes up the hand-bell and rings. The
Attendant_ ENTERS.)

QUEEN. Pick up that broken glass.

(_The Attendant collects it on the hand-tray which he carries_)

Bring it to me! ... Leave it!

(_The Attendant deposits the tray before her, and_ GOES. _Gently
the Queen handles the broken pieces. Then in a voice of tearful emotion
she speaks_.)

Such devotion! Most extraordinary! Oh! Albert! Albert!

(_And in the sixteenth year of her widowhood and the fortieth of her
reign the Royal Lady bends her head over the fragments of broken glass,
and weeps happy tears_.)

CURTAIN

His Favourite Flower

Dramatis Personae

THE STATESMAN
THE HOUSEKEEPER
THE DOCTOR
THE PRIMROSES

His Favourite Flower

A Political Myth Explained

_The eminent old Statesman has not been at all well. He is sitting up in
his room, and his doctor has come to see him for the third time in three
days. This means that the malady is not yet seriously regarded: once a day
is still sufficient. Nevertheless, he is a woeful wreck to look at; and
the doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his
querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain,
repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument:
its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane
of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the
polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more
in those tired old hands, shiny with rheumatic gout, and now twitching
feebly under the discomfort of a superimposed malady, the reins of
democratic and imperial power. The dark, cavernous eyes still wear their
look of accumulated wisdom, a touch also of visionary fire. The sparse
locks, dyed to a raven black, set off with their uncanny sheen the
clay-like pallor of the face. He sits in a high-backed chair, wrapped in
an oriental dressing-gown, his muffled feet resting on a large hot-water
bottle; and the eminent physician, preparatory to taking a seat at his
side, bends solicitously over him_.

DOCTOR. Well, my dear lord, how are you to-day? Better? You look better.

STATESMAN. Yes, I suppose I am better. But my sleep isn't what it ought to
be. I have had a dream, Doctor; and it has upset me.

DOCTOR. A dream?

STATESMAN. You wonder that I should mention it? Of course, I--I don't
believe in dreams. Yet they indicate, sometimes