feels pity for him. She
hardly yet knows her own feelings toward her husband; but his manhood
and kindness are gradually forcing their way to her heart. Routledge, in
his own passion, forgets himself, and she now repels him. She even
threatens to strike the bell, when the Count de Carojac appears, and
warns his rival to desist. This is now the end of the second act, a very
different end, you see, from the other version, where the little girl
runs in, and, in her innocence, saves the mother from herself.

Here let me tell a curious experience, which illustrates how stubbornly
persistent the dramatic laws are, in having their own way. We were all
three of us--manager, literary attache, and author--so pleased with the
original ending of the second act the picture of the little girl in her
mother's arms, and the lover bowing his head in its presence of
innocence, that we retained it. The little girl ran on the stage at
every rehearsal at the usual place. But no one knew what to do with her.
The actress who played the part of Lilian caught her in her arms, in
various attitudes; but none of them seemed right. The actor who played
Routledge tried to drop his head, according to instructions, but he
looked uncomfortable, not reverential. The next day we had the little
girl run on from another entrance. She stopped in the center of the
stage. Lilian stared at her a moment and then exclaimed: "Mr. Howard,
what shall I do with this child?" Routledge, who had put his hands in
his pocket, called out: "What's the girl doing here, anyway, Howard?" I
could only answer: "She used to be all right; I don't know what's the
matter with her now." And I remember seeing an anxious look on the face
of the child's mother, standing at the side of the stage. She feared
there was something wrong about her own little darling who played the
part of Natalie. I reassured her on this point; for the fact that I was
in error was forcing itself on my mind, in spite of my desire to retain
the scene. You will hardly believe that I am speaking literally, when I
tell you that it was not until the 19th rehearsal that we yielded to the
inevitable, and decided not to have the child come on at all at that
point. The truth was this: now that Lilian saved herself in her own
strength, the child had no dramatic function to fulfill. So strongly did
we all feel the force of a dramatic law which we could not, and would
not, see. Our own natural human instinct--the instinct