, from those who are most likely
to be wounded by them; but it is not to be presumed that, when found
out, they necessarily disgrace themselves by irritating lies and
transparent subterfuges.

My playlet, which I offer as a model to all future writers of farcical
comedy, may now, I hope, be read without shock. I may just add that Mr.
Sibthorpe Juno's view that morality demands, not that we should behave
morally (an impossibility to our sinful nature) but that we shall not
attempt to defend our immoralities, is a standard view in England, and
was advanced in all seriousness by an earnest and distinguished British
moralist shortly after the first performance of Overruled. My objection
to that aspect of the doctrine of original sin is that no necessary and
inevitable operation of human nature can reasonably be regarded as
sinful at all, and that a morality which assumes the contrary is an
absurd morality, and can be kept in countenance only by hypocrisy. When
people were ashamed of sanitary problems, and refused to face them,
leaving them to solve themselves clandestinely in dirt and secrecy, the
solution arrived at was the Black Death. A similar policy as to sex
problems has solved itself by an even worse plague than the Black
Death; and the remedy for that is not Salvarsan, but sound moral
hygiene, the first foundation of which is the discontinuance of our
habit of telling not only the comparatively harmless lies that we know
we ought not to tell, but the ruinous lies that we foolishly think we
ought to tell.

OVERRULED.

A lady and gentleman are sitting together on a chesterfield in a
retired corner of the lounge of a seaside hotel. It is a summer night:
the French window behind them stands open. The terrace without
overlooks a moonlit harbor. The lounge is dark. The chesterfield,
upholstered in silver grey, and the two figures on it in evening dress,
catch the light from an arc lamp somewhere; but the walls, covered with
a dark green paper, are in gloom. There are two stray chairs, one on
each side. On the gentleman's right, behind him up near the window, is
an unused fireplace. Opposite it on the lady's left is a door. The
gentleman is on the lady's right.

The lady is very attractive, with a musical voice and soft appealing
manners. She is young: that is, one feels sure that she is under
thirty-five and over twenty-four. The gentleman does not look much
older. He is rather handsome, and has ventured as far