emed as though they were coming
together at last; for at the beginning of it Mr. Levinski took them both
aside and told the audience a parable about a butterfly and a
snap-dragon, which was both pretty and helpful, and caused several
middle-aged ladies in the first and second rows of the upper circle to
say, "What a nice man Mr. Levinski must be at home, dear!"--the purport
of the allegory being to show that both _Dick_ and _Winifred_ were being
very silly, as indeed by this time everybody but the author was aware.
Unfortunately at that moment a footman entered with a telegram for _Miss
Winifred_, which announced that she had been left fifty thousand pounds
by a dead uncle in Australia; and, although Mr. Levinski seized this
fresh opportunity to tell the audience how in similar circumstances
Pride, to his lasting remorse, had kept _him_ and some good woman (a
third one) apart, nevertheless _Dick_ held back once more, for fear lest
he should be thought to be marrying her for her money. The curtain comes
down as he says, "Good-bye ... good ber-eye." But there is a Fourth
Act, and in the Fourth Act Mr. Levinski has a splendid time. He tells
the audience two parables--one about a dahlia and a sheep, which I
couldn't quite follow--and three reminiscences of life in India; he
brings together finally and for ever these hesitating lovers; and, best
of all, he has a magnificent love-scene of his own with a pretty widow,
in which we see, for the first time in the play, how love should really
be made--not boy-and-girl pretty-pretty love, but the deep emotion felt
(and with occasional lapses of memory explained) by a middle-aged man
with a slight _embonpoint_ who has knocked about the world a bit and
knows life. Mr. Levinski, I need not say, was at his best in this Act.

. . . . .

I met Prosper Vane at the club some ten days before the first night, and
asked him how rehearsals were going.

"Oh, all right," he said. "But it's a rotten play. I've got such a
dashed silly part."

"From what you told me," I said, "it sounded rather good."

"It's so dashed unnatural. For three whole acts this girl and I are in
love with each other, and we know we're in love with each other, and yet
we simply fool about. She's a dashed pretty girl, too, my boy. In real
life I'd jolly soon----"

"My dear Alfred," I protested, "you're not going to fall in love with
the girl you have to fall in love with on the stage? I