ame room, to do his writing. Misquith and Jayne
exchange a few speeches in an undertone, and then Cayley Drummle comes
in, bringing the story of George Orreyd's marriage to the unmentionable
Miss Hervey. This story is so unpleasant to Tanqueray that, to get out
of the conversation, he returns to his writing; but still he cannot help
listening to Cayley's comments on George Orreyd's "disappearance"; and
at last the situation becomes so intolerable to him that he purposely
leaves the room, bidding the other two "Tell Cayley the news." The
technical manipulation of all this seems to me above reproach
--dramatically effective and yet life-like in every detail. If
one were bound to raise an objection, it would be to the coincidence
which brings to Cayley's knowledge, on one and the same evening, two
such exactly similar misalliances in his own circle of acquaintance. But
these are just the coincidences that do constantly happen. Every one
knows that life is full of them.

The exposition might, no doubt, have been more economically effected.
Cayley Drummle might have figured as sole confidant and chorus; or even
he might have been dispensed with, and all that was necessary might have
appeared in colloquies between Aubrey and Paula on the one hand, Aubrey
and Ellean on the other. But Cayley as sole confidant--the "Charles, his
friend," of eighteenth-century comedy--would have been more plainly
conventional than Cayley as one of a trio of Aubrey's old cronies,
representing the society he is sacrificing in entering upon this
experimental marriage; and to have conveyed the necessary information
without any confidant or chorus at all would (one fancies) have strained
probability, or, still worse, impaired consistency of character. Aubrey
could not naturally discuss his late wife either with her successor or
with her daughter; while, as for Paula's past, all he wanted was to
avert his eyes from it. I do not say that these difficulties might not
have been overcome; for, in the vocabulary of the truly ingenious
dramatist there is no such word as impossible. But I do suggest that the
result would scarcely have been worth the trouble, and that it is
hyper-criticism which objects to an exposition so natural and probable
as that of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, simply on the ground that
certain characters are introduced for the purpose of conveying certain
information. It would be foolish to expect of every work of art an
absolutely auste