nfident that his lordship's conduct would scarcely justify
itself. But interest is largely independent of critical judgment, and,
for my own part, I can aver that, when the curtain fell on the first
act, a five-pound note would not have bribed me to leave the theatre
without assisting at Lady Windermere's reception in the second act. That
is the frame of mind which the author should try to beget in his
audience; and Oscar Wilde, then almost a novice, had, in this one little
passage between Lady Windermere and the butler, shown himself a master
of the art of dramatic story-telling. The dramatist has higher functions
than mere story-telling; but this is fundamental, and the true artist is
the last to despise it.[1]

For another example of a first act brought to what one may call a
judiciously tantalizing conclusion, I turn to Mr. R.C. Carton's comedy
_Wheels within Wheels._ Lord Eric Chantrell has just returned from
abroad after many years' absence. He drives straight to the bachelor
flat of his old chum, Egerton Vartrey. At the flat he finds only his
friend's valet, Vartrey himself has been summoned to Scotland that very
evening, and the valet is on the point of following him. He knows,
however, that his master would wish his old friend to make himself at
home in the flat; so he presently goes off, leaving the newcomer
installed for the night. Lord Eric goes to the bedroom to change his
clothes; and, the stage being thus left vacant, we hear a latch-key
turning in the outer door. A lady in evening dress enters, goes up to
the bureau at the back of the stage, and calmly proceeds to break it
open and ransack it. While she is thus burglariously employed, Lord Eric
enters, and cannot refrain from a slight expression of surprise. The
lady takes the situation with humorous calmness, they fall into
conversation, and it is manifest that at every word Lord Eric is more
and more fascinated by the fair house-breaker. She learns who he is, and
evidently knows all about him; but she is careful to give him no inkling
of her own identity. At last she takes her leave, and he expresses such
an eager hope of being allowed to renew their acquaintance, that it
amounts to a declaration of a peculiar interest in her. Thereupon she
addresses him to this effect: "Has it occurred to you to wonder how I
got into your friend's rooms? I will show you how"--and, producing a
latch-key, she holds it up, with all its questionable implications,
before h