and Gar, arising from her inveterate habit
of telling trifling fibs to avoid facing the petty annoyances of life.
For instance, when Gar asks her casually whether she has read Ringve's
poems, a foolish denial slips out, though she knows that the cut pages
of the book will give her the lie. These incidents point to a state of
unstable equilibrium in the relations between husband and wife;
wherefore, when we see Gar, at the end of the act, preparing to read
Ringve's poems, our curiosity is very keen as to how he will take them.
We feel the next hour to be big with fate for these two people; and we
long for the curtain to rise again upon the threatened household. The
fuse has been fired; we are all agog for the explosion.

In Herr Egge's place, I should have been inclined to have dropped my
curtain upon Gar, with the light of the reading-lamp full upon him, in
the act of opening the book, and then to have shown him, at the
beginning of the second act, in exactly the same position. With more
delicate art, perhaps, the author interposes a little domestic incident
at the end of the first act, while leaving it clearly impressed on our
minds that the reading of the poems is only postponed by a few minutes.
That is the essential point: the actual moment upon which the curtain
falls is of minor importance. What is of vast importance, on the other
hand, is that the expectation of the audience should not be baffled, and
that the curtain should rise upon the immediate sequel to the reading of
the poems. This is, in the exact sense of the words, _a scene a
faire_--an obligatory scene. The author has aroused in us a reasonable
expectation of it, and should he choose to balk us--to raise his
curtain, say, a week, or a month, later--we should feel that we had been
trifled with. The general theory of the _scene a faire_ will presently
come up for discussion. In the meantime, I merely make the obvious
remark that it is worse than useless to awaken a definite expectation in
the breast of the audience, and then to disappoint it.[2]

The works of Sir Arthur Pinero afford many examples of interest very
skilfully carried forward. In his farces--let no one despise the
technical lessons to be learnt from a good farce--there is always an
_adventure_ afoot, whose development we eagerly anticipate. When the
curtain falls on the first act of _The Magistrate_, we foresee the
meeting of all the characters at the Hotel des Princes, and are
impatient t