longer the same woman whose
relentless egoism drove Beata into the mill-race. Rebecca herself puts
it to him: "How can you believe me on my bare word after to-day?" There
is only one proof she can give--that of "going the way Beata went." She
gives it: and Rosmer, who cannot believe her if she lives, and will not
survive her if she dies, goes with her to her end. But the cases are not
very frequent, fortunately, in which such drastic methods of proof are
appropriate or possible. The dramatist must, as a rule, attain his end
by less violent means; and often he fails to attain it at all.

A play by Mr. Haddon Chambers, _The Awakening_, turned on a sudden
conversion--the "awakening," in fact, referred to in the title. A
professional lady-killer, a noted Don Juan, has been idly making love to
a country maiden, whose heart is full of innocent idealisms. She
discovers his true character, or, at any rate, his reputation, and is
horror-stricken, while practically at the same moment, he "awakens" to
the error of his ways, and is seized with a passion for her as single
minded and idealistic as hers for him. But how are the heroine and the
audience to be assured of the fact? That is just the difficulty; and the
author takes no effectual measures to overcome it. The heroine, of
course, is ultimately convinced; but the audience remains sceptical, to
the detriment of the desired effect. "Sceptical," perhaps, is not quite
the right word. The state of mind of a fictitious character is not a
subject for actual belief or disbelief. We are bound to accept
theoretically what the author tells us; but in this case he has failed
to make us intimately feel and know that it is true.[2]

In Mr. Alfred Sutro's play _The Builder of Bridges_, Dorothy Faringay,
in her devotion to her forger brother, has conceived the rather
disgraceful scheme of making one of his official superiors fall in love
with her, in order to induce him to become practically an accomplice in
her brother's crime. She succeeds beyond her hopes. Edward Thursfield
does fall in love with her, and, at a great sacrifice, replaces the
money the brother has stolen. But, in a very powerful peripety-scene in
the third act, Thursfield learns that Dorothy has been deliberately
beguiling him, while in fact she was engaged to another man. The truth
is, however, that she has really come to love Thursfield passionately,
and has broken her engagement with the other, for whom she never truly