he curtain rises, Lilian is
teaching her little child, Natalie, her alphabet. All the warm affection
of a woman's nature, suppressed and thrown back upon her own heart, has
concentrated itself upon this child. Lilian has been a good wife, and
she does reverence her husband as she expected to do. He is a kind,
generous and noble man. But she does not love him as a wife. Mr.
Strebelow now enters, and, after a little domestic scene, the French
nurse is instructed to dress the child for a walk with its mother.
Strebelow then tells Lilian that he has just met an old friend of hers
and of himself--the American artist, Mr. Harold Routledge, passing thru
Paris on his way from his studio in Rome. He has insisted on a visit
from Mr. Routledge, and the two parted lovers are brought face to face
by the husband. They are afterwards left alone together. Routledge has
lived a solitary life, nursing his feelings toward a woman who had
heartlessly cast him off, as he thinks, to marry a man merely for his
wealth. He is bitter and cruel. But the cruelty to a woman which is born
of love for her has a wonderful, an almost irresistible fascination for
the female heart. Under the spell of this fascination, Lilian's old love
reasserts its authority against that of his will. She forgets everything
except the moment when her lover last parted from her. She is again the
wayward girl that waited for his return; he has returned!--and she does
what she would have done five years before; she turns, passionately, to
throw herself into his arms. At this moment, her little child, Natalie,
runs in. Lilian is a mother again, and a wife. She falls to her knees
and embraces her child at the very feet of her former lover. Harold
Routledge bows his head reverently, and leaves them together.

Act third. The art of breaking the tenth commandment--thou shalt not
covet they neighbor's wife--has reached its highest perfection in
France. One of the most important laws of dramatic construction might be
formulated in this way. If you want a particular thing done, choose a
character to do it that an audience will naturally expect to do it. I
wanted a man to fall in love with my heroine after she was a married
woman, and I chose a French count for that purpose. I knew that an
American audience would not only expect him to fall in love with another
man's wife, but it would be very much surprised if he didn't. This saved
much explanation and unnecessary dialog. Harold Rou