In this class we have placed, by definition,
scenes which the author himself has rendered obligatory by seeming
unmistakably to lead up to them--or, in other words, scenes indicated,
or seeming to be indicated, by deliberately-planted finger-posts. It may
appear as though the case of Dick Halward, which we have just been
examining, in reality came under this heading. But it cannot actually be
said that Mr. Jerome either did, or seemed to, point by finger-posts
towards the obligatory scene. He rather appears to have been blankly
unconscious of its possibility.
We have noted in the foregoing chapter the unwisdom of planting
misleading finger-posts; here we have only to deal with the particular
case in which they seem to point to a definite and crucial scene. An
example given by M. Sarcey himself will, I think, make the matter
quite clear.
M. Jules Lemaitre's play, _Revoltee_, tells the story of a would-be
intellectual, ill-conditioned young woman, married to a plain and
ungainly professor of mathematics, whom she despises.
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