She gives out that "an explanation will be
forthcoming at the right moment"; but the right moment never arrives.
All we are told is that she, Julia, considers that there was never
anything degrading in her conduct; and this we are asked to accept as
sufficient. It was a daring policy to dangle before our eyes an
explanation, which always receded as we advanced towards it, and proved
in the end to be wholly unexplanatory. The success of the play, however,
was sufficient to show that, in light comedy, at any rate, a secret may
with impunity be kept, even to the point of tantalization.[2]
Let us now look at a couple of cases in which the keeping of a secret
seems pretty clearly wrong, inasmuch as it diminishes tension, and
deprives the audience of that superior knowledge in which lies the irony
of drama. In a play named _Her Advocate_, by Mr. Walter Frith (founded
on one of Grenville Murray's _French Pictures in English Chalk_), a K.C.
has fallen madly in love with a woman whose defence he has undertaken.
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