Here, however, the fault did not lie
in awakening a premature expectation of the close, but in the fact that
we somehow were more interested in the other characters of the play than
in the pair who held the stage throughout the long concluding scene.
Once more I turn to _La Douloureuse_ for an instance of an admirable
act-ending of the quiet modern type. The third act--the terrible
peripety in the love of Philippe and Helene--has run its agonizing
course, and worked itself out. The old dramaturgy would certainly have
ended the scene with a bang, so to speak--a swoon or a scream, a tableau
of desolation, or, at the very least, a piece of tearful rhetoric. M.
Donnay does nothing of the sort. He lets his lovers unpack their hearts
with words until they are exhausted, broken, dazed with misery, and have
nothing more to say. Then Helene asks: "What o'clock is it?" Philippe
looks at his watch: "Nearly seven." "I must be going"--and she dries her
eyes, smoothes her hair, pulls herself together, in a word, to face the
world again.
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