Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. In _Bella Donna_, by Messrs.
Robert Hichens and James B. Fagan, we have a murder-story of a not
uncommon or improbable type. A woman of very shady reputation marries an
amiable idealist who is infatuated with her. She naturally finds his
idealism incomprehensible and his amiability tedious. His position as
heir-presumptive to a peerage is shattered by the birth of an
heir-apparent. She becomes passionately enamoured of an Egyptian
millionaire; and she sets to work to poison her husband with
sugar-of-lead, provided by her oriental lover. How her criminal purpose
is thwarted by a wise Jewish physician is nothing to the present
purpose. In intent she is a murderess, no less than Lucrezia Borgia or
the Marquise de Brinvilliers. And the authors have drawn her character
cleverly enough. They have shown her in the first act as a
shallow-souled materialist, and in the later acts as a vain, irritable,
sensual, unscrupulous creature. But have they given us any insight into
her psychology? No, that is just what they have not done.
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