Here is an unexampled kind of collaboration, since the invention of the story, the creation of the characters, the dialog to be spoken--these were all due to George Sand alone; but the concentrating of the interest, the heightening of the personages of the narrative to adjust themselves to the perspective of the theater, the serried and irresistible momentum of the action--these were the contribution of Dumas, a freewill offering to his old friend. The piece that she wrote was hers and hers alone, and yet it had a dramatic vitality lacking in all her other plays, because a man had intervened at the right moment to provide the architectural framework which the woman could not have bestowed upon it, however felicitous she might be in the decoration. IV Thus it is that we can supply two answers to the two questions posed at the beginning of this inquiry: Why is it that there are so few women playwrights? And why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women playwrights rarely attain high rank? The explanation is to be found in two facts: first, the fact that women are likely to have only a definitely limited knowledge of life, and, second, the fact that they are likely also to be more or less deficient in the faculty of construction. The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate victory; and the second may depart also whenever women submit themselves to the severe discipline which has compelled men to be more or less logical. (1915.) VIII THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING I