In an earlier play, Les Tenailles, the same idea was present, but is a first attempt compared to this newer work. The story in Le Dédale runs thus: Marianne de Pogis has separated from her husband Max, a handsome, careless _viveur_, for very patent reasons; with her own eyes she witnessed his infidelity, further accentuated by the fact that her friend was an accomplice to his infidelity. The outraged woman takes her son and seeks the protection of her parents. These are called the Villard-Duvals, the father of the old school, tolerant of masculine transgressions; the mother a strict Roman Catholic, who abhors divorce. M. Hervieu has never been so happy in his painting of two such widely dissimilar portraits. Marianne is a proud woman with her father's will and temperament, proud and, unfortunately for her peace of mind, passionate. The inevitable man turns up. He is an admirable character, this Le Breuil--a gentleman, steadfast, honourable above all, patient. He loves Marianne and will not be refused. And she, tired of her claustral existence, tired of her mother's reproaches, at last listens to the pleadings of her suitor. Why not? She argues that her life has been made miserable through no fault of her own. Why not remarry and snatch some happiness from the devourer of all happiness--Time? Her mother refuses to hear of the project. Worse to her would be the remarriage of her daughter than sheer adultery. She has accused Marianne of an unforgiving disposition, and it is only too plain that she still considers her married to her divorced husband. But the father likes his presumptive son-in-law. The man's honesty and fearlessness appeal to him. Marianne, worn out by the continual bickering, marries Guillaume Le Breuil. In the next act we find them happy. The little son is loved by his stepfather as if he were his own. But a cloud mounts in their sky. The former husband, Max de Pogis, comes with his mother to intercede for a sight of his boy. He is melancholy and depressingly repentant. He married the woman for whom he sold his matrimonial birthright, and is now a widower. In a vividly conceived and expressed scene his mother, a skilful, worldly dame, argues with Marianne that to the father the love of the son belongs. At last, after an exhausting interview in which the hearts of these three humans are shown as if in a blazing light, Marianne consents to her son visiting the château of his father and his grandmother.