Duse possesses the subtle hands of that painter's Lisa Gioconda, and as the motive of D'Annunzio's play springs from a pair of hands--its original title was The Tragedy of the Beautiful Hands--Signora Duse makes of her fingers ten eloquent signals. The opportunity for theatric climax is rare in La Gioconda; but when it does come the effect is strong. A wife, whose love and devotion are slighted, dares to face her rival in the studio of the sculptor-husband. He has endeavoured desperately to wean himself from his passion for the model who posed as his masterpiece, a Sphinx. Attempted suicide before the action of the play proved how deeply sunk in his imagination is this crazy infatuation. His wife meets the woman, who is young, beautiful, strange, and absolutely enamoured of the sculptor. Of her sincerity there is no doubt. Then the dramatist throws wire-drawn analysis to the winds and in a scene of peculiar brutality the women duel for the possession of the gifted, worthless man. Here Duse's imagination and technic are revealed. She must remain the refined woman, though her brain is afire, her soul up in arms. In acrid terms of reproach and irony she defies the temptress of her husband, knowing full well that he is lost to her; in the very flush of defeat she would pluck victory by the sleeve. Startled by the ready assurance, enraged by the seemingly triumphant wife, Gioconda, the model, rushes into the atelier, bent upon destroying her counterfeit in clay,--that figure she so lovingly guarded during the sculptor's illness. She had watched the work of his soul, while his wife nursed only his sick body. With this she taunts the other. In despair before the looming catastrophe, Duse, the wife, cries that she has lied, that her husband still loves his model. But it is too late. The struggle of the women is heard. A crash and a scream announce that the statue has been overthrown. Then an ugly Sardou motive is obtruded. With the shadow of eternal regret in her eyes, her hands wrapped in the wet cloths that bound the clay, Duse staggers from behind the draperies of the atelier. She has saved her husband's statue, but her beautiful hands are hopelessly maimed. This scene is hideously cruel. And to top the _crescendo_ of woe, the vacillating man runs in. "You, you, you!" sobs his wife; "it is saved," and the curtain blots the agonizing situation from our eye, not from our memory.