But perhaps I had better describe the whole play as shortly as possible. The theme--as one guessed from the title, even before the curtain rose--was the wooing of _Winifred_. In the First Act _Dick_ proposed to _Winifred_ and was refused by her, not from lack of love, but for fear lest she might spoil his career, he being one of those big-hearted men with a hip-pocket to whom the open spaces of the world call loudly; whereupon Mr. Levinski took _Winifred_ on one side and told the audience how, when _he_ had been a young man, some good woman had refused _him_ for a similar reason and had been miserable ever since. Accordingly in the Second Act _Winifred_ withdrew her refusal and offered to marry _Dick_, who declined to take advantage of her offer for fear that she was willing to marry him from pity rather than from love; whereupon Mr. Levinski took _Dick_ on one side and told the audience how, when _he_ had been a young man, he had refused to marry some good woman (a different one) for a similar reason, and had been broken-hearted ever afterwards. In the Third Act it really seemed as though they were coming together at last; for at the beginning of it Mr. Levinski took them both aside and told the audience a parable about a butterfly and a snap-dragon, which was both pretty and helpful, and caused several middle-aged ladies in the first and second rows of the upper circle to say, "What a nice man Mr. Levinski must be at home, dear!"--the purport of the allegory being to show that both _Dick_ and _Winifred_ were being very silly, as indeed by this time everybody but the author was aware. Unfortunately at that moment a footman entered with a telegram for _Miss Winifred_, which announced that she had been left fifty thousand pounds by a dead uncle in Australia; and, although Mr. Levinski seized this fresh opportunity to tell the audience how in similar circumstances Pride, to his lasting remorse, had kept _him_ and some good woman (a third one) apart, nevertheless _Dick_ held back once more, for fear lest he should be thought to be marrying her for her money. The curtain comes down as he says, "Good-bye ... good ber-eye." But there is a Fourth Act, and in the Fourth Act Mr. Levinski has a splendid time. He tells the audience two parables--one about a dahlia and a sheep, which I couldn't quite follow--and three reminiscences of life in India; he brings together finally and for ever these hesitating lovers; and, best of all, he has a magnificent love-scene of his own with a pretty widow, in which we see, for the first time in the play, how love should really be made--not boy-and-girl pretty-pretty love, but the deep emotion felt (and with occasional lapses of memory explained) by a middle-aged man with a slight _embonpoint_ who has knocked about the world a bit and knows life. Mr. Levinski, I need not say, was at his best in this Act. . . . . .