It is curious that the denouement, which was so severely handled by the critics when the play was produced in Berlin, was the part of the piece that seemed most to impress an English audience. The epigram and the praises of strength and beauty provoked no protest or dissatisfaction, as those who had seen the German production expected they would, nor was the audience in the least shocked when the wife holds the torch for her husband and lover to fight, nor when, at the close of the encounter, she purposely throws it down. This, of course, is the unlooked-for climax of the piece, and the dramatic character of the situation completely saved it. "THE WOMAN COVERED WITH JEWELS" Finally we have arrived at what must always be the most tantalising of all Wilde's plays because the MS. has been lost and very little is known about it. It had for title "The Woman Covered With Jewels." The only copy of it known to exist, a small quarto book of ruled paper in the author's own handwriting, was presumably stolen with the copies of "The Incomparable and Ingenious History of Mr W. H. Being the true Secret of Shakespeare's Sonnets, now for the first time here fully set forth," and "The Florentine Tragedy," at the time of the Tite Street sale. But little is known about the play--a very few privileged persons having been favoured with a perusal of it, and the only information the public have been able to gather about it is from an article by a well-known book-lover that appeared in a weekly paper. I myself have not been able to discover any further information. The play was in prose and, like "Salomé," was a tragedy in one act. It was written about 1896. According to the writer of the article referred to, it was "presented by its author to a charming and cultured Mayfair lady, well known in London Society." He goes on to say that she allowed a few well-known _littérateurs_ to peruse it, but that the manuscript is now lost and that he has not succeeded in tracing a second copy anywhere. There seems to be some confusion here, for if this were the only copy it could not have been stolen from the Tite Street sale, as, according to the biography, was the case. One thing, at anyrate, appears certain, and that is that there is no copy in existence, or rather--for if it was stolen it must be in someone's possession--available at the present moment. It would be interesting to know how the lady to whom the book was presented came to lose it. Perhaps she herself destroyed it at the period when so many of his friends were so anxious to conceal all traces of their friendship with its author. Again, the MS. may only have been lent her, and may have been returned by her to Wilde before the crash. At anyrate, it seems incredible that he should have parted with the manuscript without keeping even a rough copy. The point needs elucidation.