Nothing could offer a sharper contrast than Bourdet’s drama, _La Prisonnière_ (1925), which borrowed its title straight from Proust’s novel of the preceding year. Within eight months of its presentation at the Théâtre Fémina in Paris it was playing also in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and New York. The germ of the play is said to have been its author’s encounter during the war with a fellow officer who was deliberately seeking death as escape from domestic tragedy,[27] and the key character is this man’s wife, a lesbian who never appears on the stage. The heroine is a girl of twenty whom the older woman has captivated. As the play opens young Irene is struggling to remain in Paris against her father’s efforts to take her with him to Rome, where he is assigned to a diplomatic post. A widower, he has been accompanied on other missions by his mistress, as both his daughters know, but discretion dictates a more conventional ménage in Rome. When in desperation Irene pleads an impending betrothal as reason for her wishing not to leave Paris, her dictatorial parent takes matters in hand and in short order has made the pretended excuse a reality. So Irene must cope also with Jacques, the hitherto unsuccessful suitor (at that time happy with a mistress who hoped one day to be his wife). Jacques suspects that an old school friend, d’Aiguines, is Irene’s lover and the real reason for her staying in Paris, but when he approaches the latter, now married, he learns that it is Mme. d’Aiguines who is the object of Irene’s absorbing passion. His first reaction is one of relief, but the unhappy husband assures him that the case is much more serious than if it were a matter of another man. Understand this: they are not for us.... Under cover of friendship a woman can enter any household ... she can poison and pillage everything before the man whose home she destroys is even aware of what’s happening to him. When he finally realizes ... it’s too late—he is alone! Alone in the face of a secret alliance of two beings who understand one another because they’re alike ... because they’re of a different planet than he, the stranger, the enemy!... _Get out_ while you still have strength to do it![28]