_Gabrielle._ It bores me to death this “regular” life. And then, do you imagine I could endure to go on living near you when I knew that you despised me enough to hold your tongue about what you had discovered? _Forjot._ If you stay, I promise that, by my attitude towards you, you may be able to suppose that everything is forgotten. _Gabrielle._ No! I refuse to lead here the life of eternal humiliation you offer me. Good-night. _Forjot._ Good-night. You have given me all the pain it was in your power to give. But even now the music publisher does not believe that Gabrielle will desert him. Shortly after she has left the room his little daughter enters and asks for her mother. The servant is sent in quest of Gabrielle, but returns to announce that she is nowhere to be found. When Forjot realises that his wife has left him he covers his face with his handkerchief and trembles all over and sobs. _Pascaline [running up to him]._ Father! Father! What _is_ the matter? _Forjot._ Nothing, nothing. [_He uncovers his face, which is tragic with sorrow and stained with tears._] My child, your mother has gone away from us on a long journey. In a former paper[4] I spoke of the prodigious importance of the child in France; the Child, the great indestructible bond between the parents. Of course, exceptions—as in Gabrielle Forjot’s case. But, as we shall see, Gabrielle seeks to recover Pascaline; and it is around this struggle that the vital interest of the play centres. It is also around this struggle, and in the feelings, language and conduct of those engaged in it that we realise the different conditions of sentiment, morals and manners that characterise respectively the French bourgeoisie and the lower English middle class.