The distressed _Senator_, therefore, sat up till a late hour every night, grieving for his wife’s “lost love,” until at last _Helen_, observing his dejection, was moved to discover and avouch that her juvenile fancy for _Robert Grey_ had been a girlish infatuation and to declare her “calm, peaceful, and eternal love” for her husband. _Mr._ and _Mrs. Rutherford_ then sailed, aboard the Alaska, for Europe. It appeared, incidentally, that _Jack Dexter_ and _Kitty Ives_, giddy things, though bright and good, hovering about the story, were lovers, but that _Kitty’s_ mother did not approve of their engagement till after _Jack_ had smirched his face with a bit of smoked glass, and also that all the persons concerned in these momentous affairs once saw an eclipse of the sun, which was visible in Washington. Almost every person in this play is colorless and insignificant. The proceedings of the characters evince no natural sequence between motive and conduct. Given two young persons who love each other, they could not possibly be alienated by conjuring up the bugbear of a previous attachment. Nothing is so dead as the love that has died, and every lover instinctively knows it. Moreover, the ladies, practically without exception, are more pleased than disquieted by discovering that their lovers have found they could live without others but not without them. The fabric, in short, is one of elaborate trifling with serious things, for the sake of situations and effects. The play should have been called “The Husband” rather than “The Wife,” because it is _Rutherford_ in whom the interest centres. The best scene in it is the one of explanation and reconcilement between the husband and wife, and this was the invention of Belasco, around which and for the sake of which the play was written. It contains a strain of rational, fine manliness that wins and holds attentive sympathy. In studying the plays written by Belasco and De Mille in collaboration it is essential to bear in mind the apportionment of the labor, in order correctly to estimate Belasco’s share in them. The writing in that co-partnership was largely done by De Mille: the dramatic machinery, the story in action, was supplied almost entirely by Belasco, who acted the scenes, when the plays were in process of construction, the dialogue being beaten out between the co-workers. This was the original cast of “The Wife”,--November 1, 1887: