The _Corporal_, who is not vicious, is so moved by _Marie-Odile’s_ unsuspecting confidence that he resolves not to molest her, but she begs him so earnestly to remain, and so willingly lets him kiss her, that he yields to temptation, and the curtain falls upon the second act as she reposes happily in his arms. The scene is natural and charming, and the sentiment that of pure, youthful romance. In the third and last act, after the lapse of a year, the convent has another tenant. _Marie-Odile_ and the old gardener are no longer alone. There is an infant, which _Marie-Odile_ accounts for as a miraculous gift from Heaven. She is conscious of no ill, has followed unhesitatingly the promptings of nature, and rejoices in her new possession with boundless exultation. But now the war is over and the nuns are returning. _Sister Louise_, the personification of true Christian charity, is the first to enter, and sorely afflicted is she as she listens to _Marie-Odile’s_ grateful pæans, and thinks of what the _Mother Superior_ will say. That austere judge is inflexible from the first. Straightway she orders the amazed but unrepentant young mother from the sacred precincts, in spite of the protests of _Sister Louise_, who declares that the true responsibility lay with the sisterhood which had failed to instruct or guard innocence. “Simple as the play is in external form, it deals with more than one difficult and complex problem. Concerning the particular instance of the heroine--who becomes in Mr. Knoblauch’s sketch a fresh and delightful ideal of ignorant and untainted innocence--there need be no question. Like _Haidée_, she flew to her love like a young bird. She was guiltless, and her story--with the exceptions hinted at--is told very prettily, with an unaffected naturalism which is rare, and with many charming little poetic interludes. Her love episode is handled with notable tact and fancy, and is an eloquent plea for the sanctity of nature’s own laws. But obviously it is less ingenuous than _Marie-Odile_ in its wilful disregard of certain awkward and wholly incontrovertible facts. The Pharisaism of the _Mother Superior_ is, of course, utterly indefensible upon any count, but may be set down partly to the credit of poetic license. Unfortunately, the innocence of love is not, in the present state of this imperfect world, sufficient to exempt it from the material penalties of unrestricted freedom. And the instruction of ignorance is not altogether so simple a matter as some of our younger social philosophers seem to suppose.