"The aunt at Sèvres also had something to say. She had managed to get on a semi-friendly footing with us when _Les Huit Jours_ was running, and now she had the effrontery to take the tone of a mother-in-law with me. She 'knew I was devoted to her niece, but I was not being fair to her--I ought to realise that she had a right to a career, too.' What audacity!--a woman who had given nothing but phrases when her niece was penniless! I did not wrap up my answer in silver paper--and I fancy the aunt's influence was responsible for a good deal; I think she revenged herself by offering all the encouragement possible behind my back. "Anyhow, my wife announced to me at last that she had determined to go her own road without my help. It was as if she had struck me. "She meant to seek an opening in some minor company in the provinces--in the obscurest of the theatres ambulants, if she could do no better. It sounded so mad that at first I could hardly believe she was in earnest. The doggedness of her air soon convinced me; I would have welcomed the wildest hysteria in preference. Since I refused to further her ambition, she must resign herself to beginning in the humblest way, she told me quietly; she 'regretted to defy my wishes, but she was a woman, and I had been wrong to expect from her the blind obedience of a child--she could not consent to remain a nonentity any longer!' She dumfounded me. It meant actual separation, it meant the end of our life together--and she was telling me this composedly, coolly, as if our life together were the merest trifle, compared with the fascination of the footlights. I cursed the footlights and the day I first wrote for them. I swear I wished myself back in the Magasins du Louvre. My excitement was so violent that I could not articulate; I stuttered and stood mute. I went from her overwhelmed, asking myself what I was to do. "There is one course that never fails to remedy marital unhappiness and bring husband and wife together again--on the stage. It is when he leads her to an ottoman, and, standing a pace or two behind her, proceeds with tender gravity to recite a catalogue of her defects. He contrasts them pathetically with the virtues that endeared her to him in the springtime of their union--and the wife, moved to tears, becomes immediately and for ever afterwards the girl that she used to be. The situation is pretty, it is popular, and it is quite untrue, for in real life one cannot recreate a character by making a speech. However, I was a dramatist, and more credulous than I am now, and I tried.