"For days I pondered what I should say. Arguments were plentiful, but the problem was how to present them forcefully enough to show her the wildness of her plan, and yet gently enough to avoid incensing her. Our future hung upon the scene, and I prayed to Heaven that not a tactless word should escape me. I knew that we had reached the crisis, that a mistaken adjective, even an impatient gesture, might be fatal. I considered and reconsidered that appeal with more tireless fervour than any lines that I have ever put into the mouth of a leading man. I thought about it so much that sometimes I was enraged to find the things I meant to say falling mentally into sentences too rhythmic and rounded, as if I had indeed been writing for the stage, and I damned my metier anew. You are an author yourself, my friend--you should understand: I longed to open my heart to her with all simplicity--never had any one sought to pour his heart out more earnestly, more freely, more unaffectedly than I--and it seemed to me in these moments that the artifices of the theatre were fighting against me to the very end. It was as if its influence were unconquerable--it had surmounted her love for me, and now it threatened even to mock my plea! "Enfin, the opportunity came. She sat down on the couch--the ottoman of the stage situation--and I began to speak, with all the tenderness and gravity of the stage husband. Struggle as I would to banish the thought, I could not help being conscious of our resemblance to the hero and heroine of a thousand comedies in the last act. I say that I 'began' to speak, and that I felt constrained by a shoal of theatrical reminiscences, but our likeness to the hero and heroine was brief. She interrupted me, she defied the dramatic convention. In lieu of being moved to tears, she replied, with a world of dignity, that the faults were mine. She advised me, for my own sake, to try to attain a more unselfish view. With a flow of impromptu eloquence that I envied, she warned me that, though I was not intentionally unjust, I was allowing 'prejudice and egotism to warp my better nature.' Before I knew what had happened, I stood listening to a homily. The situation that meant my last hope had come out upside down!" * * * * * Aribaud paused again. On the little lawn the child had left the swing; the most devoted of wives and mothers was playing _chat perché_ with him now. They made a pretty picture, but my thoughts were with her predecessor; I was mourning the love-story that had begun like an idyll, and that seemed to have had so bad an end. The man's voice brought me back. "Yes, the infallible situation had failed," he repeated. "What do you suppose was the sequel?" "I suppose," I sighed, "she had her way?"