(_A Scene from the Drama of To-morrow._)
_Edwin._ And do you really love me?
_Angelina._ With all my heart and soul; and yet----
_Edwin._ Yet what? ANGELINA, why do you look so strangely at me? There
is something on your mind, something you have not the courage to tell
me.
[Illustration]
_Angelina._ EDWIN, I can hide nothing from you. Even though it should
wreck both our lives, you have the right to know the truth.
_Edwin._ My own darling, what is in your heart?
_Angelina._ Can you bear to hear it? Don't look at me, or I shall not
have the courage to say what must be said. EDWIN, I have never lived a
disreputable life.
_Edwin_ (_burying his face in his hands_). Great Heaven! and I believed
in you so utterly. (_Then rising, with a desperate effort to control his
emotion._) Good-bye.
_Angelina_ (_falling on her knees, and clinging to him_). Ah, no, you
shall not go. Think of it, EDWIN, of the temptations to virtue that
surrounded me, of the examples of simple girlhood that poisoned my
youth. If I have lived a life of spotless innocence, remember, at least,
that I knew no better. What else could I do? Brought up from earliest
infancy by a mother of unblemished reputation?
_Edwin_ (_with a gesture of horror_). Your mother, too? ANGELINA, our
marriage is impossible.
_Angelina._ How hard you men are. Is your sex alone to have the monopoly
of innocence? Must there always be one law for women and another for
dramatic authors? Oh, it is cruel! cruel! But you will not leave me.
Remember, I am still young: it is never too late to err. And is it
because I am a woman that I am to be denied the chance of retrieving the
innocence of a mis-spent youth by the indiscretions of a riper
womanhood? Besides, are there not cases, cases known to us both where a
wife has lived down the terrible reproach of a blameless girlhood? Why,
even Mr. JONES'S latest heroine, and there is nothing later than that,
could not absolutely prove she had gone wrong, and yet her husband took
her back! But you are so proud, so relentless. You have no pity in your
heart.
_Edwin._ Believe me, it is not pride. For myself, I would gladly brave
the censure of the world, and if in after years men should say in scorn
he married her though there was nothing against her, I should still be
happy, knowing I had your love. But my father, that dear old man in his
quiet, country vicarage. Think of it? It is too horrible!
_Angelina_ (_with bowed head._) You are right, I had forgotten your
father.
_Edwin._ How could I ever look into that sweet, wrinkled face, and meet
those reverend eyes, knowing that I was asking him to receive as a
daughter one who had never even once strayed from the paths of virtue?
_Angelina._ I see it all now, good-bye.
_Edwin._ Good-bye.
_Angelina_ (_as he is going_). EDWIN, come back.
_Edwin._ Ah! don't torture me, I can bear no more!
_Angelina._ But what if I were to tell you that this confession, so
humiliating to us both, was but a ruse to test the strength of your
devotion.
_Edwin._ Ah, don't raise a false hope within me, only to plunge me again
in the abyss of despair.
_Angelina._ But this is no false hope.
_Edwin_ (_eagerly_). What do you mean?
_Angelina_ (_burying her head on his shoulder_). I mean that I been no
better than I should be.
_Edwin_ (_embracing her_). My own true love, nothing can part us now.
_Curtain._
* * * * *
Crackers.
The youthful but indiscriminating would-be smoker will find unending
bliss in the joys of _Our Smoking-Room Concert_, his pleasure though
commencing with a bang won't end in smoke. Feminine hearts who long for
the sunny south will revel in the _Riviera Cosaque_. Both these are
warranted to "go off," through the inventive genius of our "crack" G.
SPARAGNAPANE.
* * * * *