Sylvette. Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light;
Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune.
Percinet. A Watteau picture—not by Watteau, quite;
Release from many a dreary Northern rune;
Lovers and fathers; old walls, flowery-bright;
A brave old plot—with music—ending soon.
Sylvette. Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light.
(The stage gradually darkens; the last lines are delivered in voices that grow fainter as the actors appear to fade away into mist and darkness.)
Curtain.[56]
So light the finale, as in London, that the figures fade from sight till only their voices are faintly heard, and theatricality helps to place the play as a mere bit of fantasy. On the other hand, there is something like genuine theatricality at the end of Sudermann’s Fritzschen. Fritz is going to his death in a prospective duel with a man who is an unerring shot. Though the others present suspect or know the truth, his mother thinks he is going to new and finer fortunes. Isn’t the following the real climax?
Fritz. (Stretching out his hand to her cheerfully.) Dear Ag— (Looks into her face, and understands that she knows. Softly, earnestly.) Farewell, then.
Agnes. Farewell, Fritz!
Fritz. I love you.