LADY E.: Invitations are never tolerant, my dear Countess; acceptances always are. But do tell me, how is your husband, the Count,—or perhaps he is no longer your husband. One never knows these days whether a man is his wife's husband or whether she is simply his wife.
COUNTESS T. (lighting a cigarette): Really, Lady Eaveston, you grow more and more interesting. I detest interesting people; they are so hopelessly uninteresting. It is like beautiful people—who are usually so singularly unbeautiful. Has not that been your experience, Sir Mortimer?
SIR M.: May I have the pleasure of escorting you to the music-room, Mrs. Wrennington?
(Exeunt omnes to music-room for dinner)
Curtain.
It is from this that we have, in a measure, been delivered by the court-room scenes, and all the medical dramas. But the paradox still remains intrenched in English writing behind Mr. G.K. Chesterton, and he may be considered, by literary tacticians, as considerable stronghold.
Here again we find our commonplaces shaken up until they emerge in what looks like a new and tremendously imposing shape, and all of them ostensibly proving the opposite of what we have always understood. If we do not quite catch the precise meaning at first reading, we lay it to our imperfect perception and try to do better on the next one. It seldom occurs to us that it really may have no meaning at all and never was intended to have any, any more than the act of hanging by your feet from parallel bars has any further significance than that you can manage to do it.
So, before retiring to the privacy of our personal couches, let us thank an all wise Providence, that the drama-paradox has passed away.