Ethel-When I think of what love has meant it has brought to me when I think that to you said that every time you looked at her to others, and when I consider what some it has meant untold misery, fortunate I am-and I wonder breast, dead in his chair, no wonder youyou-(Pause; he realizes that according to her actions when Dole died she didn't see Ethel-You shan't think that of me! You may think anything else you like but you shan't think that! Listen now, listen, and I'll tell you the truth. Doctor-Ha! The truth! Ethel-Yes, the truth. When you left the studio to talk to Mrs. Dole he came in. He told me you had said there was no need for an operation, and that as there wasn't, he was going to tell his wife that he loved me and wanted a divorce. I begged him not to, and when he insisted on knowing why, I told that I didn't love him, but that I loved you. Doctor--Told him, knowing that it would kill him! Ethel-Ethan! Doctor I might have forgiven you the other, but this I can't forgive! I have finished with you! (Doctor makes for the door, Ethel detains him) Ethel-You shan't go thinking that of me, you shan't! I didn't intend to do it, as God is my judge. I didn't! How can you imagine that I did? How can you think that I could deliberately kill a man! Doctor-I do think it and I am done with you. Ethel-You shan't go thinking that of me! You shan't, I tell you! You shan't! Ethan! (Slam of the door is heard. Ethan is gone) For what I did I could be forgiven; for what I did not do, I am condemned. (Ethel picks up diary and reads; then rings for Susan) Susan What is it, ma'am? Ethel-It isn't there! It isn't there! Ethel The last she read. He didn't write anything after saying that he would send me away. She wrote the rest. And listen to what she says at the last. "He didn't write enough for me to prove anything by it, but I'm going to do it just the same, and if ever you read this, Mrs. Bristol, you'll know that I did prove it." Oh, my God! She trapped me! She couldn't have proven anything and she made me confess. I have thrown everything away, husband, home, happiness, everything—and I have done it for nothing! She tricked me into doing it-tricked me! Oh, my God! My God! (Ethel glances at doctor's bag) Get me a glass of water! Susan Water, ma'am? Susan-Yes, ma'am. (Susan goes out, Ethel goes to bag and takes out various vials; selects one. Susan enters with water. Pause) Ethel-What are you waiting for? Susan-The glass, ma'am. Ethel-You needn't wait. (Pause) I said you needn't wait. Susan I know you did, ma'am, but I was thinking that perhaps if I get that glass, I might-(Susan forces the vial out of Ethel's hand) That's what I was waiting for, ma'am! Ethel-Give it back to me! Susan-Don't do it, ma'am! No man's worth it! I know because I tried it. Ethel-You tried it? Susan-Yes, ma'am. When I first met you at Mrs. Dole's I told you I had just come out o' the hospital, but I didn't tell you why I went in. I loved my husband just as much as you love yours. But he left me and I tried it. Ethel-Did he come back? Susan-No, ma'am. He didn't love me. That's the difference between him and your husband. CURTAIN Few American artists of to-day have juster claims upon our national pride than Miss Mary Cassatt. One of the first members of the now famous Impressionist school, she has attained world-wide recognition not only because of the intrinsic merit of her paintings, but also because of her marked influence upon contemporary art. Mr. Teall gives here a short account of her work MONG American artists living abroad there is no one in A whom we take greater national pride than in Miss Mary Cassatt, whose paintings have come to be known the world over. Miss Cassatt spent her early years in America, the land of her nativity, and although she has chosen France as her home and by some is regarded as a veritable arch-expatriate, her art has never departed from what we may fondly, and I think justly, consider the path of American ideals. No painter of modern times has more exquisitely depicted the great epic of motherhood as exemplified in the centuriesold, but ever fresh subject of Mother and Child,-Mère et Enfant, for thus is nearly every one of Miss Cassatt's paintings entitled. There is not a great museum in the world within whose walls modern art finds a place that believes itself representative in examples of painters of today without some canvas by Miss Cassatt in Only the prompt action of the Italian government saved this famous its galleries. Not only has this American woman achieved personal success in the products of her brush, but her work has had a marked influence upon the painting of her time. Miss Cassatt is an Impressionist. The term Impressionist has been applied to that school of painters who departed from the old traditions of academic inspiration, for the individual working out of each problem that presented itself to the artist, that is to say, the working out of every impression received by the painter through personal interpretation, untrammeled by the example of precedent. Miss Cassatt Miss Cassatt is one of the survivors of the early group that really brought Impressionism to the front Monet, Pisaro, Berthe Morisot, and others. Of them all, Miss Cassatt's work has most endeared itself to the public at large, perhaps, by reason of its subject inspiration, for the average person seems far more willing to accept rainbow hues in a Mother and Child subject than in a landscape; it is hard for the novice, who has believed that grass is entirely and completely green, to realize that it may appear differently through an atmosphere created by light and shade, that it can be correct to interpret it by yellow, blue, purple, orange, or violet pigment. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to imagine even the anti-impressionist holding out against the art of Miss Cassatt! Her paintings of mothers and babies and children. "No painter of modern times has more exquisitely depicted the great epic of motherhood as exemplified in the centuries-old, but ever fresh subject of Mother and Child" "We are too apt to associate the term pastel with pansy-painting or with amateur plaque-decoration, but one needs only a survey of Miss Cassatt's work in this medium to realize what it car. become in the hands of an artist" would win the most hardened sceptic over the borderland of doubt into the realm of even the most extreme phases of Impressionism. Miss Cassatt has a personal aversion to interviews that has often been misinterpreted by the uninvited critic who has chosen to trespass on her privacy, either at her hotel in Paris or at her villa in the country outside. And yet it must be a source of the greatest satisfaction to any artist to know that, without the blare of publicity or the anchorage of entertaining anecdote, the work from his or her hand has, in itself, won supreme recognition for the artist. Almost less has been written of Miss Cassatt than of any of her distinguished contemporaries of any nation |