_Harness._ A woman dead; and the two best men both broken!
_Tench._ (_Staring at him--suddenly excited._) D'you know, sir--these terms, they're the _very same_ we drew up together, you and I, and put to both sides before the fight began? All this--all this--and--and what for?
_Harness._ (_In a slow, grim voice._) That's where the fun comes in! (_Underwood without turning from the door makes a gesture of assent._)
_The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_[27] illustrates the play in which emphasis little by little brings out the meaning of the whole piece. Examine even the first act. It is full of the feeling: "It cannot nor it will not come to good." Tanqueray himself says frankly, "My marriage is not even the conventional sort of marriage likely to satisfy society." Drummle coming in declares that George Orreyed is "a thing of the past," because he has married Mabel Hervey. The group of old friends show anxiety, and it is clear that to the mind of Cayley Drummle Tanqueray is but repeating the rash step of Orreyed. The whole act prepares for the finale of the play.
Hervieu's _The Trail of the Torch_ shows the emphasis which strikes one hard blow and leaves to the rest of the play illustration of what has been clearly stressed. About one third of the way through Act I, Maravon explains to Sabine the thesis which the entire play illustrates:
_Sabine._ (_Pointing to the two who have just gone._) Ah, my dear Maravon, what an absurd friend I have there!
_Sabine._ Haven't you noticed that she is beginning to look like a governess? I suppose it's because she has been doing a governess' work for so long that she has ceased to have any personal existence. She no longer cares to possess anything of her own, everything belongs to her daughter, and her husband works his fingers to the bone to pay for Beatrice's dresses, while Beatrice lords it over both of them in a way that is beginning to be just a trifle odious.
_Maravon._ I'm afraid I don't agree with you, Madame. With naively natural beings, like these, I enjoy watching the family wheels function with such simplicity. People of this kind conform to the law which begins by demanding of the mother the flesh of her flesh, often her beauty, her health, and, if need be, her life, for the formation of the child. And then, for the profit of the newer generation, Nature exerts herself to despoil the old. She exacts without stint from the parents in the shape of labors, anxieties, expenses, gifts, and sacrifices, all of their vital forces to equip, arm, and decorate their sons and daughters who are descending into the plain of the future. Take my own case, for instance. There was the question of my son's position in life. Didier was able to persuade me very quickly that my property would be better placed, for the future, in his hands. To show you that Mme. Gribert and her daughter are merely following out a tradition of the remotest antiquity, if you can endure the pedantry of an old college professor, I will give you an example from the classics.