FRANÇOISE. You are right, I am very foolish to try to struggle. What is the good? It will suffice when I have lost the dearest creature on earth--through my foolishness, my blunders!
FRANÇOISE. I can't help it if he seems so to me!
MARCEL [_disarmed_]. You--you're trying to appeal to my vanity!
FRANÇOISE. I am hardly in the mood for joking.
MARCEL [_tenderly, as he kneels at her feet_]. But you make me say things like that--I don't know what! I am not bad--really bad! No, I have not deceived you! I love you, and only you! You! You know that, Françoise! Ask--ask any woman! All women!
FRANÇOISE [_smiling through her tears_]. Best of husbands! You're not going out then? You'll stay?
MARCEL [_in Françoise's arms_]. Can I go now, now that I'm here? You are so pretty that I--
MARCEL. Wait, I haven't confessed everything.
MARCEL. First, read this note--the one I received this morning.
FRANÇOISE [_surprised_]. From Madame Guérin?
MARCEL. You saw her not long ago. Yes, she calmly told me--
FRANÇOISE. That her husband had found some letters!
MARCEL. And that she was about to leave for England with her lover.
FRANÇOISE. Poor Marcel! And you went to see her and try to prevent her going away with him?
MARCEL. My foolishness was well punished. She wouldn't receive me.
FRANÇOISE. Then I am the only one left who loves you? How happy I am!
MARCEL. I'll kill that love some day with my ridiculous philandering!
MARCEL [_playfully_]. Then I no longer have the right to provoke Monsieur Guérin? Now?
FRANÇOISE [_gayly_]. You are growing old, Lovelace, his wife has deceived you!
MARCEL [_lovingly_]. Françoise' luck! [_Sadly._] Married!
BY KARL ETTLINGER TRANSLATED BY BENJAMIN F. GLAZER.
Copyright, 1920, by Benjamin F. Glazer. All rights reserved.
The first performance of ALTRUISM was given by The Stage Society of Philadelphia at the Little Theatre, Philadelphia, on January 28, 1916, with the following cast:
A BEGGAR _Henry C. Sheppard_ A WAITER _E. Ryland Carter_ A YOUNG MAN _William H. McClure_ A COCOTTE _Sylvia Loeb._ A PARISIAN _Edward B. Latimer_ HIS WIFE _Florence Bernstein_ THEIR CHILD _Jean Massey_ AN ARTIST _Theron J. Bamberger_ AN AMERICAN _William J. Holt_ A GENTLEMAN _Caspar W. Briggs_ ANOTHER GENTLEMAN _Norris W. Corey_ A PICKPOCKET _Walter E. Endy_ A GENDARME _William H. Russell_ ANOTHER GENDARME _Frederick Cowperthwaite_ A WORKINGMAN _Walter D. Dalsimer_ A FLOWER GIRL _Katherine Kennedy_ A PASSING LADY _C. Warren Briggs_ A BYSTANDER _Charles E. Sommer_ AN OLD LADY _Paulyne Brinkman_ A GRISETTE _Florence M. Lyman_