_Leslie._ Dunstan, I am here. (_He partly opens his eyes, raises himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie's face averted._) Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not your Judge--let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of. Dunstan! (_She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and reads it._) Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! (_She catches him in her arms._) Husband! Husband! Husband![22]
It is of course true, as M. Brieux maintains in regard to the two endings of his early play, _Blanchette_,[23] that sometimes more than one ending may be made plausible. Consequently he changed a tragic close to something more pleasing to his audience. Belief grows, however, that when a play has been begun and developed with a tragic ending in mind, this cannot with entire convincingness be changed to something else unless the play is rewritten from the start. There is inevitableness in the conduct on the stage of the creatures of our brains even as with people of real life. So strongly does Sir Arthur Pinero feel this as the result of his long experience that, though he changed the ending of _The Big Drum_ in 1915 in accordance with public demand, he restored the original version when printing the play. He says in his Preface:
_The Big Drum_ is published exactly as it was written, and as it was originally performed. At its first representation, however, the audience was reported to have been saddened by its "unhappy ending." Pressure was forthwith put upon me to reconcile Philip and Ottoline at the finish, and at the third performance of the play the curtain fell upon the picture, violently and crudely brought about, of Ottoline in Philip's arms.
I made the alteration against my principles and against my conscience, and yet not altogether unwillingly. For we live in depressing times; and perhaps in such times it is the first duty of a writer for the stage to make concessions to his audience and, above everything, to try to afford them a complete, if brief, distraction from the gloom which awaits them outside the theatre.
My excuse for having at the start provided an "unhappy" ending is that I was blind enough not to regard the ultimate break between Philip and Ottoline as really unhappy for either party. On the contrary, I looked upon the separation of these two people as a fortunate occurrence for them both; and I conceive it as a piece of ironic comedy which might not prove unentertaining that the falling away of Philip from his high resolves was checked by the woman he had once despised and who had at last grown to know and to despise herself.