The critics were wonderfully kind. They actually praised the play;
some reluctantly, some with a reckless enthusiasm which quite
astonished me. I had expected a much less pleasant reception.

The main objection they made to the thing was that it had a tragic
ending, which they kindly suggested I had tacked on to my comedy, to
appeal to the morbid taste of an "Independent" audience.
Unfortunately I had done nothing of the kind. The play was conceived
before the Independent Theatre had come into existence. The end was
foreseen from the beginning; the tragedy being implicit in the
subject. The tragic motive lay deeper than the death of the heroine,
who might have been allowed to live, if that last symbolic pageantry
had not had its dramatic fitness. Given the characters and the
circumstances, the end is the absolutely right one.

Of course the circumstances might have been altered, and a sort of
reconciliation patched up between husband and wife. But this would
be a somewhat flat piece of cynicism, only justifiable on the ground
taken by the _Telegraph_, that modern actors cannot play, and ought
not to be expected to play, modern tragedy.

The conventional "happy ending" demanded by sentimental critics to
suit the taste of sentimental playgoers, the divided parents left
weeping in each other's arms over the recovered child, would also be
quite possible. But surely even a modern dramatist may for once be
allowed to preserve a grain of respect for nature and dramatic art?
This would be an outrage against both. It would not be decent
comedy, it would be mere burlesque, as sentimentality always is to
the judicious.