but, in the awful bitterness of a great heart, at that moment, he feels
that the woman who has deceived him so wickedly has no natural right to
be the guardian of their child. "Return to our home, madam; it will be
yours, not mine, hereafter; but our child will not be there." Ungenerous
words! But if we are looking in our own hearts, where we must find
nearly all the laws of dramatic construction, how many of us would be
more generous, with such words as John Strebelow had just heard ringing
in our ears? As the act closes, the startled love of a mother has again
and finally asserted itself in Lilian's heart, its one overmastering
passion of her nature. With the man she has loved lying near her,
wounded, and, for aught she knows, dying, she is thinking only of her
lost child. Maternal love, thruout the history of the world, has had
triumphs over all the other passions; triumphs over destitution and
trials and tortures; over all the temptations incident to life; triumphs
to which no other impulse of the human heart--not even the love of man
for woman--has ever risen. One of the most brilliant men I had ever
known once said in court; "Woman, alone, shares with the Creator the
privilege of communing with an unborn human being"; and, with this
privilege, the Creator seems to have shared with woman a part of His own
great love. All other love in our race is merely human. The play, from
this time on, becomes the story of a mother's love.

Acts fourth and fifth. Two years later Lilian is at the home of her
father in New York. Her husband has disappeared. His name was on the
passenger list of a wrecked steamer; and no other word of him or of the
child has been heard. If he had left the little girl in the care of
others, it is unknown to whom or where. So Lilian is a widow and
childless. She is fading, day by day, and is hardly expected to live.
Her mind, tortured by the suspense, which, worse than certainty, is
gradually yielding to hallucinations which keep her little one ever