simple, pathetic love-story of boy and girl--love that was pure and
almost passionless. It was followed by three little plays--"for
marionettes," he describes them on the title-page; among them being
La Mort de Tintagiles, the play he himself prefers of all that he
has written. And then came a curious change: he wrote Aglavaine et
Selysette. The setting is familiar to us; the sea-shore, the ruined
tower, the seat by the well; no less than the old grandmother and
little Yssaline. But Aglavaine herself is strange: this woman who
has lived and suffered; this queenly, majestic creature, calmly
conscious of her beauty and her power; she whose overpowering,
overwhelming love is yet deliberate and thoughtful. The complexities
of real life are vaguely hinted at here: instead of Golaud, the
mediaeval, tyrannous husband, we have Selysette, the meek, self-
sacrificing wife; instead of the instinctive, unconscious love of
Pelleas and Melisande, we have great burning passion. But this play,
too, was only a stepping-stone--a link between the old method and
the new that is to follow. For there will probably be no more plays
like Pelleas et Melisande, or even like Aglavaine et Selysette. Real
men and women, real problems and disturbance of life--it is these
that absorb him now. His next play will doubtless deal with a
psychology more actual, in an atmosphere less romantic; and the old
familiar scene of wood, and garden, and palace corridor will be
exchanged for the habitual abode of men.

I have said it was real life that absorbed him now, and yet am I
aware that what seems real to him must still appear vague and
visionary to many. It is, however, only a question of shifting one's
point of view, or, better still, of enlarging it. Material success
in life, fame, wealth--these things M. Maeterlinck passes
indifferently by. There are certain ideals that are dear to many on