Page:The Makropoulos Secret (1925).pdf/13

 “The toils are laid, the stakes are set.” A—third act ensues—of the steeled Emilia caught, in a press that may crush even steel; of Emilia spent, desperate, menaced, disclosing at last the mystery that has haunted the play. Again there are interludes—Prus’s discovery of the suicide of his son because the father had won the woman that the youth also craved; the foolish interventions of old Hauk-Sendorf. Yet the one is as the red bolt to pierce these darkening clouds; the other as the irony attending nearly every human crisis. “The melodrama, the staginess, the superfluity of the mock medieval inquisition!” the reader is quick to say, as he cons the manuscript. Capek, however, writes for the stage, not for the easy-chair. In the theater these trappings retort with spell against spell upon the wavering Emilia. Nay, with them as well as with his hands, the justiciar clutches her by the throat and bids her exude the secret.

The woman reveals it and the suspense of the play seems ended—only to renew itself. For what shall be done with life everlasting? And in the next room Elena-Emilia waits. There is debate, in which the debaters speak also in character and with emotion. There is human