Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/99



ancient Greeks had a word for it—. In dramatic usage of the present day it has become peripety. When the man who has been suspected of the murder all through three acts suddenly, at the end of the play, turns out to be the hero-detective in disguise who finds the real girl and marries the murderer—er—finds the real murderer and marries the girl—or when the poor suitor, who has been scorned by the family because of his poverty, suddenly turns out to be William Q. Rockerbilt, the richest man in the world—or when the supposed hero suddenly is unmasked as a villain of the deepest dye—that is a peripety, the sudden, surprising reversal of fortune that sends you home happy at eleven o’clock, making you forget about the eight eighty you had to pay for the tickets. The reversal must be sudden and unexpected, but it can be in either direction, happy or horrible.

Val was at this instant the center point of a peripety, and it is quite unnecessary, perhaps, to state in which direction the thing worked. It was horrible. In fact, he was peripettied almost into a dazed unconsciousness by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the thing. Of course, he had vaguely supposed that so lovely a girl would have masculine affiliations of one kind or another—he knew all men were not blind. But this man! Really, you know, it was a bit thick. He Rh