Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-02-17
THE SURPLUS
ES Of LOVE-"
BY Elsie de Wolfe.

Marcelle Duval is a character serious
~ played through several farcical and
many ridiculous situations. h IS a
young and attractive widow, who's first
marriage was a failure, and whose ideas
Of love are bounded by her one sad ex-
pe%rience.
She has engaged herself to a prominent
Frenchman, a member Of the academy
and a rising man, through whose public
career She intends to find the only hap
.siness she believes in-the qualification OF
her social ambitions. Her nance IS tneo-
retically the very man a young, ambitious
and disillus. ned widow in her early
twentiss should take for a husband.
M. Dupont-Martin has everything to
recommend him in. the abstract. But as
an Individual he is self-assertive tire
some and. as Marcelle herself confesses.
occasionally reminds her most unpleas-
antly of the departed Duval
Marcelle makes no pretense of being
sentimentally in love with the oratorical
NJ. Dupont-Martin.
She is making a marriage convenience.
after the fashion of continental Europe.
where detached women do not have he
prestige accorded American widows.
She is a trfie bored by her future hus-
band. IN Is in this state of mind when
the play begins.
According to the French proverb, the
u~neXpscted happens.
AS Marcelle is ~endeavoring TO persuade
her fiarce not to rehearse am GRAFTON
which she is in duty bound to listen to a
few hours later an American promoter
announces hat No. 147 has won the one
and only prize of the Burnett lottery.
OF course Marcelle is the holder of this
ticket. which has been presented to her
by the loud and aggressive fiance.
The prize is a surprise n proves to
he rothing more nor less than a young
mar who is duly deposited in Narcotics
drawing room n signed for a few weeks
before the date set for her wedding with
Dupont-Martin.
The situation is farcical. but neither
the prize nor Marcelle so regard It.
They are entirely serious. and remain
so throughout the entire play despite its
ridiculous complications.
.Marce'le naturally objects to being
endowed with a prize in the shape of a
gpod-1ooking young mar whose sole
earthly nnssassion consists of a hand
bag, which he grasps tenaciously and
refuses to be narted from because, as
he exrlains. it is the only thing in the
world belonging to him.
When Nine. Duval declares she will
not retain her prize, the young man,
taste understands and appreciates her
feelings, and that. as he has no place to &C
proceeds TO relieve her embarrassment
by drowning himself.
And. moreover. he does it in the public
fountain. which is at the time being Sin.
augurated." to tho a~coompaniment Of
Dupont Martins flowing eloquence. ani
IS rescued more dead than alive. pro
nounced by doctors incapable of beins
moved te a hospital. and for two month!
is cared for and LODGED in a little summel
house on Marcelle's estate.
tftt(e h~ little Na"calla frds hersel
falling IN love with the prize.
She is an honorable woman and is tn,
promised wife of another.
She makes the struggle a good woman
would make. md makes It for the SAX,
Of a man who each day grows more
blatant. more ridiculous, more distaste
ful to her.
Meanwhile the prize. who in his earl,
recital his told how luck was Away
against him-how ne painted %pictnre!
that were never hung, wrote stories tina
were never printed and composed must
that was never NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
turn :, rs offa'~e w. atctnra takas
medal ard is sold for TO- 900 francs.
Suddenly he leaps into fame in vari
Gus ways n Marcelle discovers tina