Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE COMMITTEE ON MATRIMONY A Comedy in One Act CHARACTERS Phyllis Arlington. Robert Chalmers. A richly furnished, if somewhat conventional, drawing-room serves as a background. Pictures, hangings, rugs, bric-a-brac, books, all indicate that taste and discretion have been exercised in their selection, but it is evident, also, that the family life is lived elsewhere, and that this room, like certain tables in boarding-house dining-rooms, is reserved for transient guests. The chill impression given by the careful exactness of every detail is somewhat modified, however, by the cheery crackle of a wood fire, and by the shaded lights, whose rays soften, even while they illumine, the mathematical precision of the room. Phyllis Arlington, a slender, supple girl, whose dreamy grey eyes, sensitive nostrils, and softly moulded chin bespeak an impressionable nature— an indication somewhat contradicted, it is true, by the firmness of her lips—sits near a table on the left, occasionally taking a few stitches in the embroidery which lies, for the most part, in her lap. The lamplight, filtering through a daffodil shade, falls upon her white-wool gown and adds a glint to her fair hair, which is neither bright enough to be golden nor dark enough to be brown. To Robert Chalmers, a vigorous, resolute, practical young fellow who lounges among the pillows of a divan on the right, she seems a delectable vision, and his eyes pay constant, eager homage, the while his slower lips temporise to suit her mood. PHYLLIS (continuing an argument). Well, Kipling may be all that you say, but to me he seems deplorably lacking in delicacy and idealism. ROBERT. I fancy that life in India may not be conducive to the development of either of those qualities; but he's keen and direct, with an ...