The pipeline's embed-and-cluster step is dead, and this commit holds both the evidence for that and the step proposed to replace it. Predicaments. Scenes are re-described as "what the person is up against", with no names, jobs or places, then embedded and clustered (redescribe.py, topic_words.py, topic_share.py). The pilot chose qwen3:14b over 3b by reading both side by side. Two defects the pilot exposed are fixed: split.py missed titles in quotes and a contents subtitle after a dash, so three stories had been merged into their neighbours, and strip_names.py read New York place names as people. The corrected corpus is probe/v2 (97 stories, 839 scenes); carry_summaries.py reuses the 829 unchanged v1 summaries. Topic share fell from 20% to 13% at k=60, short of the pre-registered 10%. Hand references. Three corpora were read scene by scene and written up by hand, under the same prompt rules the local models get, as a baseline to judge them against: O. Henry (probe/v2/claude, 839 scenes, 20 situations), Wharton's Descent of Man (probe/wharton, 262 scenes, 16 groups) and Jacobs's The Lady of the Barge (probe/jacobs, 157 scenes, 19 groups). Each has its own README and a readable page. No inference was used for any of them. Catalogue. probe/catalogue maps every hand group in the three references onto 36 situation entries, with an answer key per corpus and one recurrence rule applied to all three. classify.py assigns a scene one entry or none, leave-one-corpus- out; score.py checks it against the key, with a self-test on random labels. Why clustering is out: hand-written predicaments, embedded and clustered exactly as the model's were, agree with the hand grouping at ARI 0.05 — no better than the 14B text's 0.07. Better rewriting cannot rescue it. Embeddings cannot even shortlist: the hand label is the nearest entry 13% of the time and in the top 8 half the time. The classification runs are not here. The dev and test runs are pre-registered in probe/catalogue/README.md with the bar set beforehand, and are blocked on the inference host, whose GPU has fallen off the PCIe bus three times. The 30-scene partial output in out/ is not a result. Review page. The situation review is now a browser page rather than JSON edited by hand (review_page.py, review_page_logic.cjs with Node tests, format schema v2). It has never been rendered in a real browser. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014BygvsUXV9eU6oHkTCkKZ1
660 lines
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660 lines
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<title>Wharton Reference Pack</title>
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</style></head><body><main>
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<h1>The Descent of Man and Other Stories: reference pack</h1>
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<p class="mut">Edith Wharton, 1904 (Project Gutenberg #4519). Every scene was read and summarised by Claude, and the groups and draft events
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were written by hand, as a comparison target for the story-to-pack tool and its use of local inference.
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It is a reference to compare against, not an answer key: another careful reader would group some of these differently.</p>
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<div class="card">
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<b>10</b> stories · <b>262</b> scenes (same ~320-word cut as the O. Henry and Jacobs probes) · <b>16</b> recurring groups ·
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<b>129</b> scenes (49%) in a group · <b>16</b> draft events ·
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<b>61</b> options<br>
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<small>A group needs ≥3 of the 10 stories and no story above 50% of its members (O. Henry: ≥4 of 97, ≤40%). Effects are a path and a direction only: DESIGN.md gives numbers to the search, not the model.</small>
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</div>
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<h2>Setting</h2>
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<div class="card"><p><b>Suggested player role</b>: You are new to money and to the people who have it, in a city where everything is forgiven except being talked about. (A suggestion only: DESIGN.md makes the one-line player role the designer's to write.)</p>
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<table><tr><td><code>money</code></td><td>Money</td></tr><tr><td><code>owed</code></td><td>Obligations (what you have accepted and will be asked to repay)</td></tr><tr><td><code>standing</code></td><td>Standing (what people say about you)</td></tr><tr><td><code>skills.tact</code></td><td>Tact: smoothing things over, saying the acceptable thing</td></tr><tr><td><code>skills.candour</code></td><td>Candour: saying the true thing and bearing the cost</td></tr><tr><td><code>relationship.confides_in_you</code></td><td>Confides in you</td></tr><tr><td><code>relationship.obliged_to_you</code></td><td>Obliged to you</td></tr><tr><td><code>relationship.resents_you</code></td><td>Resents you</td></tr></table>
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<p class="mut">Across the ten stories, the thing people spend is reputation, and the two ways of spending it are the two skills: smoothing over (the wife in 'The Other Two', the publisher in 'The Descent of Man', Mrs. Vervain as trained by Thursdale) and plain speaking at a cost (Hope Fenno, Julia Westall at the end, the mother in 'The Quicksand'). Almost nobody borrows money in these stories; what they incur instead is an obligation to someone, so the debt slot is labelled that way.</p>
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<p><b>Roles</b>: <span class="tag">{spouse}</span>The spouse · <span class="tag">{former}</span>The one from before: a former spouse or old intimate who still has a claim · <span class="tag">{rival}</span>The rival for the person you want · <span class="tag">{patron}</span>The elder with power over you: a relation, a publisher, a senior partner · <span class="tag">{ward}</span>The young person in your charge, or your child · <span class="tag">{employer}</span>The person you work for, in their private trouble · <span class="tag">{confidant}</span>The candid friend or cousin who tells you what you would rather not hear</p>
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<p><b>Stages</b>: <b>On sufferance</b>: The protagonist is dependent, new, in service or hard up: they need something from the people around them. · <b>Established</b>: The protagonist is married, known and comfortable: their trouble is what their position costs to keep.</p></div>
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<h2>Groups and their events</h2>
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<div class="card" id="g-tainted_money"><h3>Money on terms you despise</h3><p class="pred">Someone is offered money or success on condition they go along with something they think is wrong, and tells themselves it will cost nothing that matters.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">12 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s12">12</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone is offered success on condition they let the world believe something they do not believe.<br><small>The publisher offers to sell the book as sincere, promising a mass success, and asks the author to let it stand as his real conviction.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s14">14</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone in a money pinch accepts a well-paid compromise, telling themselves it will cost them nothing that matters.<br><small>Short of money after illness, the author accepts a large advance, sure his colleagues will see through the book and his reputation will be safe.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s22">22</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone enjoying the attention their false reputation brings slips into living the part.<br><small>Fame opens society to the author; charmed by clever women, he grows used to telling how the book first came to him.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s23">23</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone sells their name more and more freely because it keeps the household comfortable.<br><small>The author gives paid interviews on every subject and lends his face to advertisements, which keeps his household solvent.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s27">27</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone is offered money to repeat a sham and must choose between it and the real work they want to do.<br><small>The publisher says the old book is fading and offers a big advance only for a sequel; the author declares he will write a serious book instead.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s28">28</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone who meant to refuse a tempting compromise gives in, promising themselves it is only a delay.<br><small>Warned that popularity perishes, the author wavers, takes the advance on the sequel, and tells himself the serious book can wait six months.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s53">53</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone trades their scruples for comfort, little by little, and learns to call it a bargain.<br><small>Habit dulls the husband's objections; he reckons that his predecessors trained his wife to make him comfortable.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s79">79</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone enjoys a success whose real origin they cannot admit to the people praising them.<br><small>Her book has sold a hundred and fifty thousand; strangers recognise and praise her courage on the train.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s87">87</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone who secretly bought a favour cannot claim credit for it without admitting the bargain.<br><small>A fellow writer guesses she paid for the window herself; she half denies it, indignant that the bishop claims credit.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s230">230</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone discovers that the comfort they have enjoyed is paid for by something shameful.<br><small>She married without knowing what the paper was, enjoyed its money, then learned it traded in exposing private scandal.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s232">232</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone who meant to refuse tainted money comes to depend on it to save a person they love.<br><small>Her husband promised to sell the paper in time, but her delicate son's life depended on the money, and she sank deeper with each compromise.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s233">233</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone who compromised long ago pins their hope of release on the next generation.<br><small>She tried to purify the money through charity and to hide the paper from her son behind beauty; on her husband's death she hoped the son would sell it.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">{patron} has read what you wrote and taken it exactly the wrong way, and is offering a great deal of money to go on taking it that way in public. All you have to do is say nothing. <small>from <a href="#s12">12</a>, <a href="#s14">14</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The advance would cover the household for a year. It is for more of the same thing you swore, six months ago, you would never do again. <small>from <a href="#s27">27</a>, <a href="#s28">28</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You have found out where the money comes from. It is the same money that has paid for everything you like about your life. <small>from <a href="#s230">230</a>, <a href="#s232">232</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Take it, and tell yourself it changes nothing.</b><br><small>It changes nothing for a while. Then it changes what you are asked to do next.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s14">14</a></td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">owed ▲</span><span class="fx down">candour ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.took_the_money ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Take it this once, to pay for the thing you actually care about.</b><br><small>You buy what you needed for the real work. The real work is put off by exactly as long as the other thing takes.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s28">28</a></td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">owed ▲</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Refuse, and say why.</b><br><small>{patron} is not offended, only puzzled, and offers the same terms to somebody else by the end of the week.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">patron.obliged_to_you ▼</span><span class="fx down">money ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Neither sign nor refuse. Let it lie on the desk.</b><br><small>It is printed anyway. Silence, it turns out, was the only thing they needed from you.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx push" title="Let it go to press without a word.">notable +</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-strings_attached"><h3>A way out, with strings attached</h3><p class="pred">Someone who needs help is offered it, but only on terms that will cost them something they value.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">broad</span><span class="tag">5 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 40%</span><span class="tag">stage: outside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s26">26</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone ready to do their real work finds the backer they relied on now wants something first.<br><small>A colleague urges him to drop everything and write his serious book; the author asks his publisher for an advance and is refused.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s89">89</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone who badly needs a place takes one they have been frankly warned will be hard.<br><small>The patron warns that the house is gloomy, the mistress an invalid who lost her children, and the last maid is dead; the servant accepts.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s215">215</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone is asked to give up their livelihood as the price of being loved.<br><small>The girl wants him to give up the paper or run it honestly at a loss; he mocks her fashionable ethics.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s256">256</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone is offered a way out, provided they accept terms they will not like.<br><small>She says she cannot be saved but he can, if he will do as she says without looking at her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s257">257</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone learns they can buy their way out of a trap, and that is exactly what the trap was for.<br><small>She explains that everyone involved can be bought, and begs him to offer a ransom to go free.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">There is a place for you. It is also, you are told quite frankly, the kind of place people leave. <small>from <a href="#s89">89</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">{patron} will back you, gladly and at once, once you have done one more thing first. <small>from <a href="#s26">26</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">There is a way out of this, and you will not like what it costs. You are asked to hear it without looking at the person telling you. <small>from <a href="#s256">256</a>, <a href="#s257">257</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Accept the terms.</b><br><small>You are out of the hole and into the arrangement, which is a different hole with better furniture.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">owed ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Take it anyway: you have been warned, and you need it.</b><br><small>Being warned turns out to be worth less than you thought, and needing it exactly as much.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s89">89</a></td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx set">flags.took_the_hard_place ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Ask for the help without the condition.</b><br><small>{patron} explains, kindly, that the condition was the help.</small></td><td>filled</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">patron.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Do without.</b><br><small>You manage. It is not the same as being all right.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-old_attachment"><h3>An old attachment comes back</h3><p class="pred">Someone's present commitment is disturbed by a former partner or intimate who still has a claim, or a hold, on them or on the person they love.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">12 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s30">30</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone's new household is disrupted at once by a crisis inherited from their partner's past.<br><small>The honeymoon is cut short by the illness of the wife's daughter from her first marriage; the husband takes comfort in his wife's calm.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s33">33</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone's comfortable new start is interrupted by a claim from their partner's former spouse.<br><small>The wife arrives worried: her first husband's lawyer has written about his right to see the child.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s34">34</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone must let an unwelcome person into their home because that person has a right they cannot refuse.<br><small>The first husband has the legal right to visit his sick daughter in the new husband's house; the husband reluctantly agrees.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s39">39</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone catches an unintended glimpse of their partner's past habits and cannot un-see it.<br><small>His wife says she let the nurse receive the visitor, then absent-mindedly pours brandy into her husband's coffee as her ex-husband took it, and blushes.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s52">52</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone feels they hold only part of a person whose loyalties are shared with others from their past.<br><small>The husband feels he owns only a share in his wife, with her former husbands as partners, and resents her tactful acquiescence.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s55">55</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone is caught in a room with two people from their partner's past, and no one knows how to behave.<br><small>The second ex-husband arrives unannounced on business while the first husband sits there; all three men stand awkwardly as tea is laid out.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s168">168</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone turns up, unannounced, at the door of a person they once wronged.<br><small>She finds herself outside her first husband's house, watches him go in, and on impulse rings the bell.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s169">169</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone forces a meeting with a former partner who would rather not see them.<br><small>She talks her way past the footman; her first husband, shocked, receives her to avoid a scene.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s170">170</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone asks a former partner for a hearing and is told to go through proper channels.<br><small>In the unchanged room he coldly suggests she speak through lawyers; she says lawyers cannot help this time.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s199">199</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone who has moved on to a new commitment returns to an old intimate as if nothing had changed.<br><small>A newly engaged man drops in on the woman he has long kept as an intimate friend, meaning to talk over her meeting with his fiancée.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s204">204</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone expects an old arrangement to continue and is told it is ending.<br><small>His friend is startled to see him and speaks of this as a last visit; he insists nothing has changed.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s207">207</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone who thought their past was their own business finds it standing in the way of their future.<br><small>He protests that a man's past is his own; she says the fiancée objects even to a mere friendship, and came to see whether he was really free.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">{former} has a right, written down by a court, to come into your house once a week. This is the week. <small>from <a href="#s33">33</a>, <a href="#s34">34</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} pours your coffee exactly the way {former} used to take it, and blushes when you say so. <small>from <a href="#s39">39</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You are engaged now, and you have called on {former} as you always did, as though nothing had changed. {former} does not seem to think so. <small>from <a href="#s199">199</a>, <a href="#s204">204</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You find yourself outside {former}'s door, with no appointment and no good reason, and you ring anyway. <small>from <a href="#s168">168</a>, <a href="#s169">169</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Be civil. Offer a chair and a cigar.</b><br><small>It is easier than you expected, which is its own kind of trouble.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s54">54</a> <small>(outside group, -1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx down">former.resents_you ▼</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Be out of the house when it happens.</b><br><small>You are out of the house, and run into a different piece of the past on the way.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s35">35</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx down">tact ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Ask your {spouse} what it was really like, before.</b><br><small>You get tears instead of an answer, which is an answer.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s48">48</a> <small>(outside group, -4 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Laugh, and take the third cup.</b><br><small>Everyone is very pleasant. Nobody mentions it afterwards, and you find you have stopped minding.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s57">57</a> <small>(outside group, +2 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span><span class="fx push" title="Took tea with all three of them.">notable +</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-what_they_hid"><h3>Finding out what they hid</h3><p class="pred">Someone discovers that a person close to them has been hiding something, and must decide what it changes.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">10 scenes</span><span class="tag">6 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 20%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s44">44</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone glimpses their partner's hidden origins and begins to doubt who they really married.<br><small>Seeing the first husband's cheap manners, the husband pictures his wife's humble former life and is disturbed by how completely she has left it behind.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s46">46</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone learns from an outsider that their partner lied to them, while being asked to intervene in a family matter.<br><small>The first husband reveals he did see the wife on the first visit, exposing her lie, and says the governess is making the girl dishonest.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s120">120</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone senses their spouse is hiding something and teases it out of them.<br><small>A clever, condescending husband notices his simple wife glowing and teases her into admitting she has done something he will not like.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s122">122</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone discovers that their spouse has carried a deep disappointment they never noticed.<br><small>Baffled, the husband learns she wants the child to be theirs and has long grieved at being childless.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s159">159</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone reads a partner's new kindness as a sign of bad news and presses for the truth.<br><small>Her husband is unusually gentle, which frightens her; when he plans to continue the talks she reminds him she objected.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s193">193</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone confronts another with damning evidence about the person they love, and meets calm disbelief.<br><small>He tells her who gave up the letter; she coolly asks for proof and does not cry out against the man she loves.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s205">205</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone learns that the person they are about to marry went behind their back to an old intimate.<br><small>She reveals that his fiancée came to see her a second time that morning, which he did not know.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s206">206</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone discovers their fiancée has been asking about their past with another person.<br><small>She pities him and hints that a letter may await him; the fiancée came to find out whether anything had happened between them.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s259">259</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone who has fallen for another begins to sense they are being played.<br><small>He declares his love; she kisses him, takes a trinket from his watch-chain, and laughs strangely that she will get none of the money.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s260">260</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone discovers they were the mark in a confidence trick just as rescue arrives.<br><small>He realises the whole thing was a swindle; she admits it but says her love was real, just as his ship's captain and tutor arrive with the police.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">Somebody who has no reason to lie mentions, in passing, a thing your {spouse} told you had not happened. <small>from <a href="#s46">46</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} has been kinder than usual all week. You have started to wonder what it is in aid of. <small>from <a href="#s159">159</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You learn that the person you are about to marry went, alone and by appointment, to ask someone else about you. <small>from <a href="#s205">205</a>, <a href="#s206">206</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">It dawns on you, halfway through being thanked, that the whole thing was arranged, and that you were the one it was arranged for. <small>from <a href="#s259">259</a>, <a href="#s260">260</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Ask straight out.</b><br><small>You get the truth, or enough of it, and you cannot give it back.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say nothing. It is done now.</b><br><small>It is done. It is also always in the room.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.knows_and_says_nothing ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Find out for yourself, quietly, before you say anything.</b><br><small>What you learn about the other side is all to their credit, which makes it worse.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s47">47</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Pay what it takes to be out of it, and go.</b><br><small>It costs you money and a certain opinion of yourself. The money was the cheaper part.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s260">260</a></td><td><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-keep_their_secret"><h3>Keeping someone else's secret</h3><p class="pred">Someone is drawn into another person's secret and must decide whether to lie, stay silent, or give it up when pressed.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">5 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 40%</span><span class="tag">stage: outside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s105">105</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone is sent on a discreet errand that seems meant to be hidden from the head of the house.<br><small>The mistress, weak, calls the maid by the dead maid's name; next morning she sends her secretly to fetch medicine and carry a note to the neighbour.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s107">107</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone is questioned by a suspicious superior and must decide whether to lie to protect another.<br><small>Wondering whether the note was the secret errand, the maid delivers it; the master confronts her and she lies to protect her mistress.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s197">197</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone is asked to keep a secret that will deny a grieving person the comfort they long for.<br><small>Convinced despite himself, he asks why the hero never told her; she asks him to keep the letter secret from everyone, even her mother.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s251">251</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone accused of compromising another must defend themselves without exposing them.<br><small>He is accused of secret correspondence with the girl, now repudiated by her betrothed; he refuses to hide behind her word.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s252">252</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone could clear themselves by producing evidence, but the person it would expose begs them not to.<br><small>Asked to clear her by showing the letter, he sees her silently beg him not to.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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|
<div class="desc">You are sent on an errand before the house is up, and asked to be back before the master of it is. On the way back, he is waiting. <small>from <a href="#s105">105</a>, <a href="#s107">107</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You hold the only proof of something that would comfort a grieving woman and ruin the man she has never met. You are asked to tell no one, not even her. <small>from <a href="#s197">197</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You could clear yourself in a sentence by showing what is in your pocket. The person it would expose is looking at you and very slightly shaking her head. <small>from <a href="#s251">251</a>, <a href="#s252">252</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Lie for them, looking straight back.</b><br><small>It comes out ready-made. You had not known you had it in you.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s107">107</a></td><td><span class="fx up">employer.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">candour ▼</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx set">flags.lied_for_them ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say you do not show your private affairs to strangers.</b><br><small>It is perfectly true and perfectly useless, and it is taken as a confession.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s253">253</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx up">employer.obliged_to_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Tell what you know.</b><br><small>You are thanked by the person who asked, and never again by the person you were covering for.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">employer.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Keep it, and never tell anyone you kept it.</b><br><small>It is the most generous thing you will ever do, and nobody, including the person it was for, will ever know.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s198">198</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx push" title="Burned it.">notable +</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-exposed"><h3>About to be exposed in public</h3><p class="pred">Someone's work or private arrangement is about to be judged in front of the very people they most feared would see it.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">broad</span><span class="tag">12 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s10">10</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone learns their joke has been taken in earnest by exactly the audience it mocked.<br><small>The publisher takes the parody for a sincere confession of faith; the author, realising, bursts out laughing.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s17">17</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone embarrassed by their own success reads praise for the very thing they meant as a sham.<br><small>The author hides in his work on publication day, then reads a serious review praising his mock platitudes as noble truths.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s18">18</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone who accepted a passing embarrassment learns it will follow them for years.<br><small>Every paper follows the first review, and the publisher predicts the book will sell for years; the author is alarmed by its staying power.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s58">58</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone who has done something bold in public dreads the moment a disapproving elder relative hears of it.<br><small>A society wife who has just published a daring novel dreads the arrival of press clippings now that her uncle, a bishop, is in town.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s70">70</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone's eager spouse forces a private worry into the open before exactly the wrong witness.<br><small>The husband bursts in waving the first review, delighted that the bishop is there to hear it.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s73">73</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone must sit through a public verdict on their work in front of the person they most wanted to keep it from.<br><small>The husband reads the review aloud in front of the bishop; it begins by denouncing the filth of modern fiction.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s74">74</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone who wanted to shock is dismissed as harmless, which wounds more than condemnation would.<br><small>The review calls her novel sweetly harmless; weeks later her cousin finds her crushed.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s84">84</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone fears a public speaker is about to reveal the secret deal they struck.<br><small>The bishop hints that the donor was a woman and that a book played its part, and eyes turn to her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s85">85</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone sits exposed to public attention, waiting to learn whether they are about to be named.<br><small>Under everyone's gaze she blushes and panics while the bishop expounds on the power of novels for good or ill.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s145">145</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone watches their partner suddenly start proclaiming in public views they once kept carefully private.<br><small>A husband gives a fashionable talk arguing that faithfulness to oneself outranks marriage vows; his wife notes that he has recently begun preaching publicly what he used to keep private.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s147">147</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone who once pushed a daring idea is uneasy now it is being preached, and looks for someone to blame.<br><small>The wife, who once urged these views on him, now finds them vulgarised, and resents the hosts' young daughter hearing such talk.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s244">244</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone receives a secret appeal for help and is immediately caught holding it.<br><small>The count names her as a senator's daughter; a page slips the youth a note begging his help, and an officer seizes him.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
|
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<div class="desc">The first review has come. Your {spouse} is delighted, and means to read it aloud, now, in front of {patron}. <small>from <a href="#s70">70</a>, <a href="#s73">73</a></small></div>
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|
<div class="desc">The speaker is circling closer and closer to a name, and every head in the room is turning towards you. <small>from <a href="#s84">84</a>, <a href="#s85">85</a></small></div>
|
|
<div class="desc">The book is everywhere. People quote it at you. They quote the parts you meant as a joke. <small>from <a href="#s17">17</a>, <a href="#s18">18</a></small></div>
|
|
<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
|
|
<tr><td><b>Sit still and look pleased.</b><br><small>Nobody can tell anything from your face, which is exactly what they will say about you afterwards.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Stop it: take the paper out of their hands.</b><br><small>It stops. So does the conversation, and several invitations.</small></td><td>filled</td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say, out loud, that it is yours and you meant it.</b><br><small>For a moment it is very quiet. Then somebody asks you to dinner.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.owned_it ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Leave, and let them talk.</b><br><small>They talk. You are not there to hear it, which helps less than you hoped.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s17">17</a></td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx down">tact ▼</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-civil_to_them"><h3>Civil to someone you would rather avoid</h3><p class="pred">Someone must deal politely, even helpfully, with a person they resent or fear, because their position leaves them no choice.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: outside</span></p>
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|
<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
|
|
<tr><td><a href="#s40">40</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone is asked by a superior to serve a person they would rather avoid, and cannot refuse without harming the firm.<br><small>The husband's ill partner asks him to handle an important deal for his wife's ex-husband; for the firm's sake he agrees.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s41">41</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone forced to do business with a rival tries to come out of it looking the more composed.<br><small>The ex-husband behaves well in the meeting and lets slip that he was once desperate for money; the husband is glad to seem the steadier man.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s43">43</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone must be civil to a person whose very presence in their home they resent.<br><small>The husband is polite to the first husband, then retreats upset that this man has the run of his house.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s49">49</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone must keep working closely with a person they would rather avoid, because their position demands it.<br><small>The first husband uses his rights modestly; meanwhile the husband must keep meeting the second ex-husband on business he cannot pass on.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s64">64</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone tries to steer an elder away from a dangerous topic by flattering them, and is caught not knowing their work.<br><small>Left alone with the bishop, the novelist feigns interest in his book to deflect talk of her own, and gets its plot wrong.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s96">96</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone in service must work around a master everyone fears and the mistress shrinks from.<br><small>The master, a coarse, leering man, looks the maid over and dismisses her; the mistress goes cold in his presence and brightens when he leaves.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s98">98</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone watches their employer endure a spouse's coarseness and can say nothing.<br><small>The master comes and goes, drinks heavily and grumbles; the servants hint the match was unhappy from the start.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s217">217</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone resents a person who has hurt their child, and is asked not to show it.<br><small>The girl admires the mother's goodness; the mother, angry, is told her son is not asking her to make the girl love him.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">{patron} is laid up and asks you, as a favour to the firm, to handle a piece of business for the one man in town you would cross the street to avoid. <small>from <a href="#s40">40</a>, <a href="#s41">41</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The master of the house is home for two days. Everyone below stairs has gone quiet, and you have been told to keep out of his way. <small>from <a href="#s96">96</a>, <a href="#s98">98</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You are left alone over tea with {patron}, who wants to talk about the one subject you most need to keep off. <small>from <a href="#s64">64</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Do it, and do it better than they would.</b><br><small>You come out of it the more composed of the two, which is a small thing to be proud of and you are proud of it anyway.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s41">41</a></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">patron.obliged_to_you ▲</span><span class="fx up">money ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Turn the talk to them, and keep it there.</b><br><small>It works until you get the name of their last book wrong.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s64">64</a></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">patron.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Keep out of the way until it passes.</b><br><small>It passes. It will come back.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s96">96</a></td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Decline, and let them find someone else.</b><br><small>They find someone else, and remember that they had to.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">patron.obliged_to_you ▼</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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|
</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-plead_their_case"><h3>Pleading someone else's case</h3><p class="pred">Someone is asked to carry another person's claim or warning to a third party, knowing it may cost them with one side or the other.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">6 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span></p>
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|
<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
|
|
<tr><td><a href="#s47">47</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone must pass on a claim from a person they have come to respect, against their own partner's wishes.<br><small>The first husband asserts his legal right to a voice in the girl's upbringing; the husband, learning of the man's sacrifices for his daughter, grows uneasy about his wife's account.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s141">141</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone must decide whether to warn an outsider about a relative's faults, at the risk of losing a longed-for outcome.<br><small>The girl accepts and at once begins to dominate her fiancé; the parents, pitying him, wonder whether to warn him.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s142">142</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone who speaks an honest warning is rebuffed as disloyal, and finds the result a relief.<br><small>The wife tells the fiancé that the girl is always difficult; he says they never understood her and grows cold, which relieves the husband.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s218">218</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone is asked by the person they love most to plead a case they privately doubt.<br><small>The son asks his mother to visit the girl and show her that the paper has never touched her life.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s219">219</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone goes to plead on another's behalf in a place where they feel they have no footing.<br><small>The mother calls at the girl's plain, comfortless home and reads failure in the furniture.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s220">220</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone tries to persuade a person of firm principle, and their own example is used against them.<br><small>The girl is immovable; she says it is the mother's own beautiful example that confirms her refusal.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">The person you love most asks you to go and talk someone round on their behalf. You are not at all sure they are in the right. <small>from <a href="#s218">218</a>, <a href="#s219">219</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">{former} asks you, very politely, to remind your {spouse} of a right the court gave him. Your {spouse} will not thank you. <small>from <a href="#s47">47</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The match is made. You could warn the young man what he is getting. If you do, there may be no match. <small>from <a href="#s141">141</a>, <a href="#s142">142</a></small></div>
|
|
<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Go, and plead it with everything you have.</b><br><small>You argue well. The other side tells you that is exactly why they cannot agree.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s222">222</a> <small>(outside group, +2 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx up">ward.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Pass it on exactly as it was given to you.</b><br><small>You are the messenger, and treated as one.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s47">47</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx up">former.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Tell the truth, even though it spoils your own hopes.</b><br><small>You are told you never understood them. Things turn out rather well.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s142">142</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx push" title="Told him what she was like.">notable +</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say it is not your place.</b><br><small>It is not, and they do not ask again.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx down">ward.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-own_words_back"><h3>Your own words turned against you</h3><p class="pred">Someone is held to a principle, promise or code they once used for their own ends, now that it works against them.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">6 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span><span class=tag>one-off</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s160">160</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone who once used a principle for their own ends has it turned against them.<br><small>She says she hates hearing him say spouses may leave when tired; he reminds her that was her own reason for leaving her first husband.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s161">161</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone is held to a promise they made when they never thought it would be used against them.<br><small>He accuses her of dropping the doctrine once it had served her, then claims her promise to release him; she says she will not go back on it.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s164">164</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone looks for a way to fight a loss and realises the rules trapping them are their own.<br><small>She considers fighting through the law or begging, but sees she is trapped by the code she herself made.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s222">222</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone urges a younger person to compromise, and is told their plea proves the danger.<br><small>The mother pleads that life is made of compromises and love outweighs theories; the girl says that is exactly why she cannot.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s253">253</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone who keeps another's secret is told the price is a lifelong obligation.<br><small>He refuses to show his private letters; the count says honour now demands he marry the girl.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s254">254</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone is trapped and given an hour before a forced commitment they never sought.<br><small>He is told he must marry her within the hour, and is locked in with her while the chaplain is fetched.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} reminds you of the promise you made each other: either could go, freely, when it was over. It is over, apparently, for one of you. <small>from <a href="#s160">160</a>, <a href="#s161">161</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You kept her secret on your honour. Now, you are told, honour requires you to marry her within the hour. <small>from <a href="#s253">253</a>, <a href="#s254">254</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You urged compromise on someone younger. They answer that your own life is the best argument against it. <small>from <a href="#s222">222</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Keep your word. Wish them luck.</b><br><small>You do it perfectly. Afterwards, the house you are standing in does not feel like yours.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s162">162</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.kept_the_bargain ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Go back on it. You did not mean it to apply to you.</b><br><small>You are allowed to. You are also told, gently, what you once said about people who did.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s164">164</a></td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx down">candour ▼</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Argue that the circumstances are different.</b><br><small>They are, and you cannot say how without saying what has changed in you.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s152">152</a> <small>(outside group, -8 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-give_it_up"><h3>Giving something up for someone else</h3><p class="pred">Someone can protect or free another person only by giving up something of their own, and the other may never know.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">5 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 38%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s125">125</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone agrees to a partner's wish they would normally mock, as a way of making amends.<br><small>The husband agrees without resistance, accepting future ridicule as penance for having underestimated his wife.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s198">198</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone gives up the thing their own family most needs to protect a person who will never know.<br><small>She burns the letter rather than risk her mother's anger ruining the hero, and says she can never tell him what she has done for him.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s210">210</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone who has been used offers to sacrifice their own name to save the person who used them.<br><small>The fiancée wants a man capable of love, not reservations; the friend offers to say she lied, and let him claim a past with her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s211">211</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone offered an easy escape at another's expense refuses it, and learns they may not need one.<br><small>Moved, he refuses her sacrifice, saying it would only harm his fiancée; she tells him the fiancée has surely recalled her letter.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s221">221</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone argues with a young person who insists on giving up happiness for a principle.<br><small>The mother argues that the girl is sacrificing her son to an idea; the girl says she is sacrificing herself.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s229">229</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone breaks a lifetime's silence to save a younger person from their own fate.<br><small>The mother says she speaks because the girl is as alive as she once was, and she cannot watch her be walled up.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s236">236</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone lays bare their own ruin to warn another, then leaves them to make the choice alone.<br><small>She warns that the son's love would never change him and that the girl would slowly die as she did; she asks what to tell him, and leaves.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s258">258</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone offers themselves to rescue another and is refused.<br><small>He offers to marry her himself instead; she refuses and insists she must marry the other man.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">There is a way to save the person who used you: say that you lied, and let your own name take it. <small>from <a href="#s210">210</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You could stop a younger person making the mistake you made. It would mean telling them what it was. <small>from <a href="#s229">229</a>, <a href="#s236">236</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You could get out of here tonight, if you let someone else pay for it. <small>from <a href="#s258">258</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Give it up for them.</b><br><small>It costs you exactly what you thought. They may never know what it was.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx up">former.obliged_to_you ▲</span><span class="fx push" title="Gave it up and said nothing.">notable +</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Tell the whole story, and let them choose.</b><br><small>You leave before they answer. It is the only part you could not bear.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s236">236</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">ward.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Refuse to let them do it for you.</b><br><small>You will take what is coming yourself. It turns out less is coming than you feared.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s211">211</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">former.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Keep what is yours.</b><br><small>Nobody blames you. That is not the same as nobody noticing.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">money ▲</span><span class="fx up">former.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-keep_the_peace"><h3>Giving ground to keep the peace</h3><p class="pred">Someone gives way, again and again, to a spouse or household, because refusing would cost more than it is worth.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">5 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 38%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s21">21</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone breaks their own resolution because giving in is the quickest way to get peace at home.<br><small>Having sworn not to extend the fraud, the author begins the popular series within the hour, mainly to be rid of his wife's demands.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s51">51</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone realises the partner they admired for ease simply gives way to everyone, and must decide whether to mind.<br><small>Sickened by his wife's endless pliancy, the husband agrees she should be civil; society praises her for smoothing an awkward situation.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s57">57</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone in an absurd position chooses to laugh and go along rather than make a scene.<br><small>The wife smooths the moment by pouring tea for all three men, and the husband takes his cup with a laugh.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s69">69</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone who meant to stand by their choice finds themselves backing down before an elder's authority.<br><small>She means to defend her choice but, under the bishop's certainty, begins apologising instead; her husband walks in.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s130">130</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone is drawn into a role they never chose, and puts up with it because it makes a partner happy.<br><small>The wife grows assertive and treats the husband as the child's father; he accepts it because she is happy.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s131">131</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone gives ground at home again and again until they have almost no room left.<br><small>The child does not bring the couple together; the wife's personality expands until the husband is squeezed into a corner of his own home.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s136">136</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone cannot rein in a difficult young person without wounding the partner who adores them.<br><small>The husband's attempts to check her only hurt his wife; the girl, pretty but charmless, fails in society despite great expense.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s235">235</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone makes peace with a loved one's flaw by refusing to look at it.<br><small>She gave up the struggle and learned to look only at the side of her son that was hers.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} wants something from you again. The fastest way to an evening's quiet is to give it. <small>from <a href="#s21">21</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The household has grown around the new arrival until there is only one small room of it left for you. <small>from <a href="#s130">130</a>, <a href="#s131">131</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} offers, very sweetly, to do whatever you like about it. You realise they would say the same to anyone. <small>from <a href="#s50">50</a>, <a href="#s51">51</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Give way. It is easier.</b><br><small>It is easier. You notice, later, that you have stopped keeping count.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s21">21</a></td><td><span class="fx up">spouse.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">candour ▼</span><span class="fx down">money ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Hold out on something small.</b><br><small>You win the small thing, and discover it was the only one left to win.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s128">128</a> <small>(outside group, -2 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Dine at the club.</b><br><small>The club is very comfortable. You are there most nights now.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s135">135</a> <small>(outside group, -1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx down">spouse.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say what you actually want.</b><br><small>It is not a pleasant evening. It is the first honest one in a long time.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx up">spouse.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-unseen_at_home"><h3>Unseen at home</h3><p class="pred">Someone lives beside a spouse who does not really see them, whether through neglect, blind approval, or plain coarseness.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">7 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 43%</span><span class="tag">stage: inside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s2">2</a></td><td><small>The Descent of Man</small></td><td>Someone whose home life is secure but closed to what they care about lives the real part of life alone.<br><small>A comfortable, dutiful marriage leaves a scholar no companion in the thinking that is his real life.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s71">71</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone is frustrated by a spouse whose unconditional approval makes nothing they do matter.<br><small>The narrator explains that the novelist suffers from a husband who admires everything she does without understanding it.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s72">72</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone tries to provoke a reaction from a partner and gets only praise, which defeats the purpose.<br><small>She wrote the book partly to provoke her husband's disapproval, but he adores it and presses it on everyone.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s97">97</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone lonely in an unhappy marriage finds comfort in one kind friend.<br><small>A gentle neighbour who shares the mistress's love of books is her only company in winter, and the servants all like him.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s123">123</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone realises their neglect has left a partner lonely for years.<br><small>The wife confesses her loneliness and that she chose nursery wallpaper years ago; the husband feels he has failed her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s126">126</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone who has kept the letter of a commitment realises they have neglected its spirit.<br><small>The husband reflects that he has been faithful but emotionally absent, keeping his wife out of his inner life.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s127">127</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone watches their partner's devotion shift wholly to someone new and feels shut out.<br><small>At the hospital the wife is transfigured by the child; the husband feels invisible to her.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} admires everything you do and understands none of it, and has just told the whole room so. <small>from <a href="#s71">71</a>, <a href="#s72">72</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">For twenty years there has been a room upstairs papered for someone who never came. You had not noticed that anyone was waiting. <small>from <a href="#s122">122</a>, <a href="#s123">123</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The only person you can talk to about what you care about lives two miles off, and calls in the afternoons when your {spouse} is away. <small>from <a href="#s97">97</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Give them the thing they have wanted, however foolish.</b><br><small>They are happy for the first time in years, and you are the one who has to get used to it.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s125">125</a> <small>(outside group, -1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">spouse.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.made_amends ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Find your company elsewhere.</b><br><small>It is a great comfort. It is also, you are beginning to notice, being noticed.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s97">97</a></td><td><span class="fx up">confidant.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx up">spouse.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Do something they will have to object to.</b><br><small>They are delighted with it.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s72">72</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Live with it. Most people do.</b><br><small>Most people do.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-new_and_warned"><h3>New, and warned</h3><p class="pred">Someone new to a place or a household is warned, or senses, that something is wrong, and must decide whom to believe.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">broad</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: outside</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s31">31</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone has married a person with a talked-about past and has chosen to believe the kindest version of it.<br><small>The husband recalls the gossip about his wife's obscure origins and first divorce, which society chose to blame on the unknown first husband.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s32">32</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone goes ahead with a choice that friends openly warn against, confident they know better.<br><small>The wife's second marriage bought her social standing, ended in a divorce that made her sympathetic, and friends doubted the wisdom of her third.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s90">90</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone arrives at a new post with an unexplained warning about the person in charge.<br><small>Told to keep out of the master's way, the servant travels to a large dark country house and is received by the cook.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s91">91</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone new to a household notices something odd that the others refuse to discuss.<br><small>On her way to her room she sees a pale woman in the passage; the housemaid scolds about a room across the hall that must stay locked.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s95">95</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone senses a household secret, and everyone they ask shuts the conversation down.<br><small>The cook begs her not to use the locked room, the dead maid's, and refuses to describe her; the master's arrival puts the household on edge.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s101">101</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone hears their predecessors all quit, and finds the staff relieved they did not.<br><small>The colleague says four maids have left in six months; back at the house the master has arrived and the cook is relieved she returned.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s241">241</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone who shows they are a naive newcomer with money is approached by a helpful stranger.<br><small>In the crowded square he overpays a pedlar through ignorance of the coinage, and a pleasant English-speaking stranger offers help.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s242">242</a></td><td><small>A Venetian Night's Entertainment</small></td><td>Someone new in a strange place gratefully accepts a guide whose credentials they cannot check.<br><small>The friendly stranger, calling himself a count, shows him the town and points out its great personages in their odd costumes.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">There is a door on your corridor that must be kept locked, and nobody will tell you why, and the cook has gone white at the question. <small>from <a href="#s91">91</a>, <a href="#s95">95</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You mention where you are working, and an old acquaintance pulls a long face: four have left it in six months. <small>from <a href="#s101">101</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">A pleasant stranger who speaks your language has offered to show you how things are done here. He knows everyone. <small>from <a href="#s241">241</a>, <a href="#s242">242</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Everyone who likes you has warned you against this marriage, and you have gone ahead, and it is going well. <small>from <a href="#s31">31</a>, <a href="#s32">32</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Ask straight out what is going on.</b><br><small>You are told you are imagining it, in a tone that says you are not.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s94">94</a> <small>(outside group, -1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">employer.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say nothing, and keep your eyes open.</b><br><small>You learn more that way, and sleep less.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s108">108</a> <small>(outside group, +7 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span><span class="fx set">flags.watching ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Accept the help, gratefully.</b><br><small>It is a wonderful afternoon. You pay for most of it, in the coin he chooses.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s242">242</a></td><td><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx up">standing ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Leave while you still can.</b><br><small>You leave. You never find out, and you think about it often.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx down">money ▼</span><span class="fx down">employer.confides_in_you ▼</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-the_rival"><h3>The rival</h3><p class="pred">Someone who has lost, or fears losing, the person they want to a rival is tempted to strike at the rival.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s37">37</a></td><td><small>The Other Two</small></td><td>Someone stewing over an awkward situation watches a rival who seems not to feel it at all.<br><small>At lunch the husband sees the ex-husband savouring his coffee with brandy and envies his ease.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s63">63</a></td><td><small>Expiation</small></td><td>Someone in authority rewards the relative who flatters them and resents the one who went her own way.<br><small>The bishop arrives; he favours this niece over her cousin, whose cheap books outsell his own and who refused his advice during her divorce.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s153">153</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone hears their partner openly confess an interest in someone else.<br><small>He defends the young woman's independence of mind and admits she interests him.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s165">165</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone rushes to warn a rival and, finding them gone, is left with nowhere to go.<br><small>She goes to warn the young woman, finds her out, and wanders the streets.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s186">186</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone rejected for a rival lashes out at the person they want, and loses them.<br><small>The narrator, jealous, accused her of leading him on and sneered at her hero; they parted in anger.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s188">188</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone stumbles on proof that could destroy a rival and feels the power it gives them.<br><small>In the archives he finds the hanged boy's farewell letter, marked as handed to the warder by his rival.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s189">189</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone tempted by jealousy convinces themselves that a rival's old act proves him a traitor.<br><small>He reasons that the rival must have surrendered the letter to curry favour, and so must be a traitor.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s190">190</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone lets jealousy override their judgement and hurries to use damaging evidence.<br><small>Ignoring the rival's long record of courage, the narrator rushes back in anger to the woman he loves.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">You have found, in an old file, a paper that would finish {rival}. Nobody else knows it exists. <small>from <a href="#s188">188</a>, <a href="#s189">189</a>, <a href="#s190">190</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Your {spouse} has said, quite calmly, that {rival} interests them. <small>from <a href="#s153">153</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Across the room {rival} is enjoying a coffee and a brandy as though none of this had touched him at all. <small>from <a href="#s37">37</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Use it.</b><br><small>It lands exactly where you aimed. The person you did it for defends {rival} better than you could have imagined.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s191">191</a> <small>(outside group, +1 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">rival.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">confidant.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span><span class="fx set">flags.struck_at_the_rival ✓</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Hand it over, and let them judge.</b><br><small>You were honest. It does not feel like honesty from the inside.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s193">193</a> <small>(outside group, +3 from a member)</small></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">confidant.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say what you think of them, to the one who loves them.</b><br><small>That is the end of that.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s186">186</a></td><td><span class="fx down">confidant.confides_in_you ▼</span><span class="fx up">confidant.resents_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Put it away.</b><br><small>It stays put away. You know where.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-owning_up"><h3>Owning up</h3><p class="pred">Someone who once wronged another faces them, or a stand-in for them, and must decide how much to admit.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">one predicament</span><span class="tag">8 scenes</span><span class="tag">4 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 38%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span><span class=tag>one-off</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s171">171</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone confesses their humiliation to the very person who once suffered the same thing at their hands.<br><small>He braces as if for a request for money; she tells him her husband has left her because he tired of her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s172">172</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone who once inflicted a hurt now feels it themselves, and needs the person they hurt to know it.<br><small>He says she need not grant a divorce; she replies that he did not have to either, and asks whether he, too, never understood.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s173">173</a></td><td><small>The Reckoning</small></td><td>Someone seeks forgiveness from a person they wronged, and leaves before anything more can be said.<br><small>He admits he never understood; she asks his forgiveness, shakes his hand, and leaves before he can stop her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s176">176</a></td><td><small>The Letter</small></td><td>Someone finally admits a past act they are ashamed of, now that those it touched are dead.<br><small>Asked for the bravest thing a woman ever did, he says it was provoked by an act of his own he is not proud of.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s202">202</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone realises that a cautious move of theirs betrayed distrust of a person who deserved better.<br><small>She received his fiancée perfectly; he regrets having announced the engagement by letter, as if he had doubted her.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s209">209</a></td><td><small>The Dilettante</small></td><td>Someone is made to see, through an outsider's eyes, how they have used another person's devotion.<br><small>The friend confesses she loved him all along; the fiancée saw that he used her and cast her aside, and despised them both.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s227">227</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone who argued for a compromise now confesses they knew all along it was wrong.<br><small>The mother says she too has suffered, and now admits the girl was right and she was wrong.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s228">228</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone about to make a hopeful sacrifice is told by an older person that they made the same one and regret it.<br><small>The girl believes love alone could change the son; the mother says she once said the same, before marrying his father.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">It has happened to you now, the thing you once did to {former}, and you find you have walked to {former}'s door. <small>from <a href="#s171">171</a>, <a href="#s172">172</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Someone younger is about to do exactly what you did. The only thing that would stop them is the truth about you. <small>from <a href="#s227">227</a>, <a href="#s228">228</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">Somebody you trained to hide their feelings has just told you, plainly, what you cost them. <small>from <a href="#s209">209</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say you understand now, and ask them to forgive you.</b><br><small>They say there is nothing to forgive, which is kinder than the truth and less use.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s173">173</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx down">former.resents_you ▼</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Admit it, all of it.</b><br><small>It is easier than you expected to say and harder than you expected to have said.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s227">227</a></td><td><span class="fx up">candour ▲</span><span class="fx up">ward.confides_in_you ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Say something graceful and go.</b><br><small>Nobody could have done it better. Nothing has changed.</small></td><td>archetype</td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<div class="card" id="g-waiting_on_them"><h3>Waiting on someone else's decision</h3><p class="pred">Someone's hopes hang on a decision entirely in another's hands, and nothing they do seems to hurry it.</p>
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<p><span class="tag">broad</span><span class="tag">6 scenes</span><span class="tag">3 stories</span><span class="tag">largest story 50%</span><span class="tag">stage: any</span></p>
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<details><summary>Member scenes</summary><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr><td><a href="#s116">116</a></td><td><small>The Lady's Maid's Bell</small></td><td>Someone covering for what they saw goes to bed uneasy, sure something is about to happen.<br><small>She makes an excuse to the neighbour, returns home, is sent to bed, and at night hears a door open below.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s139">139</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone hoping for a match that would relieve them must pretend indifference while it hangs in the balance.<br><small>An effusively polite young man courts the girl; the parents pretend not to notice while she shows no emotion at all.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s140">140</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone longs for a decision that is entirely in another's hands, and that person insists on delaying it.<br><small>He proposes, and the girl demands a month to think it over, to her parents' agony.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s143">143</a></td><td><small>The Mission of Jane</small></td><td>Someone waits through a nerve-racking final stretch, fearing any accident could undo the outcome they need.<br><small>The girl turns hysterical before the wedding and threatens to break it off; the husband frets over every possible mishap until the groom arrives late.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s212">212</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone whose whole life centres on one person senses that person is in trouble and waits to be told.<br><small>A mother devoted to her perfect son senses from his walk that he is coming home to tell her something.</small></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="#s226">226</a></td><td><small>The Quicksand</small></td><td>Someone who once refused an offer comes back to say they have changed their mind, and asks if it still stands.<br><small>The girl confesses she followed the mother there, has been unhappy, and now believes the mother was right; she asks whether the son still cares.</small></td></tr>
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</table></div></details><h4>Draft event</h4>
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<div class="desc">The offer has been made. The answer has been deferred for a month, and there is nothing whatever you can do about it. <small>from <a href="#s139">139</a>, <a href="#s140">140</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">You can tell from the way they walk up the street that they are coming home to tell you something. <small>from <a href="#s212">212</a></small></div>
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<div class="desc">The house has gone very quiet. You have the feeling that tonight something is going to happen. <small>from <a href="#s116">116</a></small></div>
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<div class="wrap"><table><tr><th>Option</th><th>Source</th><th>Effects</th></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Try to hurry it along.</b><br><small>Your ruses are seen through and the date does not move.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s140">140</a></td><td><span class="fx up">ward.resents_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">tact ▼</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Pretend not to notice anything at all.</b><br><small>You are very good at it. It is exhausting.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s139">139</a></td><td><span class="fx up">tact ▲</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><b>Stay up, and be ready.</b><br><small>Nothing happens tonight. You are no less tired for that.</small></td><td>scene <a href="#s116">116</a></td><td><span class="fx up">ward.confides_in_you ▲</span><span class="fx down">standing ▼</span></td></tr>
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</table></div></div>
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<h2>Every scene</h2><p><input id="q" placeholder="Filter scenes by any word" oninput="f(this.value)"></p>
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<h3>0. The Descent of Man <small>7,235 words, 29 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s0"><td>0</td><td>A scholar returns from a rare holiday alone, secretly delighted by a private idea he has hidden from his wife and colleagues.<br><span class="pred">Someone carries home a private excitement they mean to keep from everyone who knows them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s1"><td>1</td><td>Alone in the woods for the first time since his marriage, a scholar indulges an idea he has never had the freedom to pursue.<br><span class="pred">Someone long hemmed in by routine finally has time to themselves and means to use it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s2"><td>2</td><td>A comfortable, dutiful marriage leaves a scholar no companion in the thinking that is his real life.<br><span class="pred">Someone whose home life is secure but closed to what they care about lives the real part of life alone.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s3"><td>3</td><td>A scholar's modest earnings must support his family, and his wife economises to keep up appearances while taking pride in his obscure reputation.<br><span class="pred">Someone's serious work earns respect but not enough money to satisfy the family that depends on it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s4"><td>4</td><td>Overworked supporting his family, a scholar breaks down, and in the enforced rest surveys how his field is seen by the public.<br><span class="pred">Someone forced to stop working steps back and wonders what their life's labour has amounted to in others' eyes.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s5"><td>5</td><td>A scholar observes that his once-private discipline has become a popular fashion that everyone reads and holds opinions on.<br><span class="pred">Someone finds the thing they devoted themselves to taken up and cheapened by a crowd that does not understand it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s6"><td>6</td><td>Angered and amused by popular pseudo-science, a scholar resolves to write a parody of it so absurd the public will laugh at its own prophets.<br><span class="pred">Someone offended by a popular falsehood decides to mock it, trusting that the crowd will see the joke.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s7"><td>7</td><td>A scholar brings his manuscript to an old college friend now a prosperous popular publisher, keeping its satirical purpose a secret.<br><span class="pred">Someone approaches an old friend for a favour, counting on the friend being unchanged by years of success.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s8"><td>8</td><td>The publisher warns the book may be too learned to sell, but agrees to take it; the author waves off the question of payment.<br><span class="pred">Someone offers their work on the strength of friendship and refuses to haggle, trusting the other to see its worth.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s9"><td>9</td><td>The publisher has rushed the book into print and congratulates the author on abandoning the scepticism of his youth.<br><span class="pred">Someone discovers that the person they confided in has completely misread what they meant.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s10"><td>10</td><td>The publisher takes the parody for a sincere confession of faith; the author, realising, bursts out laughing.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns their joke has been taken in earnest by exactly the audience it mocked.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s11"><td>11</td><td>The author explains the book is a satire; the publisher, offended, suggests it need not be read ironically at all.<br><span class="pred">Someone explains their true intent and is told it hardly matters, since no one else will see it either.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s12"><td>12</td><td>The publisher offers to sell the book as sincere, promising a mass success, and asks the author to let it stand as his real conviction.<br><span class="pred">Someone is offered success on condition they let the world believe something they do not believe.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s13"><td>13</td><td>The author agrees to stay silent, telling himself the joke has only grown larger and that nothing in the book will change.<br><span class="pred">Someone talks themselves into a deception by calling it a bigger version of what they meant all along.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s14"><td>14</td><td>Short of money after illness, the author accepts a large advance, sure his colleagues will see through the book and his reputation will be safe.<br><span class="pred">Someone in a money pinch accepts a well-paid compromise, telling themselves it will cost them nothing that matters.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s15"><td>15</td><td>The book is already printing, so resistance seems futile; his wife, having seen a glowing review, asks why he kept it from her.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has kept a compromising success from their family is confronted by a proud spouse who found out elsewhere.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s16"><td>16</td><td>The publisher's advertising campaign floods the country, making the book impossible to escape.<br><span class="pred">Someone watches something they quietly agreed to grow far larger and louder than they ever meant.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s17"><td>17</td><td>The author hides in his work on publication day, then reads a serious review praising his mock platitudes as noble truths.<br><span class="pred">Someone embarrassed by their own success reads praise for the very thing they meant as a sham.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s18"><td>18</td><td>Every paper follows the first review, and the publisher predicts the book will sell for years; the author is alarmed by its staying power.<br><span class="pred">Someone who accepted a passing embarrassment learns it will follow them for years.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s19"><td>19</td><td>The publisher praises the book's sentiment and pays more; the author, pestered by journalists, is asked by his wife whether interviews pay.<br><span class="pred">Someone resisting the demands of fame finds their family eager for the money it could bring.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s20"><td>20</td><td>His wife confesses their son has run into debt since the book's fame; the author offers to write a lucrative popular series to cover it.<br><span class="pred">Someone's family has run up costs on the strength of their success, and the only quick remedy is more of what they despise.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s21"><td>21</td><td>Having sworn not to extend the fraud, the author begins the popular series within the hour, mainly to be rid of his wife's demands.<br><span class="pred">Someone breaks their own resolution because giving in is the quickest way to get peace at home.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s22"><td>22</td><td>Fame opens society to the author; charmed by clever women, he grows used to telling how the book first came to him.<br><span class="pred">Someone enjoying the attention their false reputation brings slips into living the part.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s23"><td>23</td><td>The author gives paid interviews on every subject and lends his face to advertisements, which keeps his household solvent.<br><span class="pred">Someone sells their name more and more freely because it keeps the household comfortable.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s24"><td>24</td><td>The author leads a double life, courted by the public while his real research goes on unnoticed by colleagues who ignore the book.<br><span class="pred">Someone keeps a public persona and a private vocation apart, and wonders what their peers really think.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s25"><td>25</td><td>The author's earnings buy him instruments for real research; nearing a genuine discovery, he confides it to one trusted colleague.<br><span class="pred">Someone uses ill-gotten means to fund their real ambition and needs an honest judge to test it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s26"><td>26</td><td>A colleague urges him to drop everything and write his serious book; the author asks his publisher for an advance and is refused.<br><span class="pred">Someone ready to do their real work finds the backer they relied on now wants something first.</span></td><td><a href="#g-strings_attached">strings_attached</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s27"><td>27</td><td>The publisher says the old book is fading and offers a big advance only for a sequel; the author declares he will write a serious book instead.<br><span class="pred">Someone is offered money to repeat a sham and must choose between it and the real work they want to do.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s28"><td>28</td><td>Warned that popularity perishes, the author wavers, takes the advance on the sequel, and tells himself the serious book can wait six months.<br><span class="pred">Someone who meant to refuse a tempting compromise gives in, promising themselves it is only a delay.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>1. The Other Two <small>7,343 words, 29 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s29"><td>29</td><td>A newly married man waits eagerly for his wife on their first evening in his own house.<br><span class="pred">Someone starting a new life with a partner hopes the fresh start will be as happy as it feels.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s30"><td>30</td><td>The honeymoon is cut short by the illness of the wife's daughter from her first marriage; the husband takes comfort in his wife's calm.<br><span class="pred">Someone's new household is disrupted at once by a crisis inherited from their partner's past.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s31"><td>31</td><td>The husband recalls the gossip about his wife's obscure origins and first divorce, which society chose to blame on the unknown first husband.<br><span class="pred">Someone has married a person with a talked-about past and has chosen to believe the kindest version of it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s32"><td>32</td><td>The wife's second marriage bought her social standing, ended in a divorce that made her sympathetic, and friends doubted the wisdom of her third.<br><span class="pred">Someone goes ahead with a choice that friends openly warn against, confident they know better.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s33"><td>33</td><td>The wife arrives worried: her first husband's lawyer has written about his right to see the child.<br><span class="pred">Someone's comfortable new start is interrupted by a claim from their partner's former spouse.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s34"><td>34</td><td>The first husband has the legal right to visit his sick daughter in the new husband's house; the husband reluctantly agrees.<br><span class="pred">Someone must let an unwelcome person into their home because that person has a right they cannot refuse.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s35"><td>35</td><td>Fleeing the house on the visiting day, the husband is squeezed next to his wife's second ex-husband on a crowded train and must make small talk.<br><span class="pred">Someone trying to avoid one awkward encounter is thrown into another with a rival they cannot snub.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s36"><td>36</td><td>The ex-husband mentions business with the husband's ailing partner; the husband escapes the train and welcomes the extra work.<br><span class="pred">Someone seeks refuge from a painful private situation in extra work.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s37"><td>37</td><td>At lunch the husband sees the ex-husband savouring his coffee with brandy and envies his ease.<br><span class="pred">Someone stewing over an awkward situation watches a rival who seems not to feel it at all.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s38"><td>38</td><td>The husband comes home and finds his wife serene and happy, having apparently put the day's visitor out of mind.<br><span class="pred">Someone troubled by a situation finds their partner untroubled and wonders what that means.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s39"><td>39</td><td>His wife says she let the nurse receive the visitor, then absent-mindedly pours brandy into her husband's coffee as her ex-husband took it, and blushes.<br><span class="pred">Someone catches an unintended glimpse of their partner's past habits and cannot un-see it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s40"><td>40</td><td>The husband's ill partner asks him to handle an important deal for his wife's ex-husband; for the firm's sake he agrees.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked by a superior to serve a person they would rather avoid, and cannot refuse without harming the firm.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s41"><td>41</td><td>The ex-husband behaves well in the meeting and lets slip that he was once desperate for money; the husband is glad to seem the steadier man.<br><span class="pred">Someone forced to do business with a rival tries to come out of it looking the more composed.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s42"><td>42</td><td>Coming home unexpectedly, the husband finds his wife's first husband, a mild shabby man, waiting in his library.<br><span class="pred">Someone comes face to face with a person they had imagined as a villain and finds them harmless.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s43"><td>43</td><td>The husband is polite to the first husband, then retreats upset that this man has the run of his house.<br><span class="pred">Someone must be civil to a person whose very presence in their home they resent.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s44"><td>44</td><td>Seeing the first husband's cheap manners, the husband pictures his wife's humble former life and is disturbed by how completely she has left it behind.<br><span class="pred">Someone glimpses their partner's hidden origins and begins to doubt who they really married.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s45"><td>45</td><td>The husband suspects his wife misrepresented her first marriage; later the first husband asks to speak to him about the child's governess.<br><span class="pred">Someone begins to suspect a partner of misleading them, just as the person misled about asks for their help.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s46"><td>46</td><td>The first husband reveals he did see the wife on the first visit, exposing her lie, and says the governess is making the girl dishonest.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns from an outsider that their partner lied to them, while being asked to intervene in a family matter.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s47"><td>47</td><td>The first husband asserts his legal right to a voice in the girl's upbringing; the husband, learning of the man's sacrifices for his daughter, grows uneasy about his wife's account.<br><span class="pred">Someone must pass on a claim from a person they have come to respect, against their own partner's wishes.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s48"><td>48</td><td>The wife calls the first husband ungentlemanly and cries; the husband sees she knew his rights all along and expects to be pitied.<br><span class="pred">Someone presses a partner to honour an obligation, and the partner responds with tears instead of answers.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s49"><td>49</td><td>The first husband uses his rights modestly; meanwhile the husband must keep meeting the second ex-husband on business he cannot pass on.<br><span class="pred">Someone must keep working closely with a person they would rather avoid, because their position demands it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s50"><td>50</td><td>The husband finds his wife chatting with her second ex-husband at a ball; she offers to do whatever he wishes about speaking to him.<br><span class="pred">Someone finds their partner on friendly terms with a former lover and is offered whatever rule they want to set.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s51"><td>51</td><td>Sickened by his wife's endless pliancy, the husband agrees she should be civil; society praises her for smoothing an awkward situation.<br><span class="pred">Someone realises the partner they admired for ease simply gives way to everyone, and must decide whether to mind.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s52"><td>52</td><td>The husband feels he owns only a share in his wife, with her former husbands as partners, and resents her tactful acquiescence.<br><span class="pred">Someone feels they hold only part of a person whose loyalties are shared with others from their past.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s53"><td>53</td><td>Habit dulls the husband's objections; he reckons that his predecessors trained his wife to make him comfortable.<br><span class="pred">Someone trades their scruples for comfort, little by little, and learns to call it a bargain.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s54"><td>54</td><td>The husband comes to accept the first husband's visits, and one evening offers him a cigar and a seat by the fire.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once resented an intruder finds themselves at ease with him.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s55"><td>55</td><td>The second ex-husband arrives unannounced on business while the first husband sits there; all three men stand awkwardly as tea is laid out.<br><span class="pred">Someone is caught in a room with two people from their partner's past, and no one knows how to behave.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s56"><td>56</td><td>The wife enters, greets both former husbands graciously, and the three men stand awkward before her.<br><span class="pred">Someone must host, in one room, people whose claims on them conflict.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s57"><td>57</td><td>The wife smooths the moment by pouring tea for all three men, and the husband takes his cup with a laugh.<br><span class="pred">Someone in an absurd position chooses to laugh and go along rather than make a scene.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>2. Expiation <small>8,120 words, 30 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s58"><td>58</td><td>A society wife who has just published a daring novel dreads the arrival of press clippings now that her uncle, a bishop, is in town.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has done something bold in public dreads the moment a disapproving elder relative hears of it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s59"><td>59</td><td>She complains that her husband is embarrassingly proud of the book and will read the reviews aloud to visitors; she fears a scandal.<br><span class="pred">Someone is mortified that their spouse's naive enthusiasm will expose them in front of the people they fear.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s60"><td>60</td><td>She insists her provocative title is honest, not commercial, and fears she has dragged her husband's name through the mire.<br><span class="pred">Someone who meant to provoke now worries about what it will cost the family whose name they used.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s61"><td>61</td><td>She says using a pen-name would be cowardice; her cousin, a hard-up hack writer, says an attack from the press would make her rich.<br><span class="pred">Someone proud of their courage is told bluntly that the risk they fear is exactly what would bring success.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s62"><td>62</td><td>She claims to speak for unhappy women; her divorced cousin warns that women with a past avoid stirring up mud. The bishop's arrival terrifies her.<br><span class="pred">Someone claims to speak for others who have suffered, and is warned by one of them that it may not be welcome.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s63"><td>63</td><td>The bishop arrives; he favours this niece over her cousin, whose cheap books outsell his own and who refused his advice during her divorce.<br><span class="pred">Someone in authority rewards the relative who flatters them and resents the one who went her own way.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s64"><td>64</td><td>Left alone with the bishop, the novelist feigns interest in his book to deflect talk of her own, and gets its plot wrong.<br><span class="pred">Someone tries to steer an elder away from a dangerous topic by flattering them, and is caught not knowing their work.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s65"><td>65</td><td>The bishop says his devout book was praised only by a friend who owed him favours, and that its best hope would be a public denunciation.<br><span class="pred">Someone admits the only thing that would help their failing work is a public scandal they cannot decently arrange.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s66"><td>66</td><td>The bishop explains that a charge of immorality would sell thousands, needed to fund a church window he has at heart.<br><span class="pred">Someone needs money for a cause and wishes they could be attacked in public to get it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s67"><td>67</td><td>The niece blurts out her own fear of not being read; the bishop turns to her novel and asks her to change its title.<br><span class="pred">Someone betrays their own worry and is immediately asked by an elder to tone down their work.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s68"><td>68</td><td>The bishop assumes the title was forced on her or chosen innocently, and warns it will offend the readers she should value.<br><span class="pred">Someone is lectured by an elder who assumes they could not have meant to give offence.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s69"><td>69</td><td>She means to defend her choice but, under the bishop's certainty, begins apologising instead; her husband walks in.<br><span class="pred">Someone who meant to stand by their choice finds themselves backing down before an elder's authority.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s70"><td>70</td><td>The husband bursts in waving the first review, delighted that the bishop is there to hear it.<br><span class="pred">Someone's eager spouse forces a private worry into the open before exactly the wrong witness.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s71"><td>71</td><td>The narrator explains that the novelist suffers from a husband who admires everything she does without understanding it.<br><span class="pred">Someone is frustrated by a spouse whose unconditional approval makes nothing they do matter.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s72"><td>72</td><td>She wrote the book partly to provoke her husband's disapproval, but he adores it and presses it on everyone.<br><span class="pred">Someone tries to provoke a reaction from a partner and gets only praise, which defeats the purpose.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s73"><td>73</td><td>The husband reads the review aloud in front of the bishop; it begins by denouncing the filth of modern fiction.<br><span class="pred">Someone must sit through a public verdict on their work in front of the person they most wanted to keep it from.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s74"><td>74</td><td>The review calls her novel sweetly harmless; weeks later her cousin finds her crushed.<br><span class="pred">Someone who wanted to shock is dismissed as harmless, which wounds more than condemnation would.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s75"><td>75</td><td>She reveals that every review has called her daring book a pretty, inoffensive story.<br><span class="pred">Someone who staked their pride on being taken seriously finds everyone treats them as tame.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s76"><td>76</td><td>The cousin says the bishop blessed the book to bury it, and suggests the bishop could make it sell by denouncing it.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns that a rival's approval was a way of smothering them, and is advised to provoke an attack instead.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s77"><td>77</td><td>The cousin explains that nobody reads books any more, only puffs, and that only a denunciation from pulpit or press will sell one.<br><span class="pred">Someone is told that merit counts for nothing and that the way to succeed is to engineer a scandal.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s78"><td>78</td><td>Months later, a famous novelist travelling with her mocks the bishop who publicly attacked her book; she defends her uncle's sense of duty.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has quietly benefited from a public attack defends the attacker's motives to an outsider.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s79"><td>79</td><td>Her book has sold a hundred and fifty thousand; strangers recognise and praise her courage on the train.<br><span class="pred">Someone enjoys a success whose real origin they cannot admit to the people praising them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s80"><td>80</td><td>The bishop's devoted friend tells her the bishop believes the anonymous gift of the window rewarded his courage in denouncing her book.<br><span class="pred">Someone hears a rival take credit for an outcome they secretly paid for.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s81"><td>81</td><td>The friend praises her forgiveness and hints that others think the bishop's attack was deserved.<br><span class="pred">Someone must smile through backhanded praise from people who think they were rightly punished.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s82"><td>82</td><td>In the cathedral she enjoys the attention of the congregation and the press, which she owes to the bishop's denunciation.<br><span class="pred">Someone savours public attention that exists only because of an arrangement nobody else knows about.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s83"><td>83</td><td>She plans a more outspoken second novel; the bishop begins his address celebrating the window's mysterious donor.<br><span class="pred">Someone emboldened by success prepares to go further, while waiting to hear how their secret part is described.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s84"><td>84</td><td>The bishop hints that the donor was a woman and that a book played its part, and eyes turn to her.<br><span class="pred">Someone fears a public speaker is about to reveal the secret deal they struck.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s85"><td>85</td><td>Under everyone's gaze she blushes and panics while the bishop expounds on the power of novels for good or ill.<br><span class="pred">Someone sits exposed to public attention, waiting to learn whether they are about to be named.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s86"><td>86</td><td>She nearly walks out, then learns the bishop is crediting his own book with inspiring the gift.<br><span class="pred">Someone expecting to be exposed instead hears another person take all the credit for what they did.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s87"><td>87</td><td>A fellow writer guesses she paid for the window herself; she half denies it, indignant that the bishop claims credit.<br><span class="pred">Someone who secretly bought a favour cannot claim credit for it without admitting the bargain.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>3. The Lady's Maid's Bell <small>8,682 words, 32 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s88"><td>88</td><td>A servant weakened by illness and nearly out of money is offered a place by a kindly former acquaintance.<br><span class="pred">Someone down on their luck and unable to find work is offered a way back by a well-wisher.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s89"><td>89</td><td>The patron warns that the house is gloomy, the mistress an invalid who lost her children, and the last maid is dead; the servant accepts.<br><span class="pred">Someone who badly needs a place takes one they have been frankly warned will be hard.</span></td><td><a href="#g-strings_attached">strings_attached</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s90"><td>90</td><td>Told to keep out of the master's way, the servant travels to a large dark country house and is received by the cook.<br><span class="pred">Someone arrives at a new post with an unexplained warning about the person in charge.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s91"><td>91</td><td>On her way to her room she sees a pale woman in the passage; the housemaid scolds about a room across the hall that must stay locked.<br><span class="pred">Someone new to a household notices something odd that the others refuse to discuss.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s92"><td>92</td><td>The other servants praise the mistress; the maid meets her and is instantly devoted.<br><span class="pred">Someone meets a new employer and feels an immediate loyalty they did not expect.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s93"><td>93</td><td>The mistress never uses the bell to her maid's room, always sending the housemaid instead.<br><span class="pred">Someone new notices an unexplained habit in how they are treated and cannot ask why.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s94"><td>94</td><td>No one admits to seeing the pale woman; the cook grows confused when asked where the last maid slept.<br><span class="pred">Someone asks innocent questions and finds the people around them evasive.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s95"><td>95</td><td>The cook begs her not to use the locked room, the dead maid's, and refuses to describe her; the master's arrival puts the household on edge.<br><span class="pred">Someone senses a household secret, and everyone they ask shuts the conversation down.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s96"><td>96</td><td>The master, a coarse, leering man, looks the maid over and dismisses her; the mistress goes cold in his presence and brightens when he leaves.<br><span class="pred">Someone in service must work around a master everyone fears and the mistress shrinks from.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s97"><td>97</td><td>A gentle neighbour who shares the mistress's love of books is her only company in winter, and the servants all like him.<br><span class="pred">Someone lonely in an unhappy marriage finds comfort in one kind friend.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s98"><td>98</td><td>The master comes and goes, drinks heavily and grumbles; the servants hint the match was unhappy from the start.<br><span class="pred">Someone watches their employer endure a spouse's coarseness and can say nothing.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s99"><td>99</td><td>The maid's duties are light and the mistress kind, but she feels a weight whenever she re-enters the house.<br><span class="pred">Someone in a comfortable position cannot shake a sense of dread they cannot explain.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s100"><td>100</td><td>Shut in by rain, the maid grows nervous about the locked room; on a trip to town she meets an old colleague who reacts to her employer's name.<br><span class="pred">Someone uneasy in their post learns that others have heard things about it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s101"><td>101</td><td>The colleague says four maids have left in six months; back at the house the master has arrived and the cook is relieved she returned.<br><span class="pred">Someone hears their predecessors all quit, and finds the staff relieved they did not.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s102"><td>102</td><td>The cook begs her to be good to the mistress; the maid overhears the master jealously accusing his wife over the neighbour.<br><span class="pred">Someone overhears a jealous quarrel between their employers and must pretend not to have.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s103"><td>103</td><td>Uneasy after a tense dinner, the maid is woken at night by her bell ringing for the first time.<br><span class="pred">Someone is called in the night by a summons that should not have come.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s104"><td>104</td><td>She hears the locked room open and steps hurry ahead of her; at her mistress's door the master answers, asking how many of them there are.<br><span class="pred">Someone answering a call at night must walk where something frightening has just gone, and is met by a hostile master.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s105"><td>105</td><td>The mistress, weak, calls the maid by the dead maid's name; next morning she sends her secretly to fetch medicine and carry a note to the neighbour.<br><span class="pred">Someone is sent on a discreet errand that seems meant to be hidden from the head of the house.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_their_secret">keep_their_secret</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s106"><td>106</td><td>Fearing the mistress means to poison herself, the maid rushes to the chemist and learns the medicine is harmless.<br><span class="pred">Someone fears their employer means to harm themselves, and checks quietly without betraying them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s107"><td>107</td><td>Wondering whether the note was the secret errand, the maid delivers it; the master confronts her and she lies to protect her mistress.<br><span class="pred">Someone is questioned by a suspicious superior and must decide whether to lie to protect another.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_their_secret">keep_their_secret</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s108"><td>108</td><td>Afraid to stay yet unwilling to abandon her mistress, the maid finds a photograph of the dead maid and recognises the pale woman.<br><span class="pred">Someone who wants to flee a frightening post stays out of loyalty, and then finds proof their fear was real.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s109"><td>109</td><td>The cook deflects when shown the photograph; the master stays on, taunting his wife about the neighbour's absence.<br><span class="pred">Someone who brings evidence to a colleague is brushed off, while the tension in the household grows.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s110"><td>110</td><td>The neighbour calls and all seem friendly, but the maid lies awake each night, dreading the silence of the locked room, and cannot bring herself to leave.<br><span class="pred">Someone lives in constant dread at their post yet cannot make themselves give notice.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s111"><td>111</td><td>The mistress grows weaker and more dependent on the maid; with the master away the servants joke about him.<br><span class="pred">Someone becomes the only support of a failing employer and feels bound to stay.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s112"><td>112</td><td>On a cheerful afternoon, for once at ease, the maid looks up and sees the dead maid standing in her doorway.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has just let their guard down is confronted with the thing they feared.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s113"><td>113</td><td>The apparition looks at her pleadingly and leads her out of the house into the snow.<br><span class="pred">Someone is silently begged for help by a figure who cannot say what it needs.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s114"><td>114</td><td>The figure, leaving no footprints, leads her to the neighbour's gate and waits for her to act.<br><span class="pred">Someone is led to a place where they must act, without knowing what they are meant to do.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s115"><td>115</td><td>The neighbour comes out cheerfully; the figure vanishes, and the maid faints, unable to guess the warning.<br><span class="pred">Someone given a warning they cannot interpret is left alone with a secret they cannot name.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s116"><td>116</td><td>She makes an excuse to the neighbour, returns home, is sent to bed, and at night hears a door open below.<br><span class="pred">Someone covering for what they saw goes to bed uneasy, sure something is about to happen.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s117"><td>117</td><td>Her bell rings; she sees the apparition at the stairhead and hears a key in the front door; the mistress, still dressed, denies ringing and sends her away.<br><span class="pred">Someone who comes to help is sent away by the person they came for, who is plainly hiding something.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s118"><td>118</td><td>The maid warns that the master has returned; the mistress collapses, and the master pushes past, heading for the dressing room to meet a friend.<br><span class="pred">Someone must try to stop a furious spouse bursting in on what he believes is a betrayal.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s119"><td>119</td><td>The apparition appears in the doorway; the master recoils; the mistress dies. At the funeral the master glares at the pale neighbour, then leaves.<br><span class="pred">Someone who tried to shield their employer's secret sees the confrontation end in death all the same.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>4. The Mission of Jane <small>6,645 words, 25 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s120"><td>120</td><td>A clever, condescending husband notices his simple wife glowing and teases her into admitting she has done something he will not like.<br><span class="pred">Someone senses their spouse is hiding something and teases it out of them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s121"><td>121</td><td>The wife, who holds only inherited opinions, says she expects his disapproval and has allowed for it, then announces 'a baby'.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has always given way to a spouse announces a wish they know will be opposed.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s122"><td>122</td><td>Baffled, the husband learns she wants the child to be theirs and has long grieved at being childless.<br><span class="pred">Someone discovers that their spouse has carried a deep disappointment they never noticed.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s123"><td>123</td><td>The wife confesses her loneliness and that she chose nursery wallpaper years ago; the husband feels he has failed her.<br><span class="pred">Someone realises their neglect has left a partner lonely for years.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s124"><td>124</td><td>She asks to adopt an orphan from a hospital, promising it will never bother him.<br><span class="pred">Someone asks a reluctant partner for the one thing they want, promising it will cost the partner nothing.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s125"><td>125</td><td>The husband agrees without resistance, accepting future ridicule as penance for having underestimated his wife.<br><span class="pred">Someone agrees to a partner's wish they would normally mock, as a way of making amends.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s126"><td>126</td><td>The husband reflects that he has been faithful but emotionally absent, keeping his wife out of his inner life.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has kept the letter of a commitment realises they have neglected its spirit.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s127"><td>127</td><td>At the hospital the wife is transfigured by the child; the husband feels invisible to her.<br><span class="pred">Someone watches their partner's devotion shift wholly to someone new and feels shut out.</span></td><td><a href="#g-unseen_at_home">unseen_at_home</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s128"><td>128</td><td>The husband allows a legal adoption but refuses to let the child be renamed, and begins to regret the whole business.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has given way on the big question digs in on a small one and starts to regret giving way.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s129"><td>129</td><td>The child is quiet and healthy; the wife's character is not changed but magnified by motherhood.<br><span class="pred">Someone finds a change they dreaded is milder than feared, but it makes a partner more of what they already were.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s130"><td>130</td><td>The wife grows assertive and treats the husband as the child's father; he accepts it because she is happy.<br><span class="pred">Someone is drawn into a role they never chose, and puts up with it because it makes a partner happy.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s131"><td>131</td><td>The child does not bring the couple together; the wife's personality expands until the husband is squeezed into a corner of his own home.<br><span class="pred">Someone gives ground at home again and again until they have almost no room left.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s132"><td>132</td><td>The girl grows healthy and good, and the wife, feeling unequal to her, asks the husband to take charge of her education.<br><span class="pred">Someone who feels out of their depth hands a responsibility to a partner they consider more capable.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s133"><td>133</td><td>The wife humbly admits she is too stupid to know what is best for the child and asks the husband to decide.<br><span class="pred">Someone admits they are not up to a task and asks another to take it on.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s134"><td>134</td><td>The girl hoards facts without understanding and grows proud and superior; the wife hopes she will be a companion for the husband.<br><span class="pred">Someone takes on a protégé who turns out to be clever but cold and conceited.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s135"><td>135</td><td>The girl sets about reforming the whole household, driving off cooks and lecturing the husband until he dines out.<br><span class="pred">Someone at home is bossed and corrected by a young person who has made themselves everyone's guardian.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s136"><td>136</td><td>The husband's attempts to check her only hurt his wife; the girl, pretty but charmless, fails in society despite great expense.<br><span class="pred">Someone cannot rein in a difficult young person without wounding the partner who adores them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s137"><td>137</td><td>The girl takes her failure out on her mother, then turns to charity and makes the husband her evening project.<br><span class="pred">Someone watches a young person take out their disappointment on a devoted parent, then turn it on them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s138"><td>138</td><td>The wife asks him to bear the girl's attentions; then a young man starts calling, and the parents hardly dare hope he comes for her.<br><span class="pred">Someone longing to be free of a burden sees a chance of it and dares not say so.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s139"><td>139</td><td>An effusively polite young man courts the girl; the parents pretend not to notice while she shows no emotion at all.<br><span class="pred">Someone hoping for a match that would relieve them must pretend indifference while it hangs in the balance.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s140"><td>140</td><td>He proposes, and the girl demands a month to think it over, to her parents' agony.<br><span class="pred">Someone longs for a decision that is entirely in another's hands, and that person insists on delaying it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s141"><td>141</td><td>The girl accepts and at once begins to dominate her fiancé; the parents, pitying him, wonder whether to warn him.<br><span class="pred">Someone must decide whether to warn an outsider about a relative's faults, at the risk of losing a longed-for outcome.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s142"><td>142</td><td>The wife tells the fiancé that the girl is always difficult; he says they never understood her and grows cold, which relieves the husband.<br><span class="pred">Someone who speaks an honest warning is rebuffed as disloyal, and finds the result a relief.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s143"><td>143</td><td>The girl turns hysterical before the wedding and threatens to break it off; the husband frets over every possible mishap until the groom arrives late.<br><span class="pred">Someone waits through a nerve-racking final stretch, fearing any accident could undo the outcome they need.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s144"><td>144</td><td>The couple leave; alone together at last, the husband and wife draw close and go out to dinner.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has endured a long strain alongside a partner finds it has finally brought them together.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>5. The Reckoning <small>7,841 words, 29 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s145"><td>145</td><td>A husband gives a fashionable talk arguing that faithfulness to oneself outranks marriage vows; his wife notes that he has recently begun preaching publicly what he used to keep private.<br><span class="pred">Someone watches their partner suddenly start proclaiming in public views they once kept carefully private.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s146"><td>146</td><td>The hosts are a couple who trade on an artistic reputation and recruit daring speakers to keep their gatherings fashionable.<br><span class="pred">Someone keeps up a social position by borrowing other people's boldness.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s147"><td>147</td><td>The wife, who once urged these views on him, now finds them vulgarised, and resents the hosts' young daughter hearing such talk.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once pushed a daring idea is uneasy now it is being preached, and looks for someone to blame.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s148"><td>148</td><td>The young woman asks the wife whether she believes it all; the wife blushes and says the girl doesn't understand.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked point-blank whether they still believe what they once championed, and cannot answer honestly.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s149"><td>149</td><td>The wife sees her husband absorbed in the young woman; walking home, he says he spoke publicly to please her, and she asks him to stop.<br><span class="pred">Someone asks their partner to stop something the partner says they began only to please them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s150"><td>150</td><td>He is solicitous, but that evening presses her to explain her objection, which she cannot.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked to justify a feeling they cannot put into words.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s151"><td>151</td><td>Looking round their home, she feels suddenly estranged; he asks whether she no longer believes the ideas their marriage was founded on.<br><span class="pred">Someone is challenged by their partner over whether they still hold to the terms of their bond.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s152"><td>152</td><td>She insists she still believes, but says public talk suits only certain audiences; he reminds her they met in just such a set, and she names the young woman.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has quietly changed their mind argues around it rather than admit it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s153"><td>153</td><td>He defends the young woman's independence of mind and admits she interests him.<br><span class="pred">Someone hears their partner openly confess an interest in someone else.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s154"><td>154</td><td>The wife's earlier divorce was accepted by everyone; her first husband was thought impossible, and remarrying a poorer man made her look disinterested.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once left a partner was praised for it, and never had to count the cost.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s155"><td>155</td><td>She recalls her first husband as a dull, self-absorbed man who shaped everything around his own needs.<br><span class="pred">Someone looks back on a partner who stifled them, and half wonders whether they judged fairly.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s156"><td>156</td><td>She remembers his mute bewilderment when she left, and her conviction that a marriage kept up out of duty is a crime.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once escaped a stifling bond is haunted by the hurt they left behind.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s157"><td>157</td><td>She met her second husband in the heat of her revolt; he shared her views, and they agreed either could leave when love ended.<br><span class="pred">Someone enters a new commitment on the promise that either may walk away freely.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s158"><td>158</td><td>Ten years of happiness have made her possessive; she now feels their compact could not apply to them, and takes a nerve tonic.<br><span class="pred">Someone finds that the freedom they insisted on would destroy them if used against them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s159"><td>159</td><td>Her husband is unusually gentle, which frightens her; when he plans to continue the talks she reminds him she objected.<br><span class="pred">Someone reads a partner's new kindness as a sign of bad news and presses for the truth.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s160"><td>160</td><td>She says she hates hearing him say spouses may leave when tired; he reminds her that was her own reason for leaving her first husband.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once used a principle for their own ends has it turned against them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s161"><td>161</td><td>He accuses her of dropping the doctrine once it had served her, then claims her promise to release him; she says she will not go back on it.<br><span class="pred">Someone is held to a promise they made when they never thought it would be used against them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s162"><td>162</td><td>She guesses he means to marry the young woman, wishes him luck, and is left alone, feeling her home is no longer hers.<br><span class="pred">Someone keeps their word with dignity and is left with nothing they thought was theirs.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s163"><td>163</td><td>Hours pass in stupor; every familiar object in the house mocks her.<br><span class="pred">Someone whose life has broken apart finds everything around them unchanged and unbearable.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s164"><td>164</td><td>She considers fighting through the law or begging, but sees she is trapped by the code she herself made.<br><span class="pred">Someone looks for a way to fight a loss and realises the rules trapping them are their own.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s165"><td>165</td><td>She goes to warn the young woman, finds her out, and wanders the streets.<br><span class="pred">Someone rushes to warn a rival and, finding them gone, is left with nowhere to go.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s166"><td>166</td><td>Faint, she takes bitter tea in a shabby eating-house and feels her mind clear.<br><span class="pred">Someone at the end of their strength stops in a strange place to steady themselves.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s167"><td>167</td><td>She sees that warning the girl would have been humiliating, and walks the darkening streets not knowing what to do.<br><span class="pred">Someone gives up a rash plan and is left with no idea what to do next.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s168"><td>168</td><td>She finds herself outside her first husband's house, watches him go in, and on impulse rings the bell.<br><span class="pred">Someone turns up, unannounced, at the door of a person they once wronged.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s169"><td>169</td><td>She talks her way past the footman; her first husband, shocked, receives her to avoid a scene.<br><span class="pred">Someone forces a meeting with a former partner who would rather not see them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s170"><td>170</td><td>In the unchanged room he coldly suggests she speak through lawyers; she says lawyers cannot help this time.<br><span class="pred">Someone asks a former partner for a hearing and is told to go through proper channels.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s171"><td>171</td><td>He braces as if for a request for money; she tells him her husband has left her because he tired of her.<br><span class="pred">Someone confesses their humiliation to the very person who once suffered the same thing at their hands.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s172"><td>172</td><td>He says she need not grant a divorce; she replies that he did not have to either, and asks whether he, too, never understood.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once inflicted a hurt now feels it themselves, and needs the person they hurt to know it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s173"><td>173</td><td>He admits he never understood; she asks his forgiveness, shakes his hand, and leaves before he can stop her.<br><span class="pred">Someone seeks forgiveness from a person they wronged, and leaves before anything more can be said.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>6. The Letter <small>6,383 words, 25 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s174"><td>174</td><td>A young assistant hired to catalogue an elderly former adventurer's papers is told to get him to talk about his past, which he never discusses.<br><span class="pred">Someone hired for one task is quietly asked to draw out secrets their employer keeps to himself.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s175"><td>175</td><td>Going blind, the old man begins to talk of the underground struggle for independence, where prisoners died rather than betray their friends.<br><span class="pred">Someone at the end of their working life looks back on a time when loyalty was tested under threat of death.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s176"><td>176</td><td>Asked for the bravest thing a woman ever did, he says it was provoked by an act of his own he is not proud of.<br><span class="pred">Someone finally admits a past act they are ashamed of, now that those it touched are dead.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s177"><td>177</td><td>As a young officer he was sent to an occupied city to help its secret resistance, which carried on its social life in defiance.<br><span class="pred">Someone sent to aid a secret cause enjoys the danger and the society it brings.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s178"><td>178</td><td>He fell in love with a widowed noblewoman prominent in the cause, whose family had been ruined by a ruler's betrayal of his own conspirators.<br><span class="pred">Someone falls for a person devoted to a cause, whose family history is steeped in betrayal.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s179"><td>179</td><td>Her teenage brother was hanged on flimsy evidence after the failed conspiracy, and her mother never recovered.<br><span class="pred">Someone's family is broken by an innocent relative's execution on the flimsiest pretext.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s180"><td>180</td><td>The daughter, rejecting her mother's brooding, threw herself into the cause after an unhappy marriage and worked for it with great discretion.<br><span class="pred">Someone channels grief and an unhappy marriage into secret work for a cause.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s181"><td>181</td><td>Mother and daughter both work for the cause, the mother for vengeance and the daughter for the country, and the daughter reveres her mother's suffering.<br><span class="pred">Someone supports a grieving parent whose motives for the shared cause are narrower than their own.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s182"><td>182</td><td>The daughter says her mother is tormented that her son alone left no farewell letter; all her bribes to find one failed.<br><span class="pred">Someone longs to bring a grieving parent the one comfort they cannot obtain.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s183"><td>183</td><td>The narrator understands that last letters from the executed were treasured and shared, and that the mother's lack of one isolates her.<br><span class="pred">Someone grieving is shut out of the comfort every other bereaved family shares.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s184"><td>184</td><td>She loved another, a leading patriot devoted only to the cause, whose father had been physician to the prisons where her brother died.<br><span class="pred">Someone loves a person who loves only their cause, and a rival stands between them and their own hopes.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s185"><td>185</td><td>The patriot conspired safely under cover of his loyal father's position; she shared his caution and hid fugitives for him.<br><span class="pred">Someone plays a double life for years, their loyalty hidden behind a respectable front.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s186"><td>186</td><td>The narrator, jealous, accused her of leading him on and sneered at her hero; they parted in anger.<br><span class="pred">Someone rejected for a rival lashes out at the person they want, and loses them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s187"><td>187</td><td>After the city rises and is freed, the wounded narrator, sulking, goes to help the new government sort the fallen ruler's archives.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has quarrelled with the person they love takes on a new task rather than make the first move.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s188"><td>188</td><td>In the archives he finds the hanged boy's farewell letter, marked as handed to the warder by his rival.<br><span class="pred">Someone stumbles on proof that could destroy a rival and feels the power it gives them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s189"><td>189</td><td>He reasons that the rival must have surrendered the letter to curry favour, and so must be a traitor.<br><span class="pred">Someone tempted by jealousy convinces themselves that a rival's old act proves him a traitor.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s190"><td>190</td><td>Ignoring the rival's long record of courage, the narrator rushes back in anger to the woman he loves.<br><span class="pred">Someone lets jealousy override their judgement and hurries to use damaging evidence.</span></td><td><a href="#g-the_rival">the_rival</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s191"><td>191</td><td>He calculates that the letter, bound to be published at a coming commemoration, would ruin the rival, and cannot honourably withhold it.<br><span class="pred">Someone holds evidence they cannot honourably keep back, and knows handing it over will destroy a rival.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s192"><td>192</td><td>He gives her the letter; overjoyed, she kisses his hands, thinking of the comfort it will bring her mother.<br><span class="pred">Someone delivers joyful news knowing that a bitter revelation comes attached to it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s193"><td>193</td><td>He tells her who gave up the letter; she coolly asks for proof and does not cry out against the man she loves.<br><span class="pred">Someone confronts another with damning evidence about the person they love, and meets calm disbelief.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s194"><td>194</td><td>She asks him on his honour whether the note could be a later forgery; he says no, and she accepts the evidence without condemning her hero.<br><span class="pred">Someone asks a rival for an honest answer that may condemn the person they trust, and gets it.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s195"><td>195</td><td>He presses the point that her hero betrayed a friend; she replies that she understands, and that he could not have done otherwise.<br><span class="pred">Someone pushes another to condemn a person they love, and is told the act was justified.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s196"><td>196</td><td>She argues that bringing the letter would have endangered the cause, so the boy's friend rightly put the country first.<br><span class="pred">Someone defends a painful betrayal as a necessary sacrifice for a greater cause.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s197"><td>197</td><td>Convinced despite himself, he asks why the hero never told her; she asks him to keep the letter secret from everyone, even her mother.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked to keep a secret that will deny a grieving person the comfort they long for.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_their_secret">keep_their_secret</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s198"><td>198</td><td>She burns the letter rather than risk her mother's anger ruining the hero, and says she can never tell him what she has done for him.<br><span class="pred">Someone gives up the thing their own family most needs to protect a person who will never know.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>7. The Dilettante <small>3,578 words, 13 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s199"><td>199</td><td>A newly engaged man drops in on the woman he has long kept as an intimate friend, meaning to talk over her meeting with his fiancée.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has moved on to a new commitment returns to an old intimate as if nothing had changed.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s200"><td>200</td><td>He prides himself on an art of evading declared feeling, having once been burdened by an avowed love.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once regretted committing themselves now takes pleasure in never committing to anyone.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s201"><td>201</td><td>He trained his friend over years to hide her feelings and follow his lead in every evasion.<br><span class="pred">Someone has shaped another person to fit their convenience and admires the result.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s202"><td>202</td><td>She received his fiancée perfectly; he regrets having announced the engagement by letter, as if he had doubted her.<br><span class="pred">Someone realises that a cautious move of theirs betrayed distrust of a person who deserved better.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s203"><td>203</td><td>Missing his candid fiancée, he calls to talk about her and delights in the fresh feelings she stirs in him.<br><span class="pred">Someone newly in love seeks out an old confidant to share it, without thinking what it costs them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s204"><td>204</td><td>His friend is startled to see him and speaks of this as a last visit; he insists nothing has changed.<br><span class="pred">Someone expects an old arrangement to continue and is told it is ending.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s205"><td>205</td><td>She reveals that his fiancée came to see her a second time that morning, which he did not know.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns that the person they are about to marry went behind their back to an old intimate.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s206"><td>206</td><td>She pities him and hints that a letter may await him; the fiancée came to find out whether anything had happened between them.<br><span class="pred">Someone discovers their fiancée has been asking about their past with another person.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s207"><td>207</td><td>He protests that a man's past is his own; she says the fiancée objects even to a mere friendship, and came to see whether he was really free.<br><span class="pred">Someone who thought their past was their own business finds it standing in the way of their future.</span></td><td><a href="#g-old_attachment">old_attachment</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s208"><td>208</td><td>Told there had never been an affair, the fiancée was more disturbed, not less: the offence was that nothing had happened.<br><span class="pred">Someone who thought themselves innocent learns the harm lay in what they withheld.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s209"><td>209</td><td>The friend confesses she loved him all along; the fiancée saw that he used her and cast her aside, and despised them both.<br><span class="pred">Someone is made to see, through an outsider's eyes, how they have used another person's devotion.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s210"><td>210</td><td>The fiancée wants a man capable of love, not reservations; the friend offers to say she lied, and let him claim a past with her.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has been used offers to sacrifice their own name to save the person who used them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s211"><td>211</td><td>Moved, he refuses her sacrifice, saying it would only harm his fiancée; she tells him the fiancée has surely recalled her letter.<br><span class="pred">Someone offered an easy escape at another's expense refuses it, and learns they may not need one.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>8. The Quicksand <small>6,406 words, 25 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s212"><td>212</td><td>A mother devoted to her perfect son senses from his walk that he is coming home to tell her something.<br><span class="pred">Someone whose whole life centres on one person senses that person is in trouble and waits to be told.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s213"><td>213</td><td>In her exquisite house the son slumps by the fire, defeated, and she feels suddenly a stranger to him.<br><span class="pred">Someone sees a person they know intimately in an unfamiliar state and feels shut out.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s214"><td>214</td><td>The son says the girl he loves has refused him on principle, because he owns a scandalous newspaper.<br><span class="pred">Someone is turned down by the person they love because of the source of their income.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s215"><td>215</td><td>The girl wants him to give up the paper or run it honestly at a loss; he mocks her fashionable ethics.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked to give up their livelihood as the price of being loved.</span></td><td><a href="#g-strings_attached">strings_attached</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s216"><td>216</td><td>Mother and son agree one cannot change oneself; the girl cites the mother's own example, and the mother notes the girl's family has never called on her.<br><span class="pred">Someone is held up as an example in an argument they would rather not be drawn into.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s217"><td>217</td><td>The girl admires the mother's goodness; the mother, angry, is told her son is not asking her to make the girl love him.<br><span class="pred">Someone resents a person who has hurt their child, and is asked not to show it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-civil_to_them">civil_to_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s218"><td>218</td><td>The son asks his mother to visit the girl and show her that the paper has never touched her life.<br><span class="pred">Someone is asked by the person they love most to plead a case they privately doubt.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s219"><td>219</td><td>The mother calls at the girl's plain, comfortless home and reads failure in the furniture.<br><span class="pred">Someone goes to plead on another's behalf in a place where they feel they have no footing.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s220"><td>220</td><td>The girl is immovable; she says it is the mother's own beautiful example that confirms her refusal.<br><span class="pred">Someone tries to persuade a person of firm principle, and their own example is used against them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-plead_their_case">plead_their_case</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s221"><td>221</td><td>The mother argues that the girl is sacrificing her son to an idea; the girl says she is sacrificing herself.<br><span class="pred">Someone argues with a young person who insists on giving up happiness for a principle.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s222"><td>222</td><td>The mother pleads that life is made of compromises and love outweighs theories; the girl says that is exactly why she cannot.<br><span class="pred">Someone urges a younger person to compromise, and is told their plea proves the danger.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s223"><td>223</td><td>Six months later the son has buried his grief in the paper, and the mother seeks refuge in a gallery of paintings.<br><span class="pred">Someone who cannot help a suffering child looks for solace of their own.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s224"><td>224</td><td>The unspoken subject has driven mother and son apart; in the gallery she meets the girl.<br><span class="pred">Someone cut off from a loved one by an unspoken hurt comes face to face with its cause.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s225"><td>225</td><td>The girl looks worn and unhappy; the mother offers her a lift, is refused, and turns away.<br><span class="pred">Someone reaches out to a former adversary and is coldly rebuffed.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s226"><td>226</td><td>The girl confesses she followed the mother there, has been unhappy, and now believes the mother was right; she asks whether the son still cares.<br><span class="pred">Someone who once refused an offer comes back to say they have changed their mind, and asks if it still stands.</span></td><td><a href="#g-waiting_on_them">waiting_on_them</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s227"><td>227</td><td>The mother says she too has suffered, and now admits the girl was right and she was wrong.<br><span class="pred">Someone who argued for a compromise now confesses they knew all along it was wrong.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s228"><td>228</td><td>The girl believes love alone could change the son; the mother says she once said the same, before marrying his father.<br><span class="pred">Someone about to make a hopeful sacrifice is told by an older person that they made the same one and regret it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-owning_up">owning_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s229"><td>229</td><td>The mother says she speaks because the girl is as alive as she once was, and she cannot watch her be walled up.<br><span class="pred">Someone breaks a lifetime's silence to save a younger person from their own fate.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s230"><td>230</td><td>She married without knowing what the paper was, enjoyed its money, then learned it traded in exposing private scandal.<br><span class="pred">Someone discovers that the comfort they have enjoyed is paid for by something shameful.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s231"><td>231</td><td>The girl tries to stop her from going on.<br><span class="pred">Someone watching another confess something painful wants to spare them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s232"><td>232</td><td>Her husband promised to sell the paper in time, but her delicate son's life depended on the money, and she sank deeper with each compromise.<br><span class="pred">Someone who meant to refuse tainted money comes to depend on it to save a person they love.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s233"><td>233</td><td>She tried to purify the money through charity and to hide the paper from her son behind beauty; on her husband's death she hoped the son would sell it.<br><span class="pred">Someone who compromised long ago pins their hope of release on the next generation.</span></td><td><a href="#g-tainted_money">tainted_money</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s234"><td>234</td><td>At twenty-one the son refused to sell, loving the power the paper gave; she saw he was what her concessions had made him.<br><span class="pred">Someone finds that the person they raised has embraced the very thing they wanted to escape.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s235"><td>235</td><td>She gave up the struggle and learned to look only at the side of her son that was hers.<br><span class="pred">Someone makes peace with a loved one's flaw by refusing to look at it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_the_peace">keep_the_peace</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s236"><td>236</td><td>She warns that the son's love would never change him and that the girl would slowly die as she did; she asks what to tell him, and leaves.<br><span class="pred">Someone lays bare their own ruin to warn another, then leaves them to make the choice alone.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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<h3>9. A Venetian Night's Entertainment <small>6,831 words, 25 scenes</small></h3><div class="wrap"><table>
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<tr class="row" id="s237"><td>237</td><td>An old man's tale begins with his younger self, just of age, sighting a fabled foreign city from his father's merchant ship.<br><span class="pred">Someone young and newly free arrives in a place they have dreamed of all their life.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s238"><td>238</td><td>The youth recalls a childhood print of the city's crowded square, full of foreigners, performers and pickpockets.<br><span class="pred">Someone brings a child's romantic picture of a place to the real thing.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s239"><td>239</td><td>The city has always stood in his mind for a place of magic where the rules of his strict upbringing do not hold.<br><span class="pred">Someone raised under strict rules longs for a place where the rules do not apply.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s240"><td>240</td><td>His tutor insists on finishing a sermon before going ashore; the youth slips away alone.<br><span class="pred">Someone under a guardian's supervision slips away to do what they want.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s241"><td>241</td><td>In the crowded square he overpays a pedlar through ignorance of the coinage, and a pleasant English-speaking stranger offers help.<br><span class="pred">Someone who shows they are a naive newcomer with money is approached by a helpful stranger.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s242"><td>242</td><td>The friendly stranger, calling himself a count, shows him the town and points out its great personages in their odd costumes.<br><span class="pred">Someone new in a strange place gratefully accepts a guide whose credentials they cannot check.</span></td><td><a href="#g-new_and_warned">new_and_warned</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s243"><td>243</td><td>Bound to return by sunset, he gives the count a costly gift, is led into the cathedral, and meets a pretty girl whose dress catches on his sword.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has promised to be back on time lets a new acquaintance talk them into one more detour.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s244"><td>244</td><td>The count names her as a senator's daughter; a page slips the youth a note begging his help, and an officer seizes him.<br><span class="pred">Someone receives a secret appeal for help and is immediately caught holding it.</span></td><td><a href="#g-exposed">exposed</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s245"><td>245</td><td>The count warns him the officer serves the dreaded council and that the letter compromises a great family, and arranges for him to be taken privately to the father.<br><span class="pred">Someone accused of an offence they do not understand is steered by a friend towards a private settlement.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s246"><td>246</td><td>He asks to send word to his ship and is refused; the count urges him not to resist.<br><span class="pred">Someone being led away is denied the chance to tell anyone where they are.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s247"><td>247</td><td>He breaks free and runs, is cornered in an alley, and is pulled through a gate by a servant girl.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has escaped their captors is cornered, and must trust an unknown rescuer.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s248"><td>248</td><td>He is led to the girl from the cathedral, who seems dismayed to see him; the page was her maid in disguise.<br><span class="pred">Someone who answered a call for help is told they were not the one it was meant for.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s249"><td>249</td><td>She says the letter was meant for an ambassador to save her from a forced marriage; her father is heard coming.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns they have been caught up in another person's desperate plan by mistake.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s250"><td>250</td><td>The father and his noble friends burst in with drawn swords; the count arrives and mediates, and says the youth is in great trouble.<br><span class="pred">Someone is confronted by an angry family and depends on a go-between who speaks for them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s251"><td>251</td><td>He is accused of secret correspondence with the girl, now repudiated by her betrothed; he refuses to hide behind her word.<br><span class="pred">Someone accused of compromising another must defend themselves without exposing them.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_their_secret">keep_their_secret</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s252"><td>252</td><td>Asked to clear her by showing the letter, he sees her silently beg him not to.<br><span class="pred">Someone could clear themselves by producing evidence, but the person it would expose begs them not to.</span></td><td><a href="#g-keep_their_secret">keep_their_secret</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s253"><td>253</td><td>He refuses to show his private letters; the count says honour now demands he marry the girl.<br><span class="pred">Someone who keeps another's secret is told the price is a lifelong obligation.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s254"><td>254</td><td>He is told he must marry her within the hour, and is locked in with her while the chaplain is fetched.<br><span class="pred">Someone is trapped and given an hour before a forced commitment they never sought.</span></td><td><a href="#g-own_words_back">own_words_back</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s255"><td>255</td><td>She weeps with shame, thanks him for keeping her secret, and says her father is forcing her to marry a brute.<br><span class="pred">Someone trapped alongside another hears their tale of being forced into a match and wants to save them.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s256"><td>256</td><td>She says she cannot be saved but he can, if he will do as she says without looking at her.<br><span class="pred">Someone is offered a way out, provided they accept terms they will not like.</span></td><td><a href="#g-strings_attached">strings_attached</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s257"><td>257</td><td>She explains that everyone involved can be bought, and begs him to offer a ransom to go free.<br><span class="pred">Someone learns they can buy their way out of a trap, and that is exactly what the trap was for.</span></td><td><a href="#g-strings_attached">strings_attached</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s258"><td>258</td><td>He offers to marry her himself instead; she refuses and insists she must marry the other man.<br><span class="pred">Someone offers themselves to rescue another and is refused.</span></td><td><a href="#g-give_it_up">give_it_up</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s259"><td>259</td><td>He declares his love; she kisses him, takes a trinket from his watch-chain, and laughs strangely that she will get none of the money.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has fallen for another begins to sense they are being played.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s260"><td>260</td><td>He realises the whole thing was a swindle; she admits it but says her love was real, just as his ship's captain and tutor arrive with the police.<br><span class="pred">Someone discovers they were the mark in a confidence trick just as rescue arrives.</span></td><td><a href="#g-what_they_hid">what_they_hid</a></td></tr>
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<tr class="row" id="s261"><td>261</td><td>The captain exposes the tricksters as known confidence men, softens towards the girl, and takes the youth back to his ship.<br><span class="pred">Someone who has been swindled is rescued by their elders and must walk away from a person they had fallen for.</span></td><td><small>-</small></td></tr>
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</table></div>
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