Exploring the Aesthetic of Harry Davenport: Decoding The Supreme Temptation

Herbert DuBois, a young medical student in Paris, falls in love with and marries Annette, a grisette. They do not get along well, however, and he later secures a separation from her. He returns to America to find his father greatly worried over impending financial ruin. The blow falls and DuBois Senior kills himself, leaving Herbert to care for his mother and sister Lydia. Some time later he falls in love with Florence, the daughter of the family lawyer, and his friend Milton is fascinated by Lydia. M. Picard, a French milliner, pays Herbert a visit and informs him of Annette's death; he and Florence are then married. A year later, Herbert has been promoted to the head of the medical college and he learns that he is soon to become a father. Annette has moved to America. While DuBois is preparing to perform an autopsy on a young woman who died suddenly, he discovers, to his horror, that it is Annette and she is not dead, but in a cataleptic trance, a disease to which her family was subject. Then the supreme temptation comes to him to kill her with a slight movement of his scalpel and thus remove forever the dark past, but his better nature conquers, and after calling the others' attention to the body, he goes out. Restoratives are quickly applied and Annette comes back to life. Then follows an agony of suspense for Herbert. Will she live and spoil his present happiness, or will she die? After what seems eternity, one of the doctors informs him that Annette has died, and rushing up to his wife's room, he is stopped by the nurse who tells him that a son has been born to them.