musty
house on one of the old side streets he set to work on his new plan. He
wrote now without fervor, without elation, plodding along hour after
hour, erasing, interlining, destroying, rewriting. He toiled terribly.
He permitted himself no fancy flights. He calculated now. "I must have a
young and beautiful duchess or countess," he mused, bitterly. "Our
democratic public loves to see nobility. She must peril her honor for a
lover--a wonderful fellow of the middle-class, not royal, but near it.
The princess must masquerade in a man's clothing for some high purpose.
There must be a lord high chamberlain or the like who discovers her on
this mission to save her lover, and who uses his discovery to demand her
hand in marriage for his son--"

In this cynical mood he worked, sustained only by the memory of "The
Glittering Woman" whose power and beauty had once dazzled him. Slowly
the new play took shape, and, try as he might, he could not keep out of
it a line now and then of real drama--of literature. Each act was
designed to end with a clarion call to the passions, and he was
perfectly certain that the curtain would rise again and again at the
close. At every point was glitter and the rush of heroics.

He lived sparely, seeing no one, going out only at night for a walk in
the square. To send to his brother or his father for money he would
not, not even to write his wonder-working drama. His letters home, while
brief, were studiedly confident of tone. The play-acting business and
all those connected with it stood very remote from the farming village
in which Dr. Donald Douglass lived, and when he read from his son's
letters references to his dramas his mind took but slight hold upon the
words. His replies were brief and to the point. "Go back to your
building and leave the play-actors to themselves. They're a poor, uneasy
lot at the best." To him an architect was a man who built houses and
barns, with a personal share in the physical labor, a wholesome, manly
business. The son understood his father's prejudices, and they formed a
barrier to his approach when in need.

On the morning of the fifteenth day _Alessandra_ went to the
type-writer, and the weary playwright lifted his head and took a full,
free breath. He was convinced beyond any question that this melodrama
would please. It had all the elements which he despised, therefore it
must succeed. His desire to see Helen now overpowered him. Worn with his
toil and exu