drawer. Whenever his eye fell on
that letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it.

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of "The
Diversity Theatre."

"MY DEAR MR. GRANICE:

"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month,
and it's no use--the play won't do. I have talked it over with Miss
Melrose--and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our stage--and I
regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn't the poetry
that scares her--or me either. We both want to do all we can to help
along the poetic drama--we believe the public's ready for it, and we're
willing to take a big financial risk in order to be the first to give
them what they want. BUT WE DON'T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE MADE TO
WANT THIS. The fact is, there isn't enough drama in your play to the
allowance of poetry--the thing drags all through. You've got a big idea,
but it's not out of swaddling clothes.

"If this was your first play I'd say: TRY AGAIN. But it has been just
the same with all the others you've shown me. And you remember the
result of 'The Lee Shore,' where you carried all the expenses of
production yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre for a week. Yet
'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play--much easier to swing than
blank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't tried all kinds--"

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the envelope.
Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every phrase in it by
heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night, stand
out in letters of flame against the darkness of his sleepless lids?

"IT HAS BEEN JUST THE SAME WITH ALL THE OTHERS YOU'VE SHOWN ME."

That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate unremitting
work!

"YOU REMEMBER THE RESULT OF 'THE LEE SHORE.'"

Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all now in a
drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play, his sudden resolve
to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand dollars of his
inheritance on testing his chance of success--the fever of preparation,
the dry-mouthed agony of the "first night," the flat fall, the stupid
press, his secret rush to Europe to escape the condolence of his
friends!

"IT ISN'T AS IF YOU HADN'T TRIED ALL KINDS."

No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the light
curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-realistic and the
lyrical-romantic--fi