erienced. She found herself
handled with decision. She almost liked it--at least it simplified some
teasing problems. He employed a direct, bluff, hearty kindness; but
strength underlay the kindness, and came first--came uppermost--if
occasion seriously required. Life with Raymond had been a laxative, when
not an irritant; life with Johnny McComas became a tonic. She had felt
somewhat loose and demoralized; now she felt braced.

Johnny was rich, and was getting richer yet. He was richer, much, than
he had been but a few years before; richer than Raymond Prince, whose
worldly fortunes seemed rather to dip. Johnny could give his wife
whatever she fancied; when she hesitated, things were urged upon her,
forced upon her. She, in her turn, was now a delegate of luxury. He
approved--and insisted upon--a showy, emphatic way of life, and a more
than liberal scale of expenditure. He wanted to show the world what he
could do for a fine woman; and I believe he wanted to show Raymond
Prince.

Gossip had long since faded away to nothingness. If anybody had wondered
at Johnny's course--a course that had run through possible dubiousness
to hard-and-fast finality--the wonder was now inaudible. If anybody felt
in him a lack of fastidiousness, the point was not pressed. The marriage
seemed a happy solution, on the whole; and the people most
concerned--those who met the new pair--appeared to feel that a problem
was off the board and glad to have it so.

Raymond, on the eve of the marriage, had softened things for himself by
leaving for a few months in Rome. Back, he began to cast about for some
means of occupation and some way of making a careful assertion of his
dignity. At this time "society" was beginning to sail more noticeably
about the edge of the arts, and an important coterie was feeling that
something might well be done to lift the drama from its state of
degradation. Why not build--or remodel--a theatre, they asked, form a
stock company, compose a repertory, and see together a series of such
performances as might be viewed without a total departure from taste and
intelligence?

The experiment ran its own quaint course. The remodeling of the hall
chosen introduced the sponsors of the movement to the fire-laws and
resulted in a vast, unlooked-for expense. A good company--though less
stress was laid on its roster than on the list of guarantors--went
astray in the hands of a succession of directors, not always competent.
The su