renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back
to the twilight of the past, to the costume play. Get out of the garish
light of to-day. The present is suited only for a kind of crass comedy
or Bowery melodrama. Only the past, the foreign, affords setting for the
large play of human passion which Helen Merival's great art demands."

"You are cheating us," wrote another. "There are a thousand little
_ingenues_ who can play acceptably this goody-goody _Enid_, but the best
of them would be lost in the large folds of your cloak in _The Baroness
Telka_."

Only one wrote in almost unmeasured praise, and his words, so well
chosen, salved the smarting wounds of the dramatist. "Those who have
seen Miss Merival only as the melodrama queen or the adventuress in
jet-black evening dress have a surprise in store for them. Her _Enid_
is a dream of cold, chaste girlhood--a lily with heart of fire--in whose
tender, virginal eyes the lust and cruelty of the world arouse only pity
and wonder. So complete was Miss Merival's investiture of herself in
this part that no one recognized her as she stepped on the stage. For a
moment even her best friends sat silent." And yet this friend ended like
the rest in predicting defeat. "The play is away over the heads of any
audience likely to come to see it. The beringed and complacent wives of
New York and their wine-befuddled husbands will find little to entertain
them in this idyl of modern life. As for the author, George Douglass, we
have only this to say: He is twenty years ahead of his time. Let him go
on writing his best and be patient. By-and-by, when we have time to
think of other things than money, when our wives have ceased to struggle
for social success, when the reaction to a simpler and truer life
comes--and it is coming--then the quality of such a play as _Enid's
Choice_ will give its author the fame and the living he deserves."

The tears came to Douglass's eyes. "Good old Jim! He knows I need
comfort this morning. He's prejudiced in my favor--everybody will see
that; and yet there is truth in what he says. I will go to him and ask
for work, for I must get back to earning a weekly wage."

He went down and out into the street. The city seemed unusually
brilliant and uncaring. From every quarter of the suburbs floods of
people were streaming in to work or to shop, quite unknowing of any
one's misfortunes but their own, each intent on earning a living or
securin