e, when it was full, held three hundred and forty pounds'
worth of solid interest in the British drama. Of _The Plague-Spot_ six
evening and two morning performances were given every week for nearly a
year, and Henry's tenth averaged more than two hundred pounds a week.
His receipts from Lionel Belmont's various theatres averaged rather
more. The book had a circulation of a hundred and twenty thousand in
England, and two hundred thousand in America, and on every copy Henry
got one shilling and sixpence. The magnificent and disconcerting total
of his income from _The Plague-Spot_ within the first year, excluding
the eight thousand pounds which he had received in advance from
Macalistairs, was thirty-eight thousand pounds. I say disconcerting
because it emphatically did disconcert Henry. He could not cope with
it. He was like a child who has turned on a tap and can't turn it off
again, and finds the water covering the floor and rising, rising, over
its little shoe-tops. Not even with the help of Sir George could he
quite successfully cope with this deluge of money which threatened to
drown him each week. Sir George, accustomed to keep his nerve in such
crises, bored one hole in the floor and called it India Three per
Cents., bored a second and called it Freehold Mortgages, bored a third
and called it Great Northern Preference, and so on; but, still, Henry
was never free from danger. And the worst of it was that, long before
_The Plague-Spot_ had exhausted its geyser-like activity of throwing up
money, Henry had finished another book and another play. Fortunately,
Geraldine was ever by his side to play the wife's part.

From this point his artistic history becomes monotonous. It is the
history of his investments alone which might perchance interest the
public.

Of course, it was absolutely necessary to abandon the flat in Ashley
Gardens. A man burdened with an income of forty thousand a year, and
never secure against a sudden rise of it to fifty, sixty, or even
seventy thousand, cannot possibly live in a flat in Ashley Gardens.
Henry exists in a superb mansion in Cumberland Place. He also possesses
a vast country-house at Hindhead, Surrey. He employs a secretary, though
he prefers to dictate his work into a phonograph. His wife employs a
secretary, whose chief duty is, apparently, to see to the flowers. The
twins have each a nurse, and each a perambulator; but when they are good
they are permitted to crowd themselves into