g of poetry and
beauty when he played. I heard them in Carnegie Hall, and then they went
off on a tour that took them as far as Chicago and St. Louis, and my
agency for newspaper cuttings kept on sending me articles by real or
alleged critics. Eulalie traveled with her, and the baby also went from
town to town. Frances sent me many postals and, often, letters. The
latter always began with "Dearest Dave."

Then came the spring again and a meeting that was positively dreadful,
during which Frances pulled out little rags of paper full of her
scribbling and covered over with numbers which represented her
indebtedness to me. We fought like cats and dogs over the items, till,
finally, she proudly pulled out a checkbook from a little desk and wrote
out the amount, signing the thing boldly and declaring that she would
never speak to me again unless I took it.

"You see, David dear," she explained, "everything is all right now and I
am making lots of money, and you can't refuse, because you know I only
accepted in the hope that I would be able to pay it all back some day,
and it will leave me a debtor to you for a million things, and Baby Paul
too!"

During the summer she went to Newport, where Richetti gave another
concert and where he made her a flattering offer to help in his teaching
of the infinitely rich and sometimes voiceless. Thank goodness that a
press of work came to me, for Ceballo, the great manager, actually
sought me out and insisted on collaborating with me in a dramatization
of "Land o' Love," which had passed its second hundred thousand. He
nearly drove me to insanity, while we toiled at it, and I would have
cried mercy before the end, but for the furious energy with which he
kept me a prisoner of his wiles.

Then I spent a few weeks in the Adirondacks, having found a small hotel
where people never put on war-paint for dinner and no one was ashamed to
wear flannel shirts, and I rowed and pretended to fish and lost myself
in the woods to my heart's content, finally returning to my old
typewriter with a mass of notes for a further novel. I took up once more
my lonely vigils, when I could, because I began to feel the grasp of
many cogwheels that were the penalty of success. Some magazines actually
requested stories of me.

About the first of October I received a cablegram from Gordon, which
appalled me with its suddenness.

"Home by _Rochambeau_. Get old girl to clean up. Can't drive
ambulance an