theatre, away from office drudgery and the slavery of business, above all the deceits and conventions and sufferings and vices of real life, looking down on the work-a-day world—as he had looked down from the top of the Fifth Avenue stage—with Margaret beside him, in an endless happiness. He felt that a door which he had been groping for in darkness had suddenly been opened to him. It was work—a future—everything!
"It—it would be great!" he said. "Wouldn't it?"
"It would be the very thing for you. I wonder you didn't think of it yourself."
He smiled up at the calcium light, as if it were the wholesome sunshine on his face. "I couldn't see any future for me here—and still I liked it so much. I hated to leave it. I didn't know what to do."
The cry from the jeweller's counter broke in on them. They exchanged parting smiles as they were separated by the crowd—the smile of congratulation and the smile of ambition; for Don, at last, had found an object and a task in life.
He walked to her door, that night, to borrow her few books; and he went to the Astor Library, next morning, to look over the list of volumes on the "Drama." He was not discouraged when he found hundreds of titles under that head; the more guides, he thought, the surer travelling. He confided to Walter Pittsey that he had serious thoughts of trying to write a play, and Pittsey nodded: "Why not?" He had been through the playwriting period himself, and was tolerant.
"There's a pile of money in it," Bert Pittsey said, "and you're nearer it in the theatre than the rest of us outside."
