The discussion took the turn of book- and play-writing. He had written a book in connection with Young, I think his name was. He had lately been thinking of writing a play. He expatiated on the money there was to be made out of this, the great name some playwrights achieved. Look at Augustus Thomas now, who had once worked on the _Star_ here. One of his pieces was then running in St. Louis. Look at Henry Blossom, once a St. Louis society boy, one of whose books was now in the local bookstore windows, a hit. To my excited mind the city was teeming with brilliant examples. Eugene Field had once worked here, on this very paper; Mark Twain had idled about here for a time, drunk and hopeless; W. C. Brann had worked on and gone from this paper; William Marion Reedy the same. I returned to my desk after a time, greatly stirred by this conversation. My gloom was dissipated. Hazard had promised to let me read this book. This world was a splendid place for talent, I thought. It bestowed success and honor upon those who could succeed. Plays or books, or both, were the direct entrance to every joy which the heart could desire. Something of the rumored wonder and charm of the lives of successful playwrights came to me, their studios, their summer homes and the like. Here at last, then, was the equivalent of Dick’s wealthy girl! I sat thinking about plays somewhat modified in my grief over Alice for the nonce, but none the less aware of its tremendous sadness. I read over my poem and thought it good, even beautiful. I must be a poet! I copied it and put a duplicate in Alice’s letter, and folded my own copy and put it in my pocket, close to my heart. It seemed as though I had just forged a golden key to a world of beauty and light where sorrow and want could never be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXIII THE central character of Hazard’s book was an actress, young and very beautiful. Her lover was a newspaper man, deeply in love with her and yet not faithful, in one instance anyhow. This brought about a Zolaesque scene in which she spanked another actress with a hairbrush. There was treacherous plotting on the part of somebody in regard to a local murder, which brought about the arrest and conviction of the newspaper man for something he knew nothing about. This entailed a great struggle on the part of Theo to save him, which resulted in her failure and his death on the guillotine. A priest figured in it in some way, grim, jesuitical.