This important question being settled, there remained merely the plan of work and travel, which Brainard undertook to prepare and to which he gave much careful consideration. Then the passage was engaged, and the morning of the sailing the three had a pleasant breakfast together at a little down-town restaurant. Louisiana appeared in what she called “the proper make-up for her new part,”—a smart traveling costume, with fresh hat, gloves, boots, and parasol. Brainard was glad to see that she had made such an immediate and natural use of the liberal means he had placed at her disposal through his secretary, although the transformation worked by her new costume took away a certain quality of primitive girlishness that was pleasant to him. Louisiana was emerging rapidly from her chrysalis under the stimulus of the opportunity he had provided for her. As he sat back and watched her spar with Farson, he wondered whether the old Louisiana would ever return from Europe. What sort of woman would take the place of the girl who had made her début in the most unconventional Cordelia the English stage had ever seen? At any rate everything was spontaneous in her now,—not a trace of self-consciousness in her attitude to him as her benefactor, and all the simplicity and directness of the child which had first touched him. “He says he’s going to write a piece for the theater and put _me_ in,” Louisiana remarked turning to Brainard. “He’d better let me see it first—I’ll give him a few points most men writers overlook. . . . You’ll keep the theater open until I get back?” “Longer than that, we hope!” Brainard laughed. “I want to make my début there—my real début,” she said importantly. “I promise you we’ll keep it open for that!” “You’d better fire the whole bunch and start over,” she observed thoughtfully. . . . At the last moment, when Farson had already gone down the gangway, the girl drew Brainard to one side and uttered the first serious words they had had since their talk in her dressing room the night of _Lear_. “It’s no use saying thanks, you know!” “I don’t want you to thank me.” “I know you don’t and I’m not—but I want you to know I understand.” “What?” “What you’re doing for me. . . . I’ll make good.” “I believe you will!” “Good-by!” She gave him a lean little hand that gripped his nervously. The last he saw of Louisiana Delacourt as he went over the ship’s side, she was chasing her dog into some stranger’s deck cabin. As he made his way from the dock towards the People’s Theater that morning, his world seemed less gay and amusing with Louisiana out of it. IX