Brainard was not to be moved, although the theater would have to remain closed for a week until the company could prepare another play. He was deeply disgusted with the whole affair, with the notoriety as well as the cheap pretense of morality by the police commissioner. For the first time in four years his faith in the great Idea began to waver, and he longed to escape from New York to the more vital air of Arizona. There had been some difficulty recently with the pumps at the Melody mine, and he might well take this opportunity of running down to Monument. Once there it would be a temptation to abandon the great Idea altogether and to remain in the mountains developing the copper mine. Or he could buy a coffee plantation in Jalapa, as he had once fleetingly thought of doing, and settle himself in Mexico like a medieval prince. Possibly the little señorita Marie had not yet found another Prince and had waited all these years for his expected return. The vision of that beautiful semitropical valley dominated by the snowy crown of the old volcano returned to his memory with alluring colors. Life in such a far-off Eden with a gentle creature as mistress of a rose-covered haçienda was an inviting contrast to the glare and vulgarity of New York. . . . Brainard and the secretary left the theater in glum silence, each possessed by an unhappy train of thought. On their way uptown they passed a billboard on which some flaming posters displayed certain tempting scenes from a soul-and-body-stirring play called _The Stolen Bonds_, now being given for the first time in New York. Brainard paused before the gaudy billboard. “What the public really likes!” Farson commented with a grin. Brainard remembered Louisiana’s angry taunt,—“Go and see a good melodrama—see what folks are willing to pay real money for!” “Let’s take it in!” he exclaimed, seizing his companion’s arm. “We haven’t anything else to do this evening.” “We’ll get all the goods before we reach the show,” the secretary observed, pointing to another series of immense posters that represented a gloomy bank vault in which a masked gentleman was holding a lantern above the prostrate form of a woman. “They’re not afraid of giving away their story!” “Perhaps we shall find the great American play we have been hunting for all this year,” Brainard replied, as they came into the garish foyer of the theater. At one side was the entrance to a brilliant saloon, which seemed part of the establishment. “Democratic and convivial this,” he joked, thinking of the dainty “tea room” at the People’s. There were only box seats left. When the two pushed aside the plush curtains that concealed these luxurious retreats, the curtain was up and the first act had started before a house packed with prosperous-looking citizens and their women. “Not a dead seat in the house, I’ll bet!” whispered the secretary.