On the eve of failure, a new light had dawned in the enthusiastic mind of the founder. He realized that whatever one man tries to carry through alone, by brute force of will, without regard for the sympathy and the help of others, is destined to fail, especially where it is a matter of art that should appeal to the many. Not Mrs. Donnie Pearmain and her “upper classes” were needed, to be sure, but the People; and the People’s Theater had failed to touch the People. Very likely, Brainard mused, Lorilla was the hand of fate needed to prove this deeper truth to him. He had failed to find his vanished mistress, Melody, and with her inheritance he had tried to achieve the impossible. Now that inheritance might be taken altogether out of his control, and the great Idea vanish into the air from which his will had conjured it. . . . A page brought Brainard a letter with a foreign postmark just as he was leaving the library for the theater. It was a hasty little scribble from Miss Delacourt—one of the few with which the young lady had favored him. In a hand that galloped unevenly over the paper, she informed him: “I’m coming home—sail Saturday, on the _Amerika_, with Cissie Pyce. Best wishes! “L. D.” Brainard wondered what freak had possessed the youngster thus to cut short her lark, as he went to the telephone to inquire when the _Amerika_ was due in New York. He determined to say nothing to Farson of the girl’s homecoming and to meet the young woman at the dock himself. There might, after all, be some method in her insanity—and there might be some good fortune in it for Farson and his play. For the little neurasthenic Miss Dudley, who, to the most casual eye, had evidently never been farther West than Hoboken, was hardly the ideal of adventurous American womanhood that the dramatist had drawn in his Gertrude. He would see Louisiana first, and make up his mind whether she was safe to try before speaking to Farson, whom he suspected of a more than friendly liking for the young woman. When Brainard returned to the auditorium he found a stranger leaning over a rear seat, an unlighted cigar between his teeth, apparently interested in the lines of the new play that Leaventritt was going over with the company. As Brainard approached, the man turned his head; it was Hollinger. “Hello!” he said, and nodding his head toward the stage asked, “New piece?” For a few moments the two men listened to the halting lines from the stage, then Brainard asked coldly: “Did you want to see me?” Hollinger looked at him coolly, the merest smile on his curving lips. “Yes,” he replied, “that is if you aren’t busy? I was in New York and thought I’d look you up.” Brainard led the way to his private office, which was in the front of the theater behind the library.