Life, always a serious matter to Lillian, became more so. Mrs. Gish underwent a major operation—was in grave danger. Lillian, at work on the set in Mamaroneck, was likely at any moment to be summoned to the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. When the patient was able to be moved, they brought her by ambulance to a house they had taken in New Rochelle. Later to an apartment on Park Avenue—three moves within a year, seeking comfort for the sufferer. Spring was saddened by the death of Victor Maurel, who had done so much for her voice. His funeral services were held in New York. Lillian attended with his widow, Madame de Grésac, and there met Madame Calvé, who had been his pupil. In the carriage on the way to the grave, Madame Calvé told the others how she had been in Boston, knowing nothing of his danger. Suddenly she had felt that something was wrong with him. The feeling was so strong that she had taken the train for New York. He was dead when she arrived. A few weeks after the funeral, Calvé asked Madame de Grésac and Lillian to come to her apartment, a beautiful place in the Hôtel des Artistes, on Central Park. She sang for them. Her voice was so enormous that it seemed as if it might burst the walls. She said that Victor Maurel’s training had made it what it was. She danced for them—the peasant dances—until the people downstairs sent up word that their chandeliers were about to come down. She was so eager to divert the little widow. Too eager for her own good: she danced so hard, that night, and so long, that next day she could not start on her tour. Lillian was unsettled as to what she should do. Again, Griffith agreed with her that she should be making more money, and perhaps it did not seem to either of them that any picture they could do together would make enough for both. He was an extravagant producer, and her financial obligations had become very heavy. In March she wrote: “My next picture, if all goes well, will be made by myself, so if it makes money I may get some of it.” She had been negotiating with the Tiffany Company, considering an offer of $3,500.00 a week, to make four or five pictures a year, when her representative, Frederick Newman, was approached by the president of a new producing company, a meeting which marked the beginning of an episode wholly different from anything she had known.