And so the steam-roller rolled and the matter was settled; and Thyrsis, broken-hearted, bid the trio farewell, and took an early train back to New York. He never saw any member of the company again--and he never saw the “practical play” which Mr. Richard Haberton made out of “The Genius”. What was done he gathered from the press-clippings that came to him--the famous author of “The Rajah’s Diamond” caused Helena to fall into Lloyd’s arms at the end of the second act, and had them safely if not happily married at the beginning of the third. Also he wrote several “charming” scenes for Ethelynda Lewis, and two weeks later the play had a second opening in another manufacturing town of New England--where the critics, awed by the name of the distinguished dramatist upon the play-bills, were moved to faint praise. But perhaps it was that Mr. Richard Haberton required more than two weeks’ time for the evolving of real “charm”; at any rate the audience came in no larger numbers to see this new version, and the misbegotten production lived for another six performances, and died a peaceful death at the very gates of the metropolis. And such was the end of Thyrsis’ career as a play-wright. In return for all his labors and his agonies he received some weeks later a note from Robertson Jones, Inc., to the effect that the books of “The Genius” showed a total deficit of six thousand seven hundred and forty-two dollars and seventeen cents; and accordingly, under the contract, there was nothing due to the author. BOOK XI THE TORTURE-HOUSE _They sat in the darkness, watching where the starlight gleamed upon the water. “We had always hope,” she was saying. “How endlessly we hoped!” “Could we do it now?” he asked; and after a pause, he quoted from the poem-- “Unbreachable the fort Of the long-batter’d world uplifts its wall; And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, And near and real the charm of thy repose, And night as welcome as a friend would fall!”_ Section 1. Thyrsis came home beaten and crushed, worn out with overwork and worry, his heart black with rage and bitterness and despair. He met Corydon in the park, and she listened to his story, white and terrified. She had swallowed all her disappointment, had stayed at home with the baby while he went with the play; and now the outcome of it all was this! “What are you going to do?” she whispered; and he answered, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She saw the terrible state he was in, and she dared not utter a single word of her own grief. She bit her lip, and choked back her tears. “This is my life,” she thought to herself; “I must endure, endure--that is all!”