_The doorway from the public stairs opens immediately upon the living-room without the intervening privacy of a small hallway. The room was, no doubt, more formally pretentious in the early days of the_ WILLIAMS’ _marriage; but the relics of that time--some rigid mahogany chairs and stray pieces of staid furniture--have been ruthlessly pushed against the walls, so that one perceives a “parlor” transformed into a miscellaneous room upon which the flat’s overflow has gradually crept. And with this has come_ GRANT WILLIAMS’ _plain wooden work-table, bearing now a writer’s accessories, a desk lamp, and a mass of manuscripts; one of which is his unproduced drama_, THE LONELY WAY, _bound in the conventional blue linen cover. His well-worn typewriter is perched on the end of the table, in easy reach of his work-chair with its sofa cushions crushed and shaped to his form. Another chair is near by, so that it also may catch the flood of light which comes from the conventional electric bunch-light above. There is a small black kerosene heater to be used in those emergencies of temperature which landlords create. Not far from it, a child’s collapsible go-cart is propped. On the walls, above some over-flowing bookshelves, are several tastefully selected etchings. A window in back, which hides an airshaft, is partly concealed by heavy curtains that hang tired and limp. There is another doorway, directly opposite the entrance, which leads to the other rooms of a characteristically compressed city flat._ _Yet the room is not forbidding: it merely suggests forced economies that have not quite fringed poverty: continual adaptation, as it were, to the financial contingencies of a marriage that has just managed to make both ends meet._ _When the curtain rises_ JERRY WILLIAMS _is seated in the cozy chair reading a number of newspaper clippings_. JERRY _is an attractive woman in her thirties. Externally, there is nothing particularly striking about her: if there be such a thing as an average wife_ JERRY _personifies it. She has loved her husband and kept house for him without a spoken protest; for she has had no advanced ideas or theories. Yet she has had her fears and little concealments and dreams--like any married woman. She has been sustained through the ten years of hard sledding by the belief in her husband’s ultimate financial success. And as she reads the criticisms of his play_, THE SAND BAR, _produced the night before, she realizes it has come at last. She is now completely happy and calm in the thought of her rewards._ _She looks at the cheap watch lying on the desk and indicates it is late. She closes the window, walks over to the doorway and looks in, apparently to see if the child is still asleep. Then she closes the door and stands there, with just a suspicion of impatience._ _Several minutes pass. Then she gives a little cry of joy as she hears the key turn in the lock and she sees the hall door open slowly--admitting her husband._