Owing to the shortage in our money supply, we had decided to go to a theatrical boarding house. Will was depending on his father to send him an allowance throughout the summer, and while it would be sufficient for his needs, now that he was married--well, we should have a chance to test the saying that two can live as cheaply as one. Our marriage had been a secret one--besides the "star" and one or two members of the company, we had taken no one into our confidence. Will's family--his father, a sister and brother--his mother having died about the time I came into his life--all were intolerant of the stage and its people. Though I was not yet a "really truly" actress, the fact that Will had met me "in the profession" would have prejudiced them against me; added to this was the fact that Will, himself a tyro, taking a wife at the very threshold of his career would not be looked at through our love-coloured glasses. The effect my marriage might have upon my own relatives never troubled me; my father and mother belonged to that great class of incompetent parenthood which brings children into the world without any actual love for them. Never questioning their fitness for child-rearing, they divine no greater responsibility than providing bodily necessities and a more or less superficial education. When, at the restless age of sixteen, I announced my determination to become an actress, there was some surface opposition, but no effort was made to enquire into my fitness for the dramatic profession, or the fitness of the dramatic profession as a career for any innocent and unprotected young girl. I had been highly successful as an amateur, and, as it was not necessary that I earn my own living, the stage appeared to their insapient minds an interesting playground for a dilettante daughter.... One week in a theatrical boarding-house was all we could endure. I wonder why it is that the rank and file of the theatrical profession are at such pains to impress one another with their importance. The flippant familiarity with which they referred to "Charley" or "Dan" Frohman; the coarse criticism of their fellow-actors, which Will called "knocking"; their easy disregard of the conventions, especially between the sexes; a bombastic retailing of their own exploits, as "how I jumped on and saved the show, with only one rehearsal"; talking "shop" to the exclusion of every other subject in the world. I overheard one of the actresses at the next table say we were "very up-stage," which Will interpreted as "not sociable, and having too good an opinion of one's self." Neither of us was happy in our new surroundings, and I felt a sense of relief when Will suggested that we look for a furnished flat. I did not mean to be critical of my husband's profession--I endeavored to agree with him that every profession has its undesirables.