Once you have been drawn into the machine it is very difficult to get out of it. Old Mole struggled, but money and invitations came pouring in. "Lossie Loses" survived two holiday seasons. During the second the actress who played Lossie went away on her vacation, and Matilda, urged on by Butcher, with whom she had become friendly, played the part, was successful, and gave the piece a new spurt of vitality. It was not a brilliant performance, but then a brilliant performance would have killed the play. The play needed charm, Matilda had it, and, by this time, among so many expertly charming women, she had learned how to manipulate it. Her appearance on the stage extended her popularity among her distinguished acquaintances, but subtly changed her status, and she had to learn how to defend herself. Her life became more exciting and she expanded in response to it. She distressed Old Mole by talking about her adventures, and he began to think it was really time to go. They went abroad for several months, to Paris, Florence, Rome, Sicily, Algiers, but as they stayed in luxurious and expensive hotels they might almost as well have stayed in London. Old Mole discovered nothing except that the eruption of gold must have been universal and that the character of the English nation had found its most obvious expression in its stout, solid, permanent telegraph poles. They returned to London, and Matilda accepted a small part in a new play by a famous dramatist, who had borrowed "Lossie" from the "greatest success of the century," called her "Blendy," and set her to leaven the mixture he had produced after the two years' hard work fixed as the proper quantum by Henrik Ibsen. More success. And Old Mole, feeling that he was now beyond all hope of escape, since he was suffering from a noticeable fatty degeneration of the will, had argued with Matilda, but she had had her way, for he could find no rejoinder to her plea that it was "something to do." He refused to leave Gray's Inn. She was tired of it; said the rooms were cramped, but he clung to it as an anchorage.