His room was quiet. The lamplight on the delicately green walls was like that of a regular author’s den, he was quite sure. He happily tested the fountain-pen by writing the names Nelly and William Wrenn on a bit of wrapping-paper (which he guiltily burned in an ash-tray); washed his face with water which he let run for a minute to cool; sat down before his table with a grunt of content; went back and washed his hands; fiercely threw off the bourgeois encumbrances of coat and collar; sat down again; got up to straighten a picture; picked up his pen; laid it down, and glowed as he thought of Nelly, slumbering there, near at hand, her exquisite cheek nestling silkenly against her arm, perhaps, and her white dreams— Suddenly he roared at himself, “Get on the job there, will yuh?” He picked up the pen and wrote: THE MILLIONAIRE’S DAUGHTER A ONE ACT DRAMATIC PLAYLET by WILLIAM WRENN CHARACTERS _John Warrington_, a railway president; quite rich. _Nelly Warrington_, Mr. Warrington’s daughter. _Reginald Thorne_, his secretary. He was jubilant. His pen whined at top speed, scattering a shower of tiny drops of ink. _Stage Scene: An office. Very expensive. Mr. Warrington and Mr. Thorne are sitting there. Miss Warrington comes in. She says:_ He stopped. He thought. He held his head. He went over to the stationary bowl and soaked his hair with water. He lay on the bed and kicked his heels, slowly and gravely smoothing his mustache. Fifty minutes later he gave a portentous groan and went to bed. He hadn’t been able to think of what Miss Warrington says beyond “I have come to tell you that I am married, papa,” and that didn’t sound just right; not for a first line it didn’t, anyway. At dinner next night—Saturday—Tom was rather inclined to make references to “our author,” and to remark: “Well, I know where somebody was last night, but of course I won’t tell. Say, them authors are a wild lot.” Mr. Wrenn, who had permitted the teasing of even Tim, the hatter, “wasn’t going to stand for no kidding from nobody—not when Nelly was there,” and he called for a glass of water with the air of a Harvard assistant professor forced to eat in a lunch-wagon and slapped on the back by the cook. Nelly soothed him. “The play _is_ going well, _isn’t_ it?” When he had, with a detached grandeur of which he was immediately ashamed, vouchsafed that he was already “getting right down to brass tacks on it,” that he had already investigated four more plays and begun the actual writing, every one looked awed and asked him assorted questions. At nine-thirty that evening he combed and tightly brushed his hair, which he had been pawing angrily for an hour and a half, went down the hall to Nelly’s hall bedroom, and knocked with: “It’s Mr. Wrenn. May I ask you something about the play?” “Just a moment,” he heard her say.