"If you want to give him something to do, why don't you intrust him with getting ready the house for your Christmas party? You are always worrying about its emptiness." "But isn't that putting in his way temptations of a more positive kind?" he suggested. "Not if you set a limit to your expenditure. Can you trust his taste? He ought to be an adept at furnishings." "Oh, I think he'd do the actual furnishing very well. But won't it seem as if I am overlooking his abominable behavior too easily?" With a great effort John kept his eyes averted from the waste-paper basket. "You must either do that or refuse to have anything more to do with him," Miss Hamilton declared. "You can't expect him to be the mirror of your moral superiority for the rest of his life." "You seem to take quite an interest in him," said John, a little resentfully. Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders. "All right," he added, hurriedly. "I'll authorize him to prepare the house for Christmas. He must fight his own battles with my sister, Hilda. At any rate, it will annoy her." Miss Hamilton shook her head in mock reproof. "Act Three. Scene One," the dramatist announced in the voice of a mystic who has at last shaken himself free from earthly clogs and is about to achieve levitation. It was consoling to perceive that his secretary's expression changed in accord with his own, and John decided that she really was a most attractive young woman and not so unsympathetic as he had been upon the verge of thinking. Moreover, she was right. The important thing at present, the only thing, in fact, was the progress of the play, and it was for this very purpose that he had secured her collaboration--well, perhaps collaboration was too strong a word--but, indeed, so completely had she identified herself with his work that really he could almost call it collaboration. He ought not to tax his invention at this critical point with such a minor problem as the preparation of Ambles for a family reunion. Relations must go to the deuce in their own way, at any rate until the rough draft of the third act was finished, which, under present favorable conditions, might easily happen before Christmas. His secretary was always careful not to worry him with her own domestic bothers, though he knew by the way she had once or twice referred to her mother that she was having her own hard fight at home. He had once proposed calling upon the old lady; but Doris had quickly squashed the suggestion. John liked to think about Mrs. Hamilton, because through some obscure process of logic it gave him an excuse to think about her daughter as Doris. In other connections he thought of her formally as Miss Hamilton, and often told himself how lucky it was that so charming and accomplished a young woman should be so obviously indifferent to--well, not exactly to himself, but surely he might allege to anything except himself as a romantic playwright.