The court action was a fortnight’s news-making wonder in London. Ballet was not helped by it. Ballet belongs on the stage, not in the musty atmosphere of the court room. De Basil and his lawyers, Massine and his lawyers, Universal Art and their lawyers. It is a silly business. _X_ brings an action against _Y_ over an alleged breach of a theatrical employment contract. Let us assume that _X_ represents the employer, _Y_ the artist-employee. Let us assume further that _X_ wins the action. _Y_ must continue in the employment of _X_. What, I ask you, is less satisfactory than an artist who is compelled by a court judgment to fulfil a contract? In ballet, the only persons who benefit in ballet lawsuits are the learned counsel. Differences of opinion, personality clashes are not healed by legal action; they are accentuated. Legal actions of this sort are instituted usually in anger and bitterness. When the legal decision is made, the final settlement adjudicated, the bitterness remains. The merger off, my contract with Universal Art came into force. I was committed to the management of a London season. Since the traditional home of ballet, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, had been preempted by the old company, I took Old Drury, the historic Drury Lane Theatre, whose history is as long, whose beauty is equally famous, whose seating capacity is enormous. The two houses are two short blocks apart. The seasons were simultaneous. Both were remarkably successful; both companies played to packed houses nightly. Nightly I had my usual table at the Savoy Grill, that famed London rendezvous of theatrical, musical, balletic, and literary life. Nightly my table was crowded with the ebb and flow of departing and arriving guests. The London summer, despite my forebodings, was halcyon. De Basil, at this period, was not a part of this cosmopolitanism and gaiety. Having been forced out of the control of his own company, at least for the moment, he became a recluse in a tiny house in Shepherd’s Market, typically biding his time in his true-to-form Caucasian manner, reflecting on his victory, although it had been more Pyrrhic than triumphant. We met for dinner in his band-box house, most of which time I devoted to a final effort to effect a merger of the two companies. It was a case of love’s labour lost, for the opposing groups were poles apart. The summer wore on into the late English midsummer heat, when all London takes itself hence. The original company’s season at Covent Carden slowed down, came to a stop; and a fortnight later, we rang down our final curtain at Drury Lane.