When it came time for the company to move to Detroit, no trains were running, and buses and trucks would not cross state lines. It took some master-minding on the part of our staff to arrange to have the company, baggage cars and all, attached to a freight train, which was carrying permitted perishable fruits and vegetables. In Detroit, the slump had set in. The feeling of depression engendered by the darkened buildings and streets, the dimly-lighted theatres, the murk of stygian restaurants, together with the fact that the Detroit engagement had to be played at one of the “legitimate” theatres rather than at the Masonic Temple which, for years, had been the local home for ballet, played havoc with the engagement; people, bewildered by the situation, one which was as darkness is to light, were discouraged and daunted. They remained away from the theatre in droves and the losses were fantastic. Using the word in the best theatrical sense and tradition, it was a catastrophe. Perhaps it was as well that it was; somehow I cannot entirely reject the conviction that things more often than not work out for the best, for as the company and the repertoire stood, it would not fill the bill. Nor was there anything like sufficient time to build either a company or a repertoire. The projected Markova-Dolin company was placed in mothballs. The problems, so far as the ensuing season was concerned, remained critical. The Markova-Dolin combination was to emerge later in a different form. For the present it marked time, while I pondered the situation, with no solution in sight. At this crucial moment an old friend, Nicholas Koudriavtzeff, entered the picture. An American citizen of long standing, by birth he was a member of an old aristocratic Russian family. His manner, his life, his thinking are Continental. A man of fine culture, he is an idealistic business man of the theatre and concert worlds; a gentle, kind, able person, with an irresistible penchant for getting himself involved, for swimming in waters far beyond his depth, largely because of his idealism, together with his warmheartedness and his gentleness. It is this very gentleness, coupled with a certain softness, that makes it almost impossible for him to say “no” to anyone.