But, however gratifying all this may have been, I had my troubles, and they increased daily. The publicity simply could not please all the people all the time. I mean the ballet people, of course. There was always the eternally dissatisfied de Basil. In addition, there were three fathers, nineteen mothers, and one sister-in-law to be satisfied. Then there were daily casting problems. The publicity department was giving the press what it wanted: feature stories on ballet, on artists, on the daily life of the dancer. It was then de Basil determined that all publicity must be centered on his own august person. He had a point of view, I must admit. Dancers were here today, gone tomorrow. De Basil and his ballet remained. But no newspaper is interested in running repeated photographs of a dour, bespectacled male. They wanted “leg art.” When de Basil insisted that he be photographed, the camera men would “shoot” him with a filmless or plateless camera. In addition to having to contend with what threatened to become a chronic and incurable case of Basildiaghileffitis, I was losing a potful of money. The St. James Theatre is no better than any other Broadway house as a home for ballet. The stage is far too small either to display the décor or to permit dancers to move freely. The auditorium, even if filled to capacity, cannot meet ballet expenses. We were not playing to anything like capacity. There was a tour booked; but, thanks to a “stop clause” in the theatre contract--a figure above which the attraction must continue at the theatre--we could not leave. We had made the “stop clause” too low. There was only one thing to do in order to protect the tour. I decided to divide the company into two companies. Forced to fulfil two sets of obligations at the end of the first month at the St. James Theatre, I opened a tour in Reading, Pennsylvania, with Massine, Danilova, Toumanova, the larger part of the _corps de ballet_, Efrem Kurtz conducting the orchestra, and all of the ballets in the repertoire except three. The company remaining at the St. James had Baronova, Riabouchinska, Lichine, and Woizikovsky, with the corps augmented by New York dancers, and Antal Dorati as conductor. This company gave eight performances weekly of the Fokine masterpieces, _Les Sylphides_, _Petroushka_, and _Prince Igor_. The steadily increasing public did not seem to mind. The response on the road and in New York was surprisingly good. When we finally left New York, the two groups merged, and we played a second Chicago engagement, at the marvellous old Auditorium Theatre. All were there, save for Grigorieff, Alexandra Danilova, and Dorati, who returned to Monte Carlo to fulfil de Basil’s contract with Blum for a spring season in Monaco.