As soon as she was assured of safety and had departed, Perdita, who, fortunately for herself and her customers, had no other appointments for the morning, sent for the papers of the day before and carefully considered the incident of Mr. Hepworth, Miss Fuschia Fleming and the motor-car as set forth in the various journals. "And so," said Perdita to herself with glooming eyes, when she had finished an exhausting perusal, "he is going to back this deserving young adventuress, who has, no doubt, played upon his sympathies, in a great spectacular presentation this spring, and in New York. Well, there will be something else spectacular. I will make this venture of ours a stupendous success now or I will know the reason why. Where on earth is Maud? She is never about when I really need her." She frowned a moment over Maud's delinquency and then happened to remember that Miss Carmine had expressed an intention of being present at a rehearsal of one of Wallace Martin's plays. Dita then decided on the moment to drive to the theater and consult with her partner at once on the new and spectacular policy of their house which she was mentally outlining. But first, before starting, she thoughtfully selected some of a number of photographs of herself and also of Maud. "I suppose I shall have a dreadful time persuading her," she reflected as she drove through the streets. "She has bred in the bone those old-fashioned ideals of New York when it lived in Bleecker and Houston Streets." But curiously enough, while events of one character had led Perdita strongly to consider the adoption of a certain line of action, circumstances of a widely differing nature had impelled Maud practically to the same conclusion. Which only goes to show how clever a weaver is Fate and how wonderfully she contrasts and combines all her various threads. For two or three hours Maud had been sitting in a dimly-lighted, empty playhouse, watching the rather dreary and disillusionizing progress of Martin's latest play. It was an odd thing, she mournfully reflected, that Wallace never got himself, his own, bubbling, merry, joyous self, full of quirks and quips, into his plays. They would seem to have been written by a secondary personality, for they were all, without exception, intensely serious and depressing, dealing with problems of the most complex and dun-colored character.