He thought he knew what she meant. Not in vain had dozens of novels been written in which the young wife subtly corrupts her artist husband into prosperous mediocrity. So that was what Rose-Ann was afraid of! She did not know that the artist chooses his wife in the profound unconscious hope of being led down from the perilous icy heights of lonely poetic ecstasy into the green valleys of everyday human life.... That Rose-Ann wanted him to dwell with her here in these green valleys he did not doubt. She wanted him to be successful. But she did not want to be blamed for his success! He could understand that. Well, he would take the responsibility upon himself. He would become what, in her secret heart, and in spite of all her protestations, she really wanted him to be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXI. More or Less Theatrical 1 MEANWHILE, with summer coming on, Felix had wondered what an assistant dramatic editor would find to do. He learned from Hawkins that the management traditionally continued the Saturday dramatic department through the season, though in a restricted space. Later, in anticipation of the opening of the theatrical season, he could print the news of what New York and London held in prospect for the Chicago public. And for the present a column or two once a week could be furbished up somehow—the how of it being left entirely to Felix’s own discretion and ingenuity. “Interviews—clip-stuff from the London weeklies of last winter—anything to keep going,” said Hawkins, cleaning up his desk and going home on a formal leave of absence for the summer to rewrite his play—which, it appeared, had impressed a New York manager and only needed to be “strengthened” in its second act. Felix, according to his arrangement with Willie Smith, was to write “something light,” every day if possible, for the editorial page; and that done, nobody cared what he put in the Saturday “Plays and Acting” column. With Hawkins away, he felt that he had a free hand. And the fact that there were no new plays to criticize did not matter much, for the kind of criticism that Felix liked to write subsisted quite as well on familiar plays that everybody had seen as upon brand-new ones—better, perhaps.