Gurdy asked, “Mark, wouldn’t you like it if the playwrights would go back to the Elizabethan idea--I mean thirty or forty scenes to a play?” “Certainly,” said Mark, “and those bucks were right.” He sat for a little silent, scrawling his desk blotter with a pencil, then shyly laughed, “Supposing some one made a play out of my married life? What you’d call the important episodes happened all over God’s earth. Cora got me on a farm in Fayettesville, N. J., married in Hoboken. Started quarreling in Martin’s café. Caught her kissing a fellow at Longbranch. Never saw him before or since. Owned up she’d lived with three or four men in our flat--twentieth Street, New York. Big scene. God, how sick that made me! I was at tea at Mrs. LeMoyne’s when Frank Worthing got me off in a corner and told me about her and Jarvis Hope. I was sittin’ in the bath tub when she chucked her curling irons at me and said she was through. That’s the way things go. Shakespeare was right. Crazy? No.--Come in.” His secretary brought Mark a thick manuscript lettered “Captain Salvador: Stephen O’Mara.” and withdrew. Mark went on, “But my married life wouldn’t make much of a show--green kid from the country and a--a Cora Boyle. Pretty ordinary.” He reflected, “But I don’t know. It’s always going to be pretty tragic for a kid to find out he’s married a girl thinkin’ she was pure--as pure as folks are, anyhow--and finds she hadn’t been. Wasn’t her fault, of course. Started acting when she was fourteen. Awful jolt, though. She lied about it, too. She was the damnedest liar! I hate liars. Well run along and play squash or something, sonny. I want to see what O’Mara’s handed me.” He bought the rights to “Captain Salvador” two hours later. Gurdy was willing to rejoice with him after he read the Cuban tragedy. Carlson yapped, “The women’ll hate it, Mark. Where’s your clothes?” “Bosh,” said Mark, “there weren’t any women’s clothes in Ervine’s ‘John Ferguson’ and the women ate it alive!” “But that fellow Ervine’s an Englishman, you big calf! You ain’t going to open the Walling with a sad piece by an American where there ain’t any duds for the women to gawp at! You’re off your head. Ain’t I told you a million times that the New York woman won’t swallow a home grown show that’s tragic unless it’s all dressed up? Stop him, Gurdy!” “It’s a damned good play, sir,” said Gurdy. He thought it high fortune that Mark should find anything so adroit and moving for the Walling’s first play. Some of the critics believed in O’Mara’s talent. Several artists in scenery were asked to submit designs. The pressmen began a scattering campaign of notes on O’Mara and hints about the play. A procession of comely young women declined the best female part as “unsympathetic.” “That means no clothes to it,” Carlson sniffed. “But they’re fools,” Gurdy insisted, “It’s a good acting part.”