When I saw him a week later his work was progressing and the play would surely go on before the season ended. But by our next meeting his hope had evidently moderated, for he looked downcast and troubled as he explained the production had to be deferred. “They haven't the money it will take. A heavy outlay for scenery is involved, you know. It will go on the first of the coming season, and that's about the most I can expect under the circumstances. In the meantime there's a lot of work I wish to do, so it doesn't much matter. I can wait, only”—and his glance became tender—“it will go hard with mother. She won't understand why it's not as I said it was going to be.” Unfortunately, when the manager returned from his summer trip abroad, he brought with him from Paris the success of a thousand nights. “He will do that at once, and then try mine. He really prefers my work, but thinks that more immediate profits are to be expected from the French piece,” Gavan told me, and this was all he had to say. The imported play had a long run in New York, half the winter and better. Then it was taken on tour. “They can't drop a sure thing,” he explained nervously when he informed me of the new arrangement. “However, the very first opening is to belong to me; no telling or guessing when it will come, but scarcely until next year. I'll have to do what I can meanwhile to drag out an existence. I can't give up. I've done so much it would be foolish even to think of stopping. If there is only a decent bit of luck in the end, a few months will pay up for the two years of misery. Of course, it's tiresome, this everlasting putting off, but if I wait long enough and don't starve, I am sure to see the play go on. The manager has said over and over that he wanted to stage it, and I think he does. It wouldn't be so rough if I were the only one concerned, but there's my mother. I know she is feeling it keenly, though she tries not to show it.” He was still brave, but the deep secret joy was gone from his eyes. He was slowly drifting back to the despondency that had marked the last weeks of his stay at Mrs. Tauton's. “I don't suppose,” he added, “that mother can comprehend how slow a matter it is, and I don't know that I make it clear to her.” How he lived through the winter and the spring that followed, I never knew. When summer came I tried to induce him to go into the country with me for an outing. He was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, but felt that he must remain in the city. The season was almost over and soon everybody would be there. It was his opportunity. “I don't know why it is,” he wound up reflectively, “but I seem to have a harder pull of it than most do. I wish I didn't look so young. Then, too, my work is original, and I find originality is an offense to most people. I can't do clever trifles.” No, his work was not clever; I appreciated that. It was only great. On my return from the country he met me in Jersey City.