Belasco devoted most of the summer of 1911 to work on William C. De Mille’s play entitled “The Woman,” which he produced for the first time in New York, September 19, that year, at the Republic Theatre: a trial production of that play had been effected, April 17 preceding, at the New National Theatre, Washington, D. C. It is a highly effective melodrama, of the “contemporaneous interest” type, and it implicates twelve persons, nine of whom are germane to its action. It is neat in construction; it skilfully utilizes the invaluable element of suspense, and interest in its progress is cumulative to the dramatic climax. This, in brief, is its story: A corrupt politician, the _Honorable “Jim” Blake_, a member of the national legislature, is scheming to get a specious bill enacted into law, whereby over-capitalization of railroad corporations and wholesale swindling of the public can be perpetrated in the guise of legality. Another member of the legislature, the _Honorable Matthew Standish_, perceptive of the latent iniquity of that measure and of the predatory intent of _Blake_, has so vigorously opposed the enactment of it and so bitterly assailed its sponsors that _Blake_ and his associates fear to force its passage. They determine, therefore, to divert attention of the people from the opposition of _Standish_ to their corrupt measure and purposed malfeasance by blasting his personal reputation with social scandal. In their effort to do this they ascertain that several years previous the _Honorable Matthew_, inflexible before Plutus, has succumbed before Venus--has, in short, registered at an hotel with a woman not his wife. The name of that woman is not known to their informant, and it is the despicable task of _Blake_ and his adherents to ascertain her identity in order to ruin his public career by convicting him of private misconduct. That task they attempt to perform by endeavoring to extort from a young woman, _Wanda Kelly_, the operator in charge of a telephone exchange desk, a telephone number in New York which _Standish_, in Washington, has called for, immediately after being apprised of the dastardly purpose of _Blake_ and his associates. The identity of the concealed and errant she as _Blake’s_ daughter, the wife of one of his chief supporters, the _Honorable Mark Robertson_, is deftly discovered to the audience by the device of a second telephone message to her, by her husband, immediately after the close of the warning of impending disclosure by _Standish_. The sympathetic _Miss Kelly_ resolutely persists in her protective secrecy as to _The Woman_ at the other end of the wire, and the climax is then attained when _Standish_ refuses to be driven from his public duty by the threatened assault on his private character and when _Mrs. Robertson_, having in an agony of dread listened to the unsuccessful coaxing and badgering of _Miss Kelly_, with sudden and desperate courage terminates the anxious