“I was entirely free from all contract obligations when Mr. Belasco first made me an offer to come under his management. I left Liebler & Company quite voluntarily, as I did not care to go to London with ‘The Children of the Ghetto.’ I was therefore out of an engagement when Mr. Belasco sent for me to create the leading part in a new comedy.... I was given the greatest opportunity of my life in ‘Madame Butterfly,’ and I have grown from leading woman to a star under his management. And because I know that my artistic future is safer in his hands than with anyone else I would not for a moment consider an offer from another manager.” And Mr. Warfield sent to Belasco by telegraph from Boston this request and statement: “Please deny for me that I had one more year [of service under contract] at Weber & Fields’. I came to you having always had an idea you could better my position.” A week before the first presentment of “The Darling of the Gods” in New York an allegation even more injurious was made against Belasco when several newspapers of the metropolis published affirmations by a female author, known as Onoto Watanna, to the effect that characters and incidents from two stories by her, “The Wooing of Wistaria” and “A Japanese Nightingale,” had been appropriated by Belasco and incorporated in “The Darling of the Gods” and that two acts of that play were pirated from a dramatization of one of those stories. To these aspersions Belasco made prompt rejoinder by institution of a suit against Mrs. Bertrand W. Babcock, asking $20,000 damages for malicious libel. Mrs. Babcock was arrested, December 3, 1902, on a warrant issued in this action and held in $500 bail. At the time of her arrest Belasco made a statement as to his motives and feelings in bringing suit in which he said: