"A haunting face, Fannie's was; at least, for me. It became almost an obsession. I could see it as I sat down to my work. And the first thing I knew I was writing Fannie into my play. There was a maid's part in it,--the conventional, table-dusting, note-carrying, tea-serving maid, with not half a dozen words to speak. But before I knew it this insignificant part had become so elaborated, I had sketched in Fannie's personality so vividly, that the whole action and theme of the piece were revolving about her--hinged on her. I couldn't seem to stop, either. I wrote on and on and--well, by Jove! it ended in my turning out something entirely different from that which I had begun. The original skeleton is still there, the characters are the same; but the values have exchanged places. This is a Fannie play through and through. And it's good, the biggest thing I've done; but----" Once more Oakley shrugs his shoulders and ends with a deep sigh. "Rubbish!" says Mr. Robert. "You and your artistic temperament! What's the real trouble, anyway?" "As I've tried to make clear to your limited and wholly commercialized intelligence," comes back Mr. Mills, "I have created a character which is too deep and too subtle for any available American actress to handle. If I could only find the original now, with her tractable genius for doing exactly what she was told----" "Why not send out for her, then?" asks Mr. Robert. "As though I hadn't!" says Oakley. "Two weeks ago I located the hotel manager in Florida and wired him a full description of the girl. All I got from him was that he'd heard she was somewhere in New York." "How simple!" says Mr. Robert. "Here is my young friend Torchy, with wits even more brilliant than his hair. Ask him to find Fannie for you." "A girl whose name I don't even know!" protests Oakley. "How in blazes could anyone trace a----" "I'll bet you the dinners," cuts in Mr. Robert, "that Torchy can do it." "Taken," says Mr. Mills, and turns to me brisk. "Now, young man, what further details would you like?" "Don't happen to have a lock of her hair with you?" says I, grinnin'. "Alas, no!" says he. "She favored me with no such mark of her esteem." "Was it kind of ginger-colored," says I, "and done in a braid round her head?" "Why--er--I believe it was," says he. "And didn't she have sort of droopy shoulders," I goes on, "and a trick of starin' vague, with her mouth part way open?" "Yes, yes!" says he eager. "But--but whom are you describing?" "Ruby Everschott," says I. "Come down to the Corrugated and take a look." Course it seemed like a 100 to 1 chance, but when I got the Wisconsin part of his yarn, and tacked it onto the rest, it didn't seem likely one State could produce two such specimens. Inside of fifteen minutes the three of us was strollin' casual through the front offices. "Glance down the line of lady typists," I whispers to Oakley. "By George!" says he gaspy. "The one at the far end?" "You win," says I.