Chapter 53

Even on their way to it their respective positions began to change. The actor, for all his broad shoulders and big voice and commanding presence, betrayed from the first a helplessness and dependence that both pleased and surprised his little wife. He anxiously deferred to her in everything; fell in readily with every suggestion; listened with profound respect to her plans. He knew New York inside out; poverty was no stranger to him, nor the makeshifts and struggles of the poor; yet in the crisis of their fortune…