The mere physical restraint was torture to so active, high-strung a man, but when it came to a problem play--He not unnaturally considered that it represented the full measure of his devotion to his wife, to spend an evening beside her listening to the same old jumble of human motives, human passions, that had occupied him all day long. Hate, jealousy, revenge, greed, infidelity were the staples of his trade, as it were; the untangling of law, if not always equity, from the seething mass was his _raison_d'etre_, and moreover paid his coal bills. That Helen was almost morbidly fond of the theater had long been his heaviest cross.