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Having ( through my unflagging effort and devotion ) achieved stardom, a fortune and a world-renowned wife at an age when most young men are casting their first vote, Letch proceeded to neglect them all.

Never a `` quick study '', he now made no attempt to learn his `` lines '' and many a mile of film was wasted, many a scene -- sometimes involving as many as a thousand fellow thespians -- was taken thirty, forty, fifty times because Miss Poitrine's co-star and `` helpmate '' had never learned his part.

Each time Letch `` went up '' in his `` lines '', I was the one to be patient, helpful and apologetic while he indulged in outbursts of temperament, profanity and abuse, blaming others, going into `` sulks '' and, on more occasions than I care to count, storming off the `` set '' for the rest of the day.

As for his finances, I was never privileged to know exactly how much money Letch had `` salted away ''.

It was I who paid for our little home, the food, the liquor, the servants -- even Letch's bills at his tailor and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

Never once did he buy me a single gift and for our third anniversary he gave me a dislocated jaw.

( But that is another story.

) As for his private monies, they were rapidly dissipated in drinking, gaming and carousing.

More than once I was confronted by professional gamblers, `` bookies '', loan `` sharks '', gangsters, `` thugs '' and `` finger men '' -- people of a class I did not even know existed -- to repay my husband's staggering losses, `` or else '' I shuddered to think that someone so dear to me could even associate with such a sinister milieu.

And at three different times during our turbulent marriage strange girls, with the commonest of accents, telephoned to announce to me that Letch had sired their unborn children!!

Having the deepest of maternal instincts, my heart fairly bled when I thought of the darling pink and white `` bundles from heaven '' I would have proudly given my husband.

`` Ah, you're too old '', was invariably his ungallant and untrue retort whenever I suggested `` starting a family ''.

Letch had made it abundantly clear that he did not care for the company of my own precious daughter.

I now felt it wiser to keep Baby-dear in school and -- during the summers -- at a camp run by the Society of Friends all year around.

Her presence only made Letch more distant and irritable and, in the hurry of buying Chateau Belletch, I had neglected to consider a room for Baby-dear, so there was no place to put her, anyhow.

( I sometimes feel that God, in His infinite wisdom, wants us to have these inexplicable little lapses of memory.

It almost always works out for the best.