boding, of the difficulties he should have to smooth out for her if it ever came to a production of the piece. The best thing that could happen, perhaps, would be its rejection, final and total, by all possible managers and actors; for she would detest any one who took the part of Salome, and would hold him responsible for all she should suffer from it. her filled his heart. Then he heard her voice saying, "Well, don't wake him, poor boy!" XVI MAXWELL opened his eyes, and found the maid lightly escaping from the room. He perceived that he had slept all night on the lounge, and he sent a cheery hail into his wife's room, and then followed it to tell her how he had thought it all out. She was as glad as he was; she applauded his plan to the ceiling; and he might not have thought of her accident if he had not seen presently that she was eating her breakfast in bed. Then he asked after her ankle, and she said, "Oh, that's perfectly well, or the same as perfectly. There's no pain at all, there, to speak of, and I shall get up to luncheon. You needn't mind me any more. If you haven't taken your death I haven't." He recurred again to what he had felt so strongly himself, and what Grayson had suggested, and thought how he could free himself from fealty to her by cutting out the whole love-business from his play. But that would be very hard. The thing had now knitted itself in one texture in his mind, and though he could sever the ties that bound the parts together, it would take from the piece the great element of charm. It was not symmetrical as it stood, but it was not two distinct motives; the motives had blended, and they really belonged to each other. He would have to invent some other love-business if he cut of cold sleeping there on the loungethis out, but still it could be done. Then it suddenly flashed upon him that there was something easier yet, and that was to abandon the notion of getting his piece played at all, and to turn it into a novel. He could give it narrative form without much trouble, if any, beyond that of copying it, and it would be thought a very dramatic story. He saw instantly how he could keep and even enhance all the charm of the lovebusiness as it stood, in a novel; and in his revulsion of feeling he wished to tell his wife. He made a movement toward the door of her room, but he heard the even breathing of her sleep, and he stopped and flung himself on the lounge to think. It was such a happy solution of the whole affair! He need not even cease trying with managers, for he could use the copy of the play that Godolphin had returned for that, and he could use the copy he had always kept for recasting it in narrative. By the time that he had got his play back from the last manager he would have his novel ready for the first publisher. In the meantime he should be writing his letters for the Abstract, and not consuming all his little savings. 'I want you to go down town to some manager with your play, and get some paper, the kind I like; and then, after lunch, we'll begin turning it into a novel, from your copy. It will be so easy for you that you can dictate, and I'll do the writing, and we'll work it up together. you like collaborating with me?" "Ah! The relief from the stress upon him was delicious. He lay at rest and heard the soft breathing of his wife from the other room, and an indescribable tenderness for Shall It will be our story, and I shall like it twice as well as if it were a play. We shall be independent of the theatre, that's one satisfaction; they can take the play, if they like, but it will be perfectly indifferent to us. I shall help you get in all those nice touches that you said you could never get into a play, like that green light in the woods. I know just how we shall manage that love business, and we sha'n't have any horror of an actress interpreting our inspirations to the public. We'll play Atland and Salome ourselves. We'll-ow!" She had given her foot a twist in the excitement and she fell back on the pillow rather faint. But she instantly recovered herself with a laugh, and she hurried him away to his breakfast, and then away with his play. He would rather have stayed and begun turning it into a story at once. But she would not let him; she said, it would be a loss of time, and she should fret a good deal more to have him there with her, than to have him away, for she should know he was just staying to cheer her up. When he was gone she sent for whatever papers the maid could find in the parlor, so that she need not think of him in the amusement she would get out of them. Among the rest was that dramatic newspaper which caught her eye first, with the effigy of a very dramatized young woman whose portrait filled the whole first page. Louise abhorred her, but with a novel sense of security in the fact that Maxwell's play was going so soon to be turned into a story; and she felt personally aloof from all the people who had dragged him down with a sense of complicity in their professional cards. She found them neither so droll nor so painful as he had, but she was very willing to turn from them, and she was giving the paper a parting glance before dropping it, when she was arrested by an advertisement which made her start: WANTED.—A drama for prominent star; light comic and emotional; star part must embody situations for the display of intense effects. Address L. STERNE, this office. A series of effects as intense as the advertiser could have desired in a drama followed one another in the mind of Louise. She now wildly reproached herself that she had, however unwittingly, sent her husband out of reach for four or five hours, when his whole future might depend upon his instantly answering this notice. Whether he had already seen the notice and rashly decided to ignore it, or had not seen it, he might involve himself with some manager irretrievably before he could be got at with a demand which seemed specifically framed to describe his play. She was in despair that there was no means of sending a messenger-boy after him with any chance of finding him. The light comic reliefs which the advertiser would have wished to give the dark phases of her mood were suggested by her reckless energy in whirling herself into her dressinggown, and hopping out to Maxwell's desk in the other room, where she dashed off a note in reply to the advertisement in her husband's name, and then checked herself with the reflection that she had no right to sign his name: even in such a cause she must not do anything wrong. Something must be done, however, right or wrong, and she decided that a very formal note in the third person would involve the least moral trespass. She fixed upon these terms, after several experiments, almost weeping at the time they cost her, when every moment was precious: Mr. Brice Maxwell writes to Mr. L. Sterne and begs to inform him that he has a play which he believes will meet the requirements of Mr. Sterne, as stated in his advertisement in the "Professional Register" of November the tenth. Mr. Maxwell asks the favor of an interview with Mr. Sterne at any time and place that Mr. Sterne may appoint. It seemed to her that this violated no law of man or God, or if it did the exigency was such that the action could be forgiven, if not justified. She ransacked Maxwell's desk for a special delivery stamp, and sent the letter out beyond recall; and then it occurred to her that its opening terms were too much those of a lady addressing a seamstress; but after a good deal of anguish on this point she comforted herself with the hope that a man would not know the form, or at least would not suspect another man of using it offensively. She passed the time till Maxwell came back, in doubt whether to tell him what she had done. There was no reason why she should not, except that he might have seen the advertisement and decided not to answer it for some reason; but in that case it might be said that he ought to have spoken to her about it. She told him everything at once, but there were many things that he did not tell her till long afterward; it would be a good thing to let him realize how that felt; besides it would be a pleasure to keep it and let it burst upon him, if that L. Sterne, whoever he was, asked to see the play. In any case, it would not be a great while that she need keep from him what she had done, but at sight of him when he came in she could hardly be silent. He was gloomy and dispirited, and he confessed that his pleasant experience with Grayson had not been repeated with the other managers. They had all been civil enough, and he had seen three or four of them, but only one had consented to let him even leave his play with him; the others said that it would be useless for them to look at it. She could not forbear showing him the advertisement she had answered as they sat at lunch; but he glanced at it with disdain, and said there must be some sort of fake in it; if it was some irresponsible fellow getting up a combination he would not scruple to use the ideas of any manuscript submitted to him and work them over to suit himself. Louise could not speak. All heart went out of her; she wanted to cry, and she did not tell what she had done. Neither of them ate much. He asked her if she was ready to begin on the story with him; she said, Oh, yes; and she hobbled off into the other room. Then he seemed to remember her hurt for the first time; he had been so full of his failure with the play before. He asked her how she was, and she said, much better; and then he stretched himself on the lounge and tried to dictate, and she took her place at his desk and tried to write. But she either ran ahead of him, and prompted him, which vexed him, or she lagged so far behind that he lost the thread of what he was saying and became angry. At last she put her head down on the paper and blotted it with her tears. At that he said, "Oh, you'd better go back to bed," and then though he spoke harshly, he lifted her tenderly and half carried her to her room. XVII THEY did not try working the play into a story again together. Maxwell kept doggedly at it, though he said it was of no use; the thing had taken the dramatic form with inexorable fixity as it first came from his mind; it could be changed, of course, but it could only be changed for the worse, artistically. If he could sell it as a story, the work would not be lost; he would gain the skill that came from doing, in any event, and it would keep him alive under the ill-luck that now seemed to have set in. None of the managers wanted his play. Some of them seemed to want it less than others; some wanted it less immediately than others; some did not want it after reading; some refused it without reading it; some had their arrangements made for an indefinite time, others in the present uncertain state of affairs could not make any arrangements; some said it was an American play; others that it was un-American in its pessimistic spirit; some found it too literary; others, lacking in imagination. They were nearly all so kind that at first Maxwell was guilty of the folly of trying to persuade them against the reasons they gave; when he realized that these reasons were also excuses, he set his teeth and accepted them in silence. For a number of days Louise suffered in momentary expectation of a reply from L. Sterne. She thought it would come by district messenger the day she wrote; and for several days afterwards she had the letters brought to her first, so that she could read them, and not disturb Maxwell with them at his work, if it were not necessary. He willingly agreed to that; he saw that it helped to pass the irksome time for her. She did not mean to conceal any answer she should have from L. Sterne, but she meant when the answer came to prepare her husband for it in such sort, that he would understand her motive, and though he condemned it, would easily forgive her. But the days went and no letter from L. Sterne came, and after a season of lively indignation at his rudeness, Louise began to forget him a little, though she still kept her surveillance of the mails. It was always on her conscience, in the meantime, to give some of the first moments of her recovery to going with Maxwell and thanking Mrs. Harley for the kindness she had shown her in her accident. She was the more strenuous in this intention, because the duty was so distasteful, and she insisted upon Maxwell's company, though he argued that he had already done enough himself in thanking her preserver, because she wished to punish a certain reluctance of her own in having him go. She promised herself that she would do everything that was right by that creature; and perhaps she repaired to her presence in rather overwhelming virtue. If this was so, Mrs. Harley showed herself equal to the demand upon her, and was overwhelming in her kind. She not only made nothing of what she had done and the housemaid had not had time to put it in order. Louise saw it through her father's and mother's eyes with the glance they gave it, and found the rooms ridiculously little, and furnished with cheap Fourteenth Street things; but she bragged all the more noisily of it on that account, and made her mother look out of the windows, for the pretty view they had from their corner-room. Mrs. Hilary pulled her head back from the prospect of the railroad-ridden avenue with silent horror, and Louise burst into a wild laugh. Well, it isn't Commonwealth Avenue, mamma ; I don't pretend that, you know." 66 for Louise, but she made nothing of frowsy, for the Maxwells breakfasted late, Louise, and contrived with a few well directed strokes to give her distinctly the sense of being a chit, a thing Louise was not at all used to. She was apparently one of those women who have no use for persons of their own sex ; but few women, even of that sort, could have so promptly relegated Louise to the outside of their interest, or so frankly devoted themselves to Maxwell. The impartial spectator might easily have imagined that it was his ankle which had been strained, and that Louise was at best an intrusive sympathizer. Sometimes Mrs. Harley did not hear what she said; at other times, if she began a response to her, she ended it in a question to him; even when she talked to Louise, her eyes were smouldering upon Maxwell. If this had all or any of it been helpless or ignorant rudeness, it could have been borne and forgiven; but Louise was aware of intention, of perfect intelligence in it; she was sensible of being even more disliked than disliking, and of finally being put to flight with a patronizing benevolence for her complete recovery which was intolerable. What was worse was that, while the woman had been so offensive, she could not wholly rid herself of the feeling that her punishment was in a measure merited, though it was not justice that had dealt with her. Where's Maxwell ?" asked Hilary, still puffing from the lounge he had sunk upon as soon as he got into the room. "Oh, he's down town interviewing a manager about his play." "I thought that fellow out West had his play. Or is this a new one?" "No," said Louise, very slowly and thoughtfully, "Brice has taken back his play from Mr. Godolphin." This was true; he had taken it back in a sense. She added, as much to herself as to her father. "But he has got a new play— that he's working at." "I hope he hasn't been rash with Godolphin; though I always had an idea that it would have been better for him to deal "Well, that is over," said Maxwell, when with a manager. It seems more businessthey were again by themselves. "Yes, forever," sighed Louise, and for once she was not let have the last word. "I hope you'll remember that I didn't want to go." At least they had not misunderstood each other about Mrs. Harley. Toward the end of the month, Louise's father and mother came on from Boston. They professed that they had been taken with that wish to see the autumn exhibition at the National Academy, which sometimes affects Bostonians, and that their visit had nothing to do with the little hurt that Louise wrote them of after she was quite well of it. They drove over from their hotel the morning they arrived, and she did not know anything of their coming till she heard their voices at the door; her father's voice was rather husky from the climb to her apart ment. like." "Oh, much," said Louise. After a little while, they were more at home with each other; she began to feel herself more their child, and less Maxwell's wife; the barriers of reluctance against him, which she always knew were up with them, fell away from between them and herself. But her father said they had come to get her and Maxwell to lunch with them at their hotel, and then Louise felt herself on her husband's side of the fence again. She said, no, they must stay with her; that she was sure Brice would be back for lunch; and she wanted to show them her house-keeping. Mrs. Hilary cast her eye about the room, at the word, as if she had seen quite enough of it already, and this made Louise laugh again. She was no better in person than the room was, and she felt her mother's tacit censure apply to The apartment was looking somewhat her slatternly dressing-gown. Oh, I'm sure it must be very comfortable," Mrs. Hilary said, of the dressinggown. "Is it entirely well, now?" she added, of the ankle; and she and Hilary both looked at Louise in a way that would have convinced her that their final anxiety concerning it had brought them to New York, if she had not guessed it already. "The doctor," and by this she meant their old family doctor, as if he were the only one, "Oh, nothing. About your play not going perfectly. I didn't think it necessary to go into particulars with them, and you needn't. Just pass it over lightly if they ask you anything about it. But they won't." said you couldn't be too careful." "Well, I haven't been careful," said Louise, gayly, "but I'm quite well, and you can go back at once, if that's all, mamma." Hilary laughed with her. "You haven't might at the prospect of dining with his changed much, Louise." Her mother said, in another sense, "I think you look a little pulled down," and that made her and her father laugh again. She got to playing with him, and poking him, and kissing him, in the way she had with him when she was a girl; it was not so very long ago. Maxwell did not look so happy as he wife's father and mother, but he did not say anything disagreeable, and after an instant of silent resentment, Louise did not say anything disagreeable either. In fact, she devoted herself to avoiding any displeasures with him, and she arrived with him at the Hilarys' hotel on perfectly good terms, and as far as he was concerned, in Her mother bore with this for awhile, rather good spirits. and then she rose to go. "You're not going to stay! protested. Upon the whole, they had a very good Louise time. Hilary made occasion to speak to Maxwell of his letters to the Abstract, and told him they were considered by far the best letters of the kind published anywhere, which meant, anywhere in Boston. Not to-day, my dear. I've got some shopping to do before lunch." "Well," said Louise, “I didn't suppose you would stay the first time, such swells as you and papa. But I shall insist upon your coming to-morrow when you've recovered a little from the blow this home of virtuous poverty has given you, and I've had a chance to dust and prepare for you. And I'll tell you what, mamma; Brice and I will come to dinner with you, to-night, and we won't take any refusal. We'll be with you at seven. How will that do, papa ?" "That will do," said Hilary, with his arm round her waist, and they kissed each other to clinch the bargain. "And don't you two old things go away and put your frosty pows together and say Brice and I are not happy. We do quarrel like cats and dogs every now and then, but the rest of the time we're the happiest couple in the universe; and an example to parents." Hilary would have manifestly liked to "You do that sort of thing so well, newspaper writing," he continued, with a slyness that was not lost upon Louise, though Maxwell was ignorant of his drift, that I wonder you don't sometimes want to take it up again." "It's well enough," said Maxwell, who was gratified by his praise. "By the way," said Hilary, "I met your friend, Mr. Ricker, the other day, and he spoke most cordially about you. I fancy he would be very glad to have you back.” “In the old way? I would rather be excused." No, from what he said, I thought he would like your writing in the editorial page." Maxwell looked pleased. "Ricker's always been very good, but he has very little influence on the Abstract. He has no money interest in the paper." Hilary said, with the greatest artfulness, |