ed that he might have written before
telegraphing, or when he came from the theatre after the play was given.
She was not satisfied with the reception of her news, and she said so to
Maxwell, as soon as they started home.

"What did you want?" he retorted, in a certain vexation. "They were as
cordial as they could be."

"Cordial is not enough. You can't expect anything like uproar from
mamma, but she took it too much as a matter of course, and I _did_
suppose papa would be a little more riotous."

"If you are going to be as exacting as that with people," Maxwell
returned, "you are going to disappoint yourself frightfully; and if you
insist, you will make them hate you. People can't share your happiness
any more than they can share your misery; it's as much as they can do to
manage their own."

"But I did think my own father and mother might have entered into it a
little more," she grieved. "Well, you are right, Brice, and I will try
to hold in after this. It wasn't for myself I cared."

"I know," said Maxwell, so appreciatively that she felt all her loss
made up to her, and shrunk closer to him in the buggy he was driving
with a lax, absent-minded rein. "But I think a little less Fourth of
July on my account would be better."

"Yes, you are wise, and I shall not say another word about it to
anybody; just treat it as a common every-day event."

He laughed at what was so far from her possibilities, and began to tell
her of the scheme for still another play that had occurred to him while
they were talking with her father. She was interested in the scheme, but
more interested in the involuntary workings of his genius, and she
celebrated that till he had to beg her to stop, for she made him ashamed
of himself even in the solitude of the woodland stretches they were
passing through. Then he said, as if it were part of the same strain of
thought, "You have to lose a lot of things in writing a play. Now, for
instance, that beautiful green light there in the woods." He pointed to
a depth of the boscage where it had almost an emerald quality, it was so
vivid, so intense. "If I were writing a story about two lovers in such a
light, and how it bathed their figures and illumined their faces, I
could make the reader feel it just as I did. I could make them see it.
But if I were putting them in a play, I should have to trust the
carpenter and the scene-painter for the effect; and you know what broken
reeds they are."

"Yes,"