at neither at night nor at morning was Maxwell's play to be repeated.
The paper dropped from his hand.

"What is the matter?" his wife asked, looking up from her own paper.
"This poor man is the greatest possible goose. He doesn't seem to know
what he is talking about, even when he praises you. But of course he has
to write merely from a first impression. Do you want to change papers?"

Maxwell mechanically picked his up, and gave it to her. "The worst of
it is," he said, with the sardonic smile he had left over from an
unhappier time of life, "that he won't have an opportunity to revise his
first impression."

"What do you mean?"

He told her, but she could not believe him till she had verified the
fact by looking at the advertisements in all the papers.

Then she asked: "What in the world _does_ he mean?"

"Not to give it there any more, apparently. He hasn't entered upon the
perpetual performance of the piece. But if he isn't like Jefferson,
perhaps he's like Rip; he don't count this time. Well, I might have
known it! Why did I ever trust one of that race?" He began to walk up
and down the room, and to fling out, one after another, the expressions
of his scorn and his self-scorn. "They have no idea of what good faith
is, except as something that brings down the house when they register a
noble vow. But I don't blame him; I blame myself. What an ass, what an
idiot, I was! Why, _he_ could have told me not to believe in his
promises; he is a perfectly honest man, and would have done it, if I had
appealed to him. He didn't expect me to believe in them, and from the
wary way I talked, I don't suppose he thought I did. He hadn't the
measure of my folly; I hadn't, myself!"

"Now, Brice!" his wife called out to him, severely, "I won't have you
going on in that way. When I denounced Godolphin you wouldn't listen to
me; and when I begged and besought you to give him up, you always said
he was the only man in the world for you, till I got to believing it,
and I believe it now. Why, dearest," she added, in a softer tone, "don't
you see that he probably had his programme arranged all beforehand, and
couldn't change it, just because your play happened to be a hit? I'm
sure he paid you a great compliment by giving it the first night. Now,
you must just wait till you hear from him, and you may be sure he will
have a good reason for not repeating it there."

"Oh, Godolphin would never lack for a good reason. And I can tell yo