ublic. The thought of this was so petrifying that even Louise could not
at once find words for it, and they were both silent, as people
sometimes are, when a calamity has befallen them, in the hope that if
they do not speak it will turn out a miserable dream.

"Well, Brice," she said at last, "you certainly never expected _this_!"

"No," he answered with a ghastly laugh; "this passes my most sanguine
expectations, even of Godolphin. Good Heaven! Fancy the botch he will
make of it!"

"You mustn't let him touch it. You must demand it back, peremptorily.
You must telegraph!"

"What a mania you have for telegraphing," he retorted. "A special
delivery postage-stamp will serve every purpose. He isn't likely to do
the piece again for a week, at the earliest." He thought for awhile, and
then he said: "In a week he'll have a chance to change his mind so
often, that perhaps he won't revise and overhaul it, after all."

"But he mustn't think that you would suffer it for an instant," his wife
insisted. "It's an indignity that you should not submit to; it's an
outrage!"

"Very likely," Maxwell admitted, and he began to walk the floor, with
his head fallen, and his fingers clutched together behind him. The sight
of his mute anguish wrought upon his wife and goaded her to more and
more utterance.

"It's an insult to your genius, Brice, dear, and you must resent it. I
am sure I have been as humble about the whole affair as any one could
be, and I should be the last person to wish you to do anything rash. I
bore with Godolphin's suggestions, and I let him worry you to death with
his plans for spoiling your play, but I certainly didn't dream of
anything so high-handed as his undertaking to work it over himself, or I
should have insisted on your breaking with him long ago. How patient you
have been through it all! You've shown so much forbearance, and so much
wisdom, and so much delicacy in dealing with his preposterous ideas, and
then, to have it all thrown away! It's too bad!"

Maxwell kept walking hack and forth, and Louise began again at a new
point.

"I was willing to have it remain simply a _succes d'estime_, as far as
Midland was concerned, though I think you were treated abominably in
that, for he certainly gave you reason to suppose that he would do it
every night there. He says himself that it would have run the whole
week; and you can see from that article how it was growing in public
favor all the time. What has bec