ld have his disgrace break their hearts, and kill two
birds with one stone, and avenge a long-suffering race of playwrights
upon stage-lovers."

The actor laughed like a man of small humor, mellowly, but hollowly.
"No, no! We must have the love-affair end happily. You can manage that
somehow. Have you got the play roughed out at all?"

"Not in manuscript. I've only got it roughed out in my mind."

"Well, I want that play. That's settled. I can't do anything with it
this winter, but I should like to open with it next fall. Do you think
you could have it ready by the end of July?"

II.

They sat down and began to talk times and terms. They parted with a
perfect understanding, and Maxwell was almost as much deceived as the
actor himself. He went home full of gay hopes to begin work on the play
at once, and to realize the character of Haxard with the personality of
the actor in his eye. He heard nothing from him till the following
spring, when the actor wrote with all the ardor of their parting moment,
to say that he was coming East for the summer, and meant to settle down
in the region of Boston somewhere, so that they could meet constantly
and make the play what they both wanted. He said nothing to account for
his long silence, and he seemed so little aware of it that Maxwell might
very well have taken it for a simple fidelity to the understanding
between them, too unconscious to protest itself. He answered discreetly,
and said that he expected to pass the summer on the coast somewhere, but
was not yet quite certain where he should be; that he had not forgotten
their interview, and should still be glad to let him have the play if he
fancied it. Between this time and the time when the actor appeared in
person, he sent Maxwell several short notes, and two or three telegrams,
sufficiently relevant but not very necessary, and when his engagement
ended in the West, a fortnight after Maxwell was married, he telegraphed
again and then came through without a stop from Denver, where the
combination broke up, to Manchester-by-the-Sea. He joined the little
colony of actors which summers there, and began to play tennis and golf,
and to fish and to sail, almost without a moment's delay. He was not
very fond of any of these things, and in fact he was fond only of one
thing in the world, which was the stage; but he had a theory that they
were recreation, and that if he went in for them he was building himself
up for the sea