ell him the
piece outright, and wash your hands of it?"

"Because he wouldn't buy it outright, and if I washed my hands of it he
could do what he pleased with it. If he couldn't tinker it up himself he
could hire some one else to do it, and that would be worse yet."

"Well, then, the only thing for us to do is to go on to New York, and
wait there till Godolphin comes. I suppose papa and mamma would like to
have us stay through October with them in Boston, but I don't see much
sense in that, and I don't choose to have the air of living on them. I
want to present an unbroken front of independence from the beginning, as
far as inquiring friends are concerned; and in New York we shall be so
lost to sight that nobody will know how we are living. You can work at
your new play while we're waiting, and we can feel that the onset in the
battle of life has sounded."

Maxwell laughed, as she meant him, at the mock heroics of her phrase,
and she pulled off his hat, and rubbed his hair round on his skull in
exultation at having arrived at some clear understanding. "I wouldn't
have hair like silk," she jeered.

"And I wouldn't have hair like corn-silk," he returned. "At least not on
my own head."

"Yes, it _is_ coarse. And it's yours quite as much as mine," she said,
thoughtfully. "We _do_ belong to each other utterly, don't we? I never
thought of it in that light before. And now our life has gone into your
work, already! I can't tell you, Brice, how sweet it is to think of that
love-business being our own! I shall be so proud of it on the stage! But
as long as we live no one but ourselves must know anything about it. Do
you suppose they will?" she asked, in sudden dismay.

He smiled. "Should you care?"

She reflected a moment. "No!" she shouted, boldly. "What difference?"

"Godolphin would pay any sum for the privilege of using the fact as an
advertisement. If he could put it into Pinney's hands, and give him
_carte blanche_, to work in all the romance he liked--"

"Brice!" she shrieked.

"Well, we needn't give it away, and if _we_ don't, nobody else will."

"No, and we must always keep it sacredly secret. Promise me one thing!"

"Twenty!"

"That you will let me hold your hand all through the first performance
of that part. Will you?"

"Why, we shall be set up like two brazen images in a box for all the
first-nighters to stare at and the society reporters to describe. What
would society journalism say to your holdin