, and from this time
forward I am going to trust him implicitly, and I'm going to make you.
No more question of Godolphin in _this_ family! Don't you long to know
how it goes in Chicago? But I don't really care, for, as you say, that
won't have the slightest influence in New York; and I know it will go
here, anyway. Yes, I consider it, from this time on, an assured success.
And isn't it delightful that, as Godolphin says, it's such a favorite
with refined people?" She went on a good while to this effect, but when
she had talked herself out, Maxwell had still said so little that she
asked, "What is it, Brice?"

"Do you think we deserve it?" he returned, seriously.

"For squabbling so? Why, I suppose I was tired and overwrought, or I
shouldn't have done it."

"And I hadn't even that excuse," said Maxwell.

"Oh, yes you had," she retorted. "I provoked you. And if any one was to
blame, I was. Do you mind it so much?"

"Yes, it tears my heart. And it makes me feel so low and mean."

"Oh, how good you are!" she began, but he stopped her.

"Don't! I'm not good; and I don't deserve success. I don't feel as if
this belonged to me. I ought to send Godolphin's check back, in common
honesty, common decency." He told of the quarrel he had witnessed on the
canal-boat, and she loved him for his simple-hearted humility; but she
said there was nothing parallel in the cases, and she would not let him
think so; that it was morbid, and showed he had been overworking.

"And now," she went on, "you must write to Mr. Ricker at once and thank
him, and tell him you can't do the letters for him. Will you?"

"I'll see."

"You must. I want you to reserve your whole strength for the drama.
That's your true vocation, and it would be a sin for you to turn to the
right or left." He continued silent, and she went on: "Are you still
thinking about our scrap this morning? Well, then, I'll promise never to
begin it again. Will that do?"

"Oh, I don't know that you began it. And I wasn't thinking--I was
thinking of an idea for a play--the eventuation of good in evil--love
evolving in hate."

"That will be grand, if you can work it out. And now you see, don't you,
that there is some use in squabbling, even?"

"I suppose nothing is lost," said Maxwell. He took out his pocket-book,
and folded Godolphin's check into it.

XII.

A week later there came another letter from Godolphin. It was very
civil, and in its general text it did not