, that counts you one," he said. "You noticed that we have put on
'Engaged?' We've made a failure of the piece we began with; it's several
pieces now. _Couldn't_ you do something like 'Engaged?'"

"I wish I could! But I'm afraid Gilbert is the only man living who can
do anything like 'Engaged.' My hand is too heavy for that kind."

"Well, the heavy hand is not so bad if it hits hard enough," said the
manager, who had a face of lively intelligence and an air of wary
kindliness. He looked fifty, but this was partly the effect of overwork.
There was something of the Jew, something of the Irishman, in his
visage; but he was neither; he was a Yankee, from Maine, with a Boston
training in his business. "What have you got?" he asked, for Maxwell's
play was evident.

"Something I've been at work on for a year, more or less." Maxwell
sketched the plot of his play, and the manager seemed interested.

"Rather Ibsenish, isn't it?" he suggested at the end.

The time had passed with Maxwell when he wished to have this said of his
play, not because he did not admire Ibsen, but because he preferred the
recognition of the original quality of his work. "I don't know that it
is, very. Perhaps--if one didn't like it."

"Oh, I don't know that I should dislike it for its Ibsenism. The time
of that sort of thing may be coming. You never can be sure, in this
business, when the time of anything is coming. I've always thought that
a naturalized Ibsenism wouldn't be so bad for our stage. You don't want
to be quite so bleak, you know, as the real Norwegian Ibsen."

"I've tried not to be very bleak, because I thought it wasn't in the
scheme," said Maxwell.

"I don't understand that it ends well?"

"Unless you consider the implicated marriage of the young people a good
ending. Haxard himself, of course, is past all surgery. But the thing
isn't pessimistic, as I understand, for its doctrine is that harm comes
only from doing wrong."

The manager laughed. "Oh, the average public would consider that _very_
pessimistic. They want no harm to come even from doing wrong. They want
the drama to get round it, somehow. If you could show that Divine
Providence forgets wrong-doing altogether in certain cases, you would
make the fortune of your piece. Come, why couldn't you try something of
that kind? It would be the greatest comfort to all the sinners in front,
for every last man of them--or woman--would think she was the one who
was going to get awa