"I suppose you know, as well as I do, that it's two plays, and that it's
only half as good as if it were one."

The manager wheeled around from his table, and looked keenly at the
author, who contrived to say, "I think I know what you mean."

"You've got the making of the prettiest kind of little comedy in it, and
you've got the making of a very strong tragedy. But I don't think your
oil and water mix, exactly," said Grayson.

"You think the interest of the love-business will detract from the
interest of the homicide's fate?"

"And vice versa. Excuse me for asking something that I can very well
understand your not wanting to tell till I had read your play. Isn't
this the piece Godolphin has been trying out West?"

"Yes, it is," said Maxwell. "I thought it might prejudice you against
it, if--"

"Oh, that's all right. Why have you taken it from him?"

Maxwell felt that he could make up for his want of earlier frankness
now. "I didn't take it from him; he gave it back to me."

He sketched the history of his relation to the actor, and the manager
said, with smiling relish, "Just like him, just like Godolphin." Then
he added, "I'll tell you, and you mustn't take it amiss. Godolphin may
not know just why he gave the piece up, and he probably thinks it's
something altogether different, but you may depend upon it the trouble
was your trying to ride two horses in it. Didn't you feel that it was a
mistake yourself?"

"I felt it so strongly at one time that I decided to develop the
love-business into a play by itself and let the other go for some other
time. My wife and I talked it over. We even discussed it with Godolphin.
He wanted to do Atland. But we all backed out simultaneously, and went
back to the play as it stood."

"Godolphin saw he couldn't make enough of Atland," said the manager, as
if he were saying it to himself. "Well, you may be sure he feels now
that the character which most appeals to the public in the play is
Salome."

"He felt that before."

"And he was right. Now, I will tell you what you have got to do. You
have either got to separate the love-business from the rest of the play
and develop it into a comedy by itself--"

"That would mean a great deal of work, and I am rather sick of the whole
thing."

"Or," the manager went on without minding Maxwell, "you have got to cut
the part of Salome, and subordinate it entirely to Haxard"--Maxwell made
a movement of impatience and refusal, and the