an put his head in, with
what Maxwell fancied a preconcerted effect, and gave the manager a card.
He said, "All right; bring him round," and he added to Maxwell, "Shall I
send your play--"

"No, no, I will take it," and Maxwell carried it away with a heavier
heart than he had even when he got it back from Godolphin. He did not
know how to begin again, and he had to go home and take counsel with his
wife as to the next step.

He could not bear to tell her of his disappointment, and it was harder
still to tell her of the kind of hope the manager had held out to him.
He revolved a compromise in his mind, and when they sat down together he
did not mean to conceal anything, but only to postpone something; he did
not clearly know why. He told her the alternatives the manager had
suggested, and she agreed with him they were all impossible.

"Besides," she said, "he doesn't promise to take the play, even if you
do everything to a 't.' Did he ask you to lunch again?"

"No, that seemed altogether a thing of the past."

"Well, let us have ours, and then we can go into the Park, and forget
all about it for a while, and perhaps something new will suggest
itself."

That was what they did, but nothing new suggested itself. They came home
fretted with their futile talk. There seemed nothing for Maxwell to do
but to begin the next day with some other manager.

They found a note from Grayson waiting Maxwell. "Well, you open it," he
said, listlessly, to his wife, and in fact he felt himself at that
moment physically unable to cope with the task, and he dreaded any
fluctuation of emotion that would follow, even if it were a joyous one.

"What does this mean, Brice?" demanded his wife, with a terrible
provisionality in her tone, as she stretched out the letter to him, and
stood before him where he lounged in the cushioned window-seat.

Grayson had written: "If you care to submit your play to Yolande
Havisham, you can easily do so. I find that her address is the same as
yours. Her name is Harley. But I was mistaken about the divorce. It was
a death."

Maxwell lay stupidly holding the note before him.

"Will you tell me what it means?" his wife repeated. "Or why you didn't
tell me before, if you meant to give your play to that creature?"

"I don't mean to give it to her," said Maxwell, doggedly. "I never did,
for an instant. As for not telling you that Grayson had suggested
it--well, perhaps I wished to spare myself a scene like