d blended, and they really belonged to each other. He would
have to invent some other love-business if he cut this out, but still it
could be done. Then it suddenly flashed upon him that there was
something easier yet, and that was to abandon the notion of getting his
piece played at all, and to turn it into a novel. He could give it
narrative form without much trouble, if any, beyond that of copying it,
and it would be thought a very dramatic story. He saw instantly how he
could keep and even enhance all the charm of the love-business as it
stood, in a novel; and in his revulsion of feeling he wished to tell his
wife. He made a movement towards the door of her room, but he heard the
even breathing of her sleep, and he stopped and flung himself on the
lounge to think. It was such a happy solution of the whole affair! He
need not even cease trying it with the managers, for he could use the
copy of the play that Godolphin had returned for that, and he could use
the copy he had always kept for recasting it in narrative. By the time
that he had got his play back from the last manager he would have his
novel ready for the first publisher. In the meantime he should be
writing his letters for the _Abstract_, and not consuming all his little
savings.

The relief from the stress upon him was delicious. He lay at rest and
heard the soft breathing of his wife from the other room, and an
indescribable tenderness for her filled his heart. Then he heard her
voice saying, "Well, don't wake him, poor boy!"

XVI.

Maxwell opened his eyes and found the maid lightly escaping from the
room. He perceived that he had slept all night on the lounge, and he
sent a cheery hail into his wife's room, and then followed it to tell
her how he had thought it all out. She was as glad as he was; she
applauded his plan to the ceiling; and he might not have thought of her
accident if he had not seen presently that she was eating her breakfast
in bed.

Then he asked after her ankle, and she said, "Oh, that is perfectly
well, or the same as perfectly. There's no pain at all there to speak
of, and I shall get up to luncheon. You needn't mind me any more. If you
haven't taken your death of cold sleeping there on the lounge--"

"I haven't."

"I want you to go down town to some manager with your play, and get some
paper, the kind I like; and then, after lunch, we'll begin turning it
into a novel, from your copy. It will be so easy for you that yo