ails in
the ideal, or does a bit of clap-trap when they have wrought the
audience up in expectation of something noble, then they insult the
audience--or all the better part of it."

"The better part of the audience never fills the house," said the actor.

"Very well. I hope my husband will never write for the worse part."

"And I hope I shall never play to it," Godolphin returned, and he looked
hurt at the insinuation of her words.

"It isn't a question of all that," Maxwell interposed, with a worried
glance at his wife. "Mr. Godolphin has merely suggested something that
can be taken into the general account; we needn't decide it now. By the
way," he said to the actor, "have you thought over that point about
changing Haxard's crime, or the quality of it? I think it had better not
be an intentional murder; that would kill the audience's sympathy with
him from the start, don't you think? We had better have it what they
call a rencontre down there, where two gentlemen propose to kill each
other on sight. Greenshaw's hold on him would be that he was the only
witness of the fight, and that he could testify to a wilful murder if he
chose. Haxard's real crime must be the killing of Greenshaw."

"Yes," said Godolphin, and he entered into the discussion of the effect
this point would have with the play. Mrs. Maxwell was too much vexed to
forgive him for making the suggestion which he had already dropped, and
she left the room for fear she should not be able to govern herself at
the sight of her husband condescending to temporize with him. She
thought that Maxwell's willingness to temporize, even when it involved
no insincerity, was a defect in his character; she had always thought
that, and it was one of the things that she meant to guard him against
with all the strength of her zeal for his better self. When Godolphin
was gone at last, she lost no time in coming back to Maxwell, where he
sat with the manuscript of his play before him, apparently lost in some
tangle of it. She told him abruptly that she did not understand how, if
he respected himself, if he respected his own genius, he could consider
such an idea as Godolphin's skirt-dance for an instant.

"Did I consider it?" he asked.

"You made him think so."

"Well," returned Maxwell, and at her reproachful look he added,
"Godolphin never thought I was considering it. He has too much sense,
and he would be astonished and disgusted if I took him in earnest and
did w