is very room."

"_I_ don't know what's the matter with you, Louise," he said, lying back
and shutting his eyes.

"Then I must tell you!" And she came out with the whole story, which she
had to repeat in parts before he could understand it. When he did
understand that she had answered an advertisement in the _Register_, in
his name, he opened his eyes and sat up.

"Well?" he said.

"Well, don't you see how wrong and wicked that was?"

"I've heard of worse things."

"Oh, don't say so, dearest! It was living a lie, don't you see. And I've
been living a lie ever since, and now I'm justly punished for not
telling you long ago."

She told him of the visit she had just had, and who the man was, and
whom he wanted the play for; and now a strange thing happened with her.
She did not beseech him not to give his play to that woman; on the
contrary she said: "And now, Brice, I want you to let her have it. I
know she will play Salome magnificently, and that will make the fortune
of the piece, and it will give you such a name that anything you write
after this will get accepted; and you can satisfy your utmost ambition,
and you needn't mind me--no--or think of me at all any more than if I
were the dust of the earth; and I am! Will you?"

He got up from the lounge and began to walk the floor, as he always did
when he was perplexed; and she let him walk up and down in silence as
long as she could bear it. At last she said: "I am in earnest, Brice, I
am indeed, and if you don't do it, if you let me or my feelings stand in
your way, in the slightest degree, I will never forgive you. Will you go
straight down to the Coleman House, as soon as you've had your dinner,
and tell that man he can have your play for that woman?"

"No," said Maxwell, stopping in his walk, and looking at her in a dazed
way.

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. "Why?" she choked.

"Because Godolphin is here."

"Godo--" she began; and she cast herself on the lounge that Maxwell had
vacated, and plunged her face in the pillow and sobbed, "Oh, cruel,
cruel, _cruel_! Oh, _cruel_, cruel, cruel, cruel!"

XX.

Maxwell stood looking at his wife with the cold disgust which hysterics
are apt to inspire in men after they have seen them more than once. "I
suppose that when you are ready you will tell me what is the matter with
you."

"To let me suffer so, when you knew all the time that Godolphin was
here, and you needn't give your play to that