ter, or his cousin, or his aunt,
if he hasn't got a wife; I saw them do that once, at a big commercial
dinner I reported."

"Ah, I was afraid it was to be exclusively a man's dinner!" the actor
interrupted.

"Oh, no," Maxwell answered, with a shade of vexation. "That wouldn't do.
You couldn't have a scene, or, at least, not a whole act, without women.
Of course I understand that. Even if you could keep the attention of the
audience without them, through the importance of the intrigue, still you
would have to have them for the sake of the stage-picture. The drama is
literature that makes a double appeal; it appeals to the sense as well
as the intellect, and the stage is half the time merely a picture-frame.
I had to think that out pretty early."

The actor nodded. "You couldn't too soon."

"It wouldn't do to have nothing but a crowd of black coats and white
shirt-fronts on the stage through a whole act. You want color, and a lot
of it, and you can only get it, in our day, with the women's costumes.
Besides, they give movement and life. After the dinner begins they're
supposed to sparkle all through. I've imagined the table set down the
depth of the stage, with Haxard and the nominal host at the head,
fronting the audience, and the people talking back and forth on each
side, and I let the ladies do most of the talking, of course. I mean to
have the dinner served through all the courses, and the waiters coming
and going; the events will have to be hurried, and the eating merely
sketched, at times; but I should keep the thing in pretty perfect form,
till it came to the speaking. I shall have to cut that a good deal, but
I think I can give a pretty fair notion of how they butter the object of
their hospitality on such occasions; I've seen it and heard it done
often enough. I think, perhaps, I shall have the dinner an act by
itself. There are only four acts in the play now, and I'll have to make
five. I want to give Haxard's speech as fully as possible, for that's
what I study the man in, and make my confidences to the audience about
him. I shall make him butter himself, but all with the utmost humility,
and brag of everything that he disclaims the merit of."

The actor rose and reached across the table for the sugar. "That's a
capital notion. That's new. That would make a hit--the speech would."

"Do you think so?" returned the author. "_I_ thought so. I believe that
in the hands of a good actor the speech could be mad