Yes," Louise assented, with a sad intelligence.

Maxwell seemed to have got some strength from confronting his calamity.
At any rate, he said, almost cheerfully, "I'll read you what I wrote
this morning," and she had to let him, though she felt that it was
taking her at a moment when her wish to console him was so great that
she would not be able to criticise him. But she found that he had done
it so well there was no need of criticism.

"You are wonderful, Brice!" she said, in a transport of adoration, which
she indulged as simply his due. "You are miraculous! Well, this is the
greatest triumph yet, even of _your_ genius. How you have seized the
whole idea! And so subtly, so delicately! And so completely disguised!
The girl acts just as a girl _would_ have acted. How could you know it?"

"Perhaps I've seen it," he suggested, demurely.

"No, no, you _didn't_ see it! That is the amusing part of it. You were
as blind as a bat all the time, and you never had the least suspicion;
you've told me so."

"Well, then, I've seen it retrospectively."

"Perhaps that way. But I don't believe you've seen it at all. You've
divined it; and that's where your genius is worth all the experience in
the world. The girl is twice as good as the man, and you never
experienced a girl's feelings or motives. You divined them. It's pure
inspiration. It's the prophet in you!"

"You'll be stoning me next," said Maxwell. "I don't think the man is so
very bad, even if I didn't divine him."

"Yes, for a poor creature of experience and knowledge, he will do very
well. But he doesn't compare with the girl."

"I hadn't so good a model."

She hugged him for saying that. "You pay the prettiest compliments in
the world, even if you don't pick up handkerchiefs."

Their joy in the triumph of his art was unalloyed by the hope of
anything outside of it, of any sort of honor or profit from it, though
they could not keep the thought of these out very long.

"Yes," she said, after one of the delicious silences that divided their
moments of exaltation. "There won't be any trouble about getting your
play taken, _now_."

After supper they strolled down for the sunset and twilight on the
rocks. There, as the dusk deepened, she put her wrap over his shoulders
as well as her own, and pulled it together in front of them both. "I am
not going to have you taking cold, now, when you need all your health
for your work more than ever. That love-business seems to