me perfect
just as it is, but I know you won't be satisfied till you have put the
very last touch on it."

"Yes, I see all sorts of things I can do to it. Louise!"

"Well, what?"

"Don't you see that the love-business is the play now? I have got to
throw away all the sin-interest, all the Haxard situation, or keep them
together as they are, and write a new play altogether, with the light,
semi-comic motive of the love-business for the motive of the whole. It's
out of tone with Haxard's tragedy, and it can't be brought into keeping
with it. The sin-interest will kill the love-business, or the
love-business will kill the sin-interest. Don't you see?"

"Why, of course! You must make this light affair now, and when it's
opened the way for you with the public you can bring out the old play,"
she assented, and it instantly became the old play in both their minds;
it became almost the superannuated play. They talked it over in this new
aspect, and then they went back to the cottage, to look at the new play
as it shadowed itself forth in the sketch Maxwell had made. He read the
sketch to her again, and they saw how it could be easily expanded to
three or four acts, and made to fill the stage and the evening.

"And it will be the most original thing that ever was!" she exulted.

"I don't think there's been anything exactly like it before," he
allowed.

From time to time they spoke to each other in the night, and she asked
if he were asleep, and he if she were asleep, and then they began to
talk of the play again. Towards morning they drowsed a little, but at
their time of life the loss of a night's sleep means nothing, and they
rose as glad as they had lain down.

"I'll tell you, Brice," she said, the first thing, "you must have it
that they have been engaged, and you can call the play 'The Second
Chapter,' or something more alliterative. Don't you think that would be
a good name?"

"It would make the fortune of any play," he answered, "let alone a play
of such merit as this."

"Well, then, sha'n't you always say that I did something towards it?"

"I shall say you did everything towards it. You originated the idea, and
named it, and I simply acted as your amanuensis, as it were, and wrote
it out mostly from your dictation. It shall go on the bills, 'The Second
Chapter,' a demi-semi-serious comedy by Mrs. Louise Hilary Maxwell--in
letters half a foot high--and by B. Maxwell--in very small lower case,
that can't be