y's name was Margaret.]

Three years were spent at this pleasant place, and though Louis's
health was never good, and he lived there, as he afterwards wrote,
"like a pallid weevil in a biscuit," a great deal was accomplished in
literary work by both husband and wife. There they put together the
stories in _The Dynamiter_, which, as will be remembered, Mrs.
Stevenson had made up to while away the hours of illness at Hyeres.
When the book came out little credit was given her by the book
reviewers for her part in it, a neglect which caused her some
mortification. Writing to her mother-in-law, she says: "I thought in
the beginning that I shouldn't mind being Louis's scapegoat, but it is
rather hard to be treated like a comma, and a superfluous one at that.
And then in one paper, the only one in which I am mentioned, the
critic refers to me as 'undoubtedly Mr. Stevenson's sister.' Why,
pray? Surely there can be nothing in the book that points to a sister
in particular."

The morning after her husband had the dream that suggested _Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde_, he came with a radiant countenance to show his work to
his wife, saying it was the best thing he had ever done. She read it
and thought it the worst, and thereupon fell into a state of deep
gloom, for she couldn't let it go, and yet it seemed cruel to tell him
so, and between the two horns of the dilemma she made herself quite
ill. At last, by his request and according to their custom, she put
her objections to it, as it then stood, in writing, complaining that
he had treated it simply as a story, whereas it was in reality an
allegory. After reading her paper and seeing the justice of her
criticism, with characteristic impulsiveness he immediately burned his
first draft and rewrote it from a different point of view. She was
appalled when he burned it, for she had only wanted him to change it,
but he was afraid of being influenced by the first writing and
preferred to start anew, with a clean slate.

Their discussions over the work were sometimes hot and protracted, for
neither was disposed to yield without a struggle. Speaking of this in
a letter to his mother, she says: "If I die before Louis, my last
earnest request is that he shall publish nothing without his father's
approval. I know that means little short of destruction to both of
them, but there will be no one else. The field is always covered with
my dead and wounded, and often I am forced to a compromise, but st