e in the country. But he said nothing, unless there was sympathy in
the cordial grip of his hand as he accompanied the other to the door.

On the threshold Wallace turned irresolutely. 'It will be a risk next
Sunday,' he said; 'I'm determined it shan't be anything more. She is not
the woman, I think, to make a quarrel out of a thing like that.'

'Oh no,' said Kendal; 'keep your courage up. I think it may be managed.
You give me leave to handle _Elvira_ as I like.'

'Oh heavens, yes!' said Wallace; 'get me out of the scrape any way you
can, and I'll bless you for ever. What a brute I am never to have asked
after your work! Does it get on?'

'As much as any work can in London just now. I must take it away with me
somewhere into the country next month. It doesn't like dinner-parties.'

'Like me,' said Wallace, with a shrug.

'Nonsense!' said Kendal; 'you're made for them. Good-night.'

'Good-night. It's awfully good of you.'

'What? Wait till it's well over!'

Wallace ran down the stairs and was gone. Kendal walked back slowly into
his room and stood meditating. It seemed to him that Wallace did not
quite realise the magnificence of his self-devotion. 'For, after all,
it's an awkward business,' he said to himself, shaking his head over his
own temerity. 'How I am to come round a girl as frank, as direct, as
unconventional as that, I don't quite know! But she ought not to have
that play; it's one of the few good things that have been done for the
English stage for a long time past. It's well put together, the plot
good, three or four strongly marked characters, and some fine Victor
Hugoish dialogue, especially in the last act. But there is extravagance
in it, as there is in all the work of that time, and in Isabel
Bretherton's hands a great deal of it would be grotesque: nothing would
save it but her reputation and the get-up, and that would be too great
a shame. No, no; it will not do to have the real thing swamped by all
sorts of irrelevant considerations in this way. I like Miss Bretherton
heartily, but I like good work, and if I can save the play from her, I
shall save her too from what everybody with eyes in his head would see to
be a failure!'

It was a rash determination. Most men would have prudently left the
matter to those whom it immediately concerned, but Kendal had a Quixotic
side to him, and at this time in his life a whole-hearted devotion to
certain intellectual interests, which decided his action