ackground?"

"I should think you could."

"How?"

"Well, I was afraid you would give Salome too much prominence."

"Didn't you know whether I had done so or not? You knew what I had done
before Godolphin came!"

"If Godolphin thinks she is too prominent, you ought to trust his
instinct."

Maxwell would not answer her. He went out, and she saw him strolling
down the path to the rocks. She took the manuscript and began to read it
over.

He did not come back, and when she was ready to go to supper she had to
go down to the rocks for him. His angry fit seemed to have passed, but
he looked abjectly sad, and her heart ached at sight of him. She said,
cheerfully, "I have been reading that love-business over again, Brice,
and I don't find it so far out as I was afraid it was. Salome is a
little too _prononcee_, but you can easily mend that. She is a
delightful character, and you have given her charm--too much charm. I
don't believe there's a truer woman in the whole range of the drama. She
is perfect, and that is why I think you can afford to keep her back a
little in the passages with Haxard. Of course, Godolphin wants to shine
there. You needn't give him her speeches, but you can put them somewhere
else, in some of the scenes with Atland; it won't make any difference
how much she outshines _him_, poor fellow."

He would not be entreated at once, but after letting her talk on to much
the same effect for awhile, he said, "I will see what can be done with
it. At present I am sick of the whole thing."

"Yes, just drop it for the present," she said. "I'm hungry, aren't you?"

"I didn't know it was time."

She was very tender with him, walking up to the hotel, and all that
evening she kept him amused, so that he would not want to look at his
manuscript. She used him, as a wife is apt to use her husband when he is
fretted and not very well, as if he were her little boy, and she did
this so sweetly that Maxwell could not resent it.

The next morning she let him go to his play again, and work all the
morning. He ended about noon, and told her he had done what she wanted
done to the love-business, he thought, but he would not show it to her,
for he said he was tired of it, and would have to go over it with
Godolphin, at any rate, when he came in the afternoon. They went to the
beach, but the person with the smouldering eyes failed to appear, and in
fact they did not see her again at Magnolia, and they decided that she
m