ce. Anybody could believe in Brice's
genius, but I believed in his star, and I always knew that he would get
on, and I was all for his giving up his newspaper work, and devoting
himself to the drama; and now the way is open to him, and all he has got
to do is to keep on writing."

"Come now, Louise," said her husband.

"Well," her father interposed, "I'm glad of your luck, Maxwell. It isn't
in my line, exactly, but I don't believe I could be any happier, if it
were. After all, it's doing something to elevate the stage. I wish
someone would take hold of the pulpit."

Maxwell shrugged. "I'm not strong enough for that, quite. And I can't
say that I had any conscious intention to elevate the stage with my
play."

"But you had it unconsciously, Brice," said Louise, "and it can't help
having a good effect on life, too."

"It will teach people to be careful how they murder people," Maxwell
assented.

"Well, it's a great chance," said Hilary, with the will to steer a
middle course between Maxwell's modesty and Louise's overweening pride.
"There really isn't anything that people talk about more. They discuss
plays as they used to discuss sermons. If you've done a good play,
you've done a good thing."

His wife hastened to make answer for him. "He's done a _great_ play, and
there are no ifs or ans about it." She went on to celebrate Maxwell's
achievement till he was quite out of countenance, for he knew that she
was doing it mainly to rub his greatness into her father, and he had so
much of the old grudge left that he would not suffer himself to care
whether Hilary thought him great or not. It was a relief when Mrs.
Hilary came in. Louise became less defiant in her joy then, or else the
effect of it was lost in Mrs. Hilary's assumption of an entire
expectedness in the event. Her world was indeed so remote from the world
of art that she could value success in it only as it related itself to
her family, and it seemed altogether natural to her that her daughter's
husband should take its honors. She was by no means a stupid woman; for
a woman born and married to wealth, with all the advantages that go
with it, she was uncommonly intelligent; but she could not help looking
upon aesthetic honors of any sort as in questionable taste. She would
have preferred position in a son-in-law to any distinction appreciable
to the general, but wanting that it was fit he should be distinguished
in the way he chose. In her feeling it went f