though every woman who saw it would know that it was. She examined
the wrapper of the newspaper, and made sure that it was addressed in
Godolphin's hand, and she said that if he did not speak of the article
in his letter, Maxwell must write out to the newspaper and ask who had
done it.

Godolphin's letter came at last, with many excuses for his delay. He
said he had expected the newspaper notices to speak for him, and he
seemed to think that they had all been altogether favorable to the play.
It was not very consoling to have him add that he now believed the piece
would have run the whole week in Midland, if he had kept it on; but he
had arranged merely to give it a trial, and Maxwell would understand
how impossible it was to vary a programme which had once been made out.
One thing was certain, however: the piece was an assured success, and a
success of the most flattering and brilliant kind, and Godolphin would
give it a permanent place in his _repertoire_. There was no talk of his
playing nothing else, and there was no talk of putting the piece on for
a run, when he opened in New York. He said he had sent Maxwell a paper
containing a criticism in the editorial columns, which would serve to
show him how great an interest the piece had excited in Midland, though
he believed the article was not written by one of the regular force, but
was contributed from the outside by a young fellow who had been
described to Godolphin as a sort of Ibsen crank. At the close, he spoke
of certain weaknesses which the piece had developed in the performance,
and casually mentioned that he would revise it at these points as he
found the time; it appeared to him that it needed overhauling,
particularly in the love episode; there was too much of that, and the
interest during an entire act centred so entirely upon Salome that, as
he had foreseen, the role of Haxard suffered.

IX.

The Maxwells stared at each other in dismay when they had finished this
letter, which Louise had opened, but which they had read together, she
looking over his shoulder. All interest in the authorship of the article
of the Ibsen crank, all interest in Godolphin's apparent forgetfulness
of his solemn promises to give the rest of his natural life to the
performance of the piece, was lost in amaze at the fact that he was
going to revise it to please himself, and to fashion Maxwell's careful
work over in his own ideal of the figure he should make in it to the
p