oing to be. They almost always walked back
from these drives, and it was not so far but they could walk over to the
North River for the sunset before their dinner, which they had late when
they did that, and earlier when they did not do it. Dinner was rather a
matter of caprice with them. Sometimes they dined at a French or Italian
_table d'hote_; sometimes they foraged for it before they came in from
their sunset, or their afternoon in the park. When dinner consisted
mainly of a steak or chops, with one of the delicious salads their
avenue abounded in, and some improvisation of potatoes, and coffee
afterward, it was very easy to get it up in half an hour. They kept one
maid, who called herself a Sweden's girl, and Louise cooked some of the
things herself. She did not cook them so well as the maid, but Maxwell
never knew what he was eating, and he thought it all alike good.

In their simple circumstances, Louise never missed the affluence that
had flattered her whole life in her father's house. It seemed to her as
if she had not lived before her marriage--as if she had always lived as
she did now. She made the most of her house-keeping, but there was not a
great deal of that, at the most. She knew some New York people, but it
was too early yet for them to be back to town, and, besides, she doubted
if she should let them know where she was; for society afflicted
Maxwell, and she could not care for it unless he did. She did not wish
to do anything as yet, or be anything apart from him; she was timid
about going into the street without him. She wished to be always with
him, and always talking to him; but it soon came to his imploring her
not to talk when she was in the room where he was writing; and he often
came to the table so distraught that the meal might have passed without
a word but for her.

He valued her all she could possibly have desired in relation to his
work, and he showed her how absolutely he rested upon her sympathy, if
not her judgment, in it. He submitted everything to her, and forbore,
and changed, and amended, and wrote and rewrote at her will; or when he
revolted, and wrote on in defiance of her, he was apt to tear the work
up. He destroyed a good deal of good literature in this way, and more
than once it happened that she had tacitly changed her mind and was of
his way of thinking when it was too late. In view of such a chance she
made him promise that he would always show her what he had written, ev