was in the
bathing-dress still, but her eyes were smouldering away just as they
were that day on the beach at Magnolia."

"Oh!" said Maxwell, indifferently. "Where did you see her?"

"On the avenue, and I know she lives in the neighborhood somewhere,
because she was shopping here on the avenue, and I could have easily
followed her home if she had not taken the Elevated for down town."

"Why didn't you take it, too? It might have been a long way round, but
it would have been certain. I've been wanting you here badly. Just tell
me what you think of that."

He gave her the editor's letter, and she hastily ran it through. "I
wouldn't think of it for a moment," she said. "Were there any letters
for me?"

"It isn't a thing to be dismissed without reflection," he began.

"I thought you wanted to devote yourself entirely to the drama?"

"Of course."

"And you've always said there was nothing so killing to creative work as
any sort of journalism."

"This wouldn't take more than a day or two each week, and twenty-five
dollars a letter would be convenient while we are waiting for our cards
to turn up."

"Oh, very well! If you are so fickle as all that, _I_ don't know what to
say to you." She put the letter down on the table before him, and went
out of the room.

He tried to write, but with the hurt of what he felt her unkindness he
could not, and after a certain time he feigned an errand into their
room, where she had shut herself from him, and found her lying down.
"Are you sick?" he asked, coldly.

"Not at all," she answered. "I suppose one may lie down without being
sick, as you call it. I should say ill, myself."

"I'm so glad you're not sick that I don't care what you call it."

He was going out, when she spoke again: "I didn't know you cared
particularly, you are always so much taken up with your work. I suppose,
if you wrote those letters for the _Abstract_, you need never think of
me at all, whether I was ill or well."

"You would take care to remind me of your existence from time to time, I
dare say. You haven't the habit of suffering in silence a great deal."

"You would like it better, of course, if I had."

"A great deal better, my dear. But I didn't know that you regarded my
work as self-indulgence altogether. I have flattered myself now and then
that I was doing it for you, too."

"Oh yes, very likely. But if you had never seen me you would be doing it
all the same."

"I'm afraid so. I seem t