inhabitants of the same planet, and
the anger that heaved within her went out in a wild flash of resentment
towards her husband for having forever fixed that woman in her
consciousness with a phrase. If it had not been for that, she would not
have thought twice of her when they first saw her, and she would not
have known her when they met again, and at the worst would merely have
been harassed with a vague resemblance which would never have been
verified.

She had climbed the stairs to their apartment on the fourth floor, when
she felt the need to see more, know more, of this hateful being so
strong upon her, that she stopped with her latch-key in her door and
went down again. She did not formulate her intention, but she meant to
hurry back to the provision store, with the pretext of changing her
order, and follow the woman wherever she went, until she found out where
she lived; and she did not feel, as a man would, the disgrace of
dogging her steps in that way so much as she felt a fatal dread of her.
If she should be gone by the time Louise got back to the shop, she would
ask the provision man about her, and find out in that way. She stayed a
little while to rehearse the terms of her inquiry, and while she
lingered the woman herself came round the corner of the avenue and
mounted the steps where Louise stood and, with an air of custom, went on
upstairs to the second floor, where Louise heard her putting a latch-key
into the door, which then closed after her.

XIII.

Maxwell went to a manager whom he had once met in Boston, where they had
been apparently acceptable to each other in a long talk they had about
the drama. The manager showed himself a shrewd and rather remorseless
man of business in all that he said of the theatre, but he spoke as
generously and reverently of the drama as Maxwell felt, and they parted
with a laughing promise to do something for it yet. In fact, if it had
not been for the chances that threw him into Godolphin's hand
afterwards, he would have gone to this manager with his play in the
first place, and he went to him now, as soon as he was out of
Godolphin's hands, not merely because he was the only manager he knew in
the city, but because he believed in him as much as his rather sceptical
temper permitted him to believe in any one, and because he believed he
would give him at least an intelligent audience.

The man in the box-office, where he stood in the glow of an electric
ligh