e that Mrs. Harley indicated her to the chaperon,
and that she remembered her from Magnolia, but she never looked at
Louise, any more than Louise looked at her, after that.

She wondered if Maxwell ever met her, but she was ashamed to ask him,
and he did not mention her. Only once when they were together did they
happen to encounter her, and then he said, quite simply, "I think she's
certainly an actress. That public look of the eyes is unmistakable.
Emotional parts, I should say."

Louise forced herself to suggest, "You might get her to let you do a
play for her."

"I doubt if I could do anything unwholesome enough for her."

At last the summons they were expecting from Grayson came, just after
they had made up their minds to wait another week for it.

Louise had taken the letter from the maid, and she handed it to Maxwell
with a gasp at sight of the Argosy theatre address printed in the corner
of the envelope. "I know it's a refusal."

"If you think that will make it an acceptance," he had the hardihood to
answer, "it won't. I've tried that sort of thing too often;" and he tore
open the letter.

It was neither a refusal nor an acceptance, and their hopes soared
again, hers visibly, his secretly, to find it a friendly confession that
the manager had not found time to read the play until the night before,
and a request that Maxwell would drop in any day between twelve and one,
which was rather a leisure time with him, and talk it over.

"Don't lose an instant, dear!" she adjured him.

"It's only nine o'clock," he answered, "and I shall have to lose several
instants."

"That is so," she lamented; and then they began to canvas the probable
intention of the manager's note. She held out passionately to the end
for the most encouraging interpretation of it, but she did not feel that
it would have any malign effect upon the fact for him to say, "Oh, it's
just a way of letting me down easy," and it clearly gave him great heart
to say so.

When he went off to meet his fate, she watched him, trembling, from the
window; as she saw him mounting the elevated steps, she wondered at his
courage; she had given him all her own.

The manager met him with "Ah, I'm glad you came soon. These things fade
out of one's mind so, and I really want to talk about your play. I've
been very much interested in it."

Maxwell could only bow his head and murmur something about being very
glad, very, very glad, with a stupid iteration.