"You would have hated it if she had played it with angelic perfection,
because you hated her."

"Perhaps you think she really did play it with angelic perfection! Well,
you needn't come back to dinner."

Louise passed into their room, to lay off her hat and sack.

"I will not come back at all, if you prefer," Maxwell called after her.

"I have no preferences in the matter," she mocked back.

XXIV.

Maxwell and Louise had torn at each other's hearts till they were
bleeding, and he wished to come back at once and she wished him to come,
that they might hurt themselves still more savagely; but when this
desire passed, they longed to meet and bind up one another's wounds.
This better feeling brought them together before night-fall, when
Maxwell returned, and Louise, at the sound of his latch-key in the door,
ran to let him in.

"Mr. Godolphin is here," she said, in a loud, cheery voice, and he
divined that he owed something of his eager welcome to her wish to keep
him from resuming the quarrel unwittingly. "He has just come to talk
over the rehearsal with you, and I wouldn't let him go. I was sure you
would be back soon."

She put her finger to her lip, with whatever warning intention, and
followed her husband into the presence of the actor, and almost into
his arms, so rapturous was the meeting between them.

"Well," cried Godolphin, "I couldn't help looking in a moment to talk
with you and Mrs. Maxwell about our Salome. I feel that she will make
the fortune of the piece--of any piece. Doesn't Miss Havisham's
rendition grow upon you? It's magnificent. It's on the grand scale. It's
immense. The more I think about it, the more I'm impressed with it.
She'll carry the house by storm. I've never seen anything like it; and
I'm glad to find that Mrs. Maxwell feels just as I do about it." Maxwell
looked at his wife, who returned his glance with a guiltless eye. "I was
afraid she might feel the loss of things that certainly _are_ lost in
it. I don't say that Miss Havisham's Salome, superb as it is, is _your_
Salome--or Mrs. Maxwell's. I've always fancied that Mrs. Maxwell had a
great deal to do with that character, and--I don't know why--I've always
thought of her when I've thought of _it_; but at the same time it's a
splendid Salome. She makes it Southern, almost tropical. It isn't the
Boston Salome. You may say that it is wanting in delicacy and the nice
shades; but it's full of passion; there's nothing caviare