"Agnes," I remarked, one February evening, when we were on our way home from a concert to which we had boldly gone without even a pretence that it was in the remotest way connected with our literary project, "I fear we are becoming demoralized, and it seems to me the only hope of our ever completing 'April's Lady' is to put everything else aside for the time being and give our minds to it. I can get my work arranged, and you can finish those articles for 'The Quill' by the middle of March. Then, we can be quietly married and go to some nice old-fashioned place--say St. Augustine--for a couple of months and get this _magnum opus_ on paper at last." "As to being married," returned she sedately, "have you considered that we could not possibly make a living, since we should inevitably be always writing the same things?" "Why, that is my chief reason," I retorted, "for proposing it. Think how awkward it is going to be if either of us marries somebody else, and then we write the same things. It is a good deal better to have our interests in common if our inventive faculty is to be so." "There is something in what you say," Agnes assented; "and it would be especially awkward for you, since the invention is in my head." "Then we will consider it all arranged." "Oh, no, George; by no means. I couldn't think of it for a minute!" Whether she did think of it for a minute is a point which may be left for the settling of those versed in the ways of the feminine mind; certain it is that the programme was carried out--except in one trifling particular. We were quietly married, we did go to St. Augustine, but as for doing anything with the story, that was quite another thing. We did not finish it then, and we have not finished it yet, and I have ceased to have any very firm confidence that we ever shall finish it; although, whenever arises one of those financial crises which are so painfully frequent in the family of a literary man, and we sit down to consider possible resources, one or the other of us is sure sooner or later to observe:-- "And then there is 'April's Lady,' you know." Interlude Eighth. A CUBAN MORNING. A CUBAN MORNING. [_Scene, the shady piazza of the hotel at Marianao, Cuba. Time, nine o'clock on a hot March morning. Miss Peltonville and Arthur Chester tête-à-tête._] _She._ Why did you follow us to Cuba? _He._ I have already told you that I thought you were in Florida. _She._ Yes? And so you came to Marianao, where nobody comes at this time of year, in order that you might be perfectly safe from an encounter, I suppose. _He._ Oh, I--that is; precisely. _She._ I had a letter from Annie Cleaves yesterday. _He._ Had you? _She._ Yes; and she said you told her that you were coming to Cuba to find me. _He._ Oh, that's nothing. It isn't to be supposed I told her the truth. _She._ Do you speak the truth so seldom, then? Is there no dependence to be put on what you say?