"Yes." Louise sat quiet, and then she said: "What a long misery your play has been to me!" "You haven't helped make it any great joy to me," said Maxwell, bitterly. She began to weep, silently, and he stood looking down at her in utter wretchedness. "Well," he said at last, "what shall I do about it?" Louise wiped her tears, and cleared up cold, as we say of the weather. She rose, as if to leave the room, and said, haughtily: "You shall do as you think best for yourself. You must let them have the play, and let them choose whom they think best for the part. But you can't expect me to come to see it." "Then that unsays all the rest. If you don't come to see it, I sha'n't, and I shall not let them have the piece. That is all. Louise," he entreated, after these first desperate words, "_can't_ we grapple with this infernal nightmare, so as to get it into the light, somehow, and see what it really is? How can it matter to you who plays the part? Why do you care whether Miss Pettrell or Mrs. Harley does it?" "Why do you ask such a thing as that?" she returned, in the same hard frost. "You know where the idea of the character came from, and why it was sacred to me. Or perhaps you forget!" "No, I don't forget. But try--can't you try?--to specify just why you object to Mrs. Harley?" "You have your theory. You said I was jealous of her." "I didn't mean it. I never believed that." "Then I can't explain. If you don't understand, after all that's been said, what is the use of talking? I'm tired of it!" She went into her room, and he sank into the chair before his desk and sat there, thinking. When she came back, after a while, he did not look round at her, and she spoke to the back of his head. "Should you have any objection to my going home for a few days?" "No," he returned. "I know papa would like to have me, and I think you would be less hampered in what you will have to do now if I'm not here." "You're very considerate. But if that's what you are going for, you might as well stay. I'm not going to do anything whatever." "Now, you mustn't talk foolishly, Brice," she said, with an air of superior virtue mixed with a hint of martyrdom. "I won't have you doing anything rash or boyish. You will go on and let them have your play just the same as if I didn't exist." She somewhat marred the effect of her self-devotion by adding: "And I shall go on just as if _it_ didn't exist." He said nothing, and she continued: "You couldn't expect me to take any interest in it after this, could you? Because, though I am ready to make any sort of sacrifice for you, I think any one, I don't care who it was, would say that was a little _too_ much. Don't you think so yourself?" "You are always right. I think that." "Don't be silly. I am trying to do the best I can, and you have no right to make it hard for me." Maxwell wheeled round in his chair: "Then I wish you wouldn't make your best so confoundedly disagreeable."