"No, of course not. You always say what you mean, and you don't change. That is what is so beautiful in you. You can't understand a nature that is one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow." "Oh, I think I can," said Maxwell, with a satirical glance. "Brice!" she softly murmured; and then she said, "Well, I don't care. He _is_ just like a woman." "You didn't like my saying so last night." "That was a different thing. At any rate, it's I that say so now, and I want you to write that to him. It will bring him back flying. Will you?" "I'll think about it," said Maxwell; "I'm not sure that I want Godolphin back, or not at once. It's a great relief to be rid of him, in a certain way, though a manager might be worse slavery. Still, I think I would like to try a manager. I have never shown this play to one, and I know the Odeon people in Boston, and, perhaps--" "You are saying that to comfort me." "I wouldn't comfort you for worlds, my dear. I am saying this to distress you. But since I have worked that love-business over, it seems to me much less a one-part play, and if I could get a manager to take a fancy to it I could have my own way with it much better; at least, he wouldn't want me to take all the good things out of the other characters' mouths and stuff them into Haxard's." "Do you really think so?" "I really thought so before I got Godolphin's letter. That made him seem the one and only man for me." "Yes," Louise assented, with a sad intelligence. Maxwell seemed to have got some strength from confronting his calamity. At any rate, he said, almost cheerfully, "I'll read you what I wrote this morning," and she had to let him, though she felt that it was taking her at a moment when her wish to console him was so great that she would not be able to criticise him. But she found that he had done it so well there was no need of criticism. "You are wonderful, Brice!" she said, in a transport of adoration, which she indulged as simply his due. "You are miraculous! Well, this is the greatest triumph yet, even of _your_ genius. How you have seized the whole idea! And so subtly, so delicately! And so completely disguised! The girl acts just as a girl _would_ have acted. How could you know it?" "Perhaps I've seen it," he suggested, demurely. "No, no, you _didn't_ see it! That is the amusing part of it. You were as blind as a bat all the time, and you never had the least suspicion; you've told me so." "Well, then, I've seen it retrospectively." "Perhaps that way. But I don't believe you've seen it at all. You've divined it; and that's where your genius is worth all the experience in the world. The girl is twice as good as the man, and you never experienced a girl's feelings or motives. You divined them. It's pure inspiration. It's the prophet in you!" "You'll be stoning me next," said Maxwell. "I don't think the man is so very bad, even if I didn't divine him."