"Don't! I'm not good; and I don't deserve success. I don't feel as if this belonged to me. I ought to send Godolphin's check back, in common honesty, common decency." He told of the quarrel he had witnessed on the canal-boat, and she loved him for his simple-hearted humility; but she said there was nothing parallel in the cases, and she would not let him think so; that it was morbid, and showed he had been overworking. "And now," she went on, "you must write to Mr. Ricker at once and thank him, and tell him you can't do the letters for him. Will you?" "I'll see." "You must. I want you to reserve your whole strength for the drama. That's your true vocation, and it would be a sin for you to turn to the right or left." He continued silent, and she went on: "Are you still thinking about our scrap this morning? Well, then, I'll promise never to begin it again. Will that do?" "Oh, I don't know that you began it. And I wasn't thinking--I was thinking of an idea for a play--the eventuation of good in evil--love evolving in hate." "That will be grand, if you can work it out. And now you see, don't you, that there is some use in squabbling, even?" "I suppose nothing is lost," said Maxwell. He took out his pocket-book, and folded Godolphin's check into it. XII. A week later there came another letter from Godolphin. It was very civil, and in its general text it did not bear out the promise of severity in its change of address to _Dear Sir_, from the _Dear Mr. Maxwell_ of the earlier date. It conveyed, in as kindly terms as could have been asked, a fact which no terms could have flattered into acceptability. Godolphin wrote, after trying the play two nights and a matinee in Chicago, to tell the author that he had withdrawn it because its failure had not been a failure in the usual sense but had been a grievous collapse, which left him no hopes that it would revive in the public favor if it were kept on. Maxwell would be able to judge, he said, from the newspapers he sent, of the view the critics had taken of the piece; but this would not have mattered at all if it had not been the view of the public, too. He said he would not pain Maxwell by repeating the opinions which he had borne the brunt of alone; but they were such as to satisfy him fully and finally that he had been mistaken in supposing there was a part for him in the piece. He begged to return it to _Maxwell_, and he ventured to send his prompt-book with the original manuscript, which might facilitate his getting the play into other hands. The parcel was brought in by express while they were sitting in the dismay caused by the letter, and took from them the hope that Godolphin might have written from a mood and changed his mind before sending back the piece. Neither of them had the nerve to open the parcel, which lay upon Maxwell's desk, very much sealed and tied and labelled, diffusing a faint smell of horses, as express packages mostly do, through the room.