Part 24 (2/2)
”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.”
”Oh!” she twitted. ”I see that you have made up your mind to let them have the play, after all.”
”Yes, I have,” he answered, savagely.
”Perhaps you meant to do it all along?”
”Perhaps I did.”
”Very well, then,” said Louise. ”Would you mind coming to the train with me on your way down town to-morrow?”
”Not at all.”
XXII.
In the morning neither of them recurred to what Louise had said of her going home for a few days. She had apparently made no preparation for the journey; but if she was better than her words in this, he was quite as bad as his in going down town after breakfast to let Grayson have the play, no matter whom he should get to do Salome. He did not reiterate his purpose, but she knew from the sullen leave, or no-leave, which he took of her, that it was fixed.
When he was gone she had what seemed to her the very worst quarter of an hour she had ever known; but when he came back in the afternoon, looking haggard but savage, her ordeal had long been over. She asked him quietly if they had come to any definite conclusion about the play, and he answered, with harsh aggression, yes, that Mrs. Harley had agreed to take the part of Salome; G.o.dolphin's old company had been mostly got together, and they were to have the first rehearsal the next morning.
”Should you like me to come some time?” asked Louise.
”I should like you very much to come,” said Maxwell, soberly, but with a latent doubt of her meaning, which she perceived.
”I have been thinking,” she said, ”whether you would like me to call on Mrs. Harley this evening with you?”
”What for?” he demanded, suspiciously.
”Well, I don't know. I thought it might be appropriate.”
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