"Be as sincere with me as you like. But this—this is a matter of business, and I'd rather you wouldn't."
"Rather I wouldn't say anything at all?" demanded Louise.
"I didn't say so, and you know I didn't; but if you can't get on without ruffling Godolphin, why, perhaps—"
"Very well, then, I'll leave the room the next time he comes. That will be perfectly simple; and it will be perfectly simple to do as most other people would—not concern myself with the play in any way from this out. I dare say you would prefer that, too, though I didn't quite expect it to come to that before our honeymoon was out."
"Oh, now, my dear!"
"You know it's so. But I can do it! I might have expected it from a man who was so perfectly self-centred and absorbed. But I was such a fool—" Her tears came and her words stopped.
Maxwell leaned forward with his thin face between his hands. This made him miserable, personally, but he was not so miserable but his artistic consciousness could take note of the situation as a very good one, and one that might be used effectively on the stage. He analyzed it perfectly in that unhappy moment. She was jealous of his work, which she had tolerated only while she could share it, and if she could not share it, while some other was suffered to do so, it would be cruel for her. But he knew that he could not offer any open concession now without making bad worse, and he must wait till the right time for it came. He had so far divined her, without formulating her, that he knew she would be humiliated by anything immediate or explicit, but would later accept a tacit repentance from him; and he instinctively forebore.
III.
For the present in her resentment of his willingness to abase his genius before Godolphin, or even to hold it in abeyance, Mrs. Maxwell would not walk to supper with her husband in the usual way, touching his shoulder with hers from time to time, and making herself seem a little lower in stature by taking the downward slope of the path leading from their cottage to the hotel. But the necessity of appearing before the people at their table on as perfect terms with him as ever had the effect that conduct often has on feeling, and she took his arm in going back to their cottage, and leaned tenderly upon him.