"You blame me!" she said, after a blinding moment, in which the letter darkened before her eyes, and she tottered in her walk. She gave it back to him as she spoke.
"What a passion you have for blaming!" he answered, coldly. "If I fixed the blame on you it wouldn't help."
"No," Louise meekly assented, and they walked along towards their cottage. They hardly spoke again before they reached it and went in. Then she asked, "Did you expect anything like this from the way he parted with you yesterday?"
Maxwell gave a bitter laugh. "From the way we parted yesterday I was expecting him early this afternoon, with the world in the palm of his hand, to lay it at my feet. He all but fell upon my neck when he left me. I suppose his not actually doing it was an actor's intimation that we were to see each other no more."
"I wish you had nothing to do with actors!" said Louise.
"They appear to have nothing to do with me," said Maxwell. "It comes to the same thing."
They reached the cottage, and sat down in the little parlor where she had left him so hopefully at work in the morning, where they had talked his play over so jubilantly the night before.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, after an abysmal interval.
"Nothing. What is there to do?"
"You have a right to an explanation; you ought to demand it."