Nothing maddened Maxwell so much as to have his wife take this tone with him, when he had followed her up through the sinuosities that always began with her after a certain point. Short of that she was as frank and candid as a man, and he understood her, but beyond that the eternal womanly began, and he could make nothing of her. She evaded, and came and went, and returned upon her course, and all with as good a conscience, apparently, as if she were meeting him fairly and squarely on the question they started with. Sometimes he doubted if she really knew that she was behaving insincerely, or whether, if she knew it, she could help doing it. He believed her to be a more truthful nature than himself, and it was insufferable for her to be less so, and then accuse him of illogicality.
"I have no wish to talk," he said, smothering his rage, and taking up a page of manuscript.
"Of course," she went on, as if there had been no break in their good feeling, "I know what a goose Godolphin is, and I don't wonder you're vexed with him, but you know very well that I have nothing but the good of the play in view as a work of art, and I should say that if you couldn't keep Salome from rivalling Haxard in the interest of the spectator, you had better go back to the idea of making two plays of it. I think that the 'Second Chapter' would be a very good thing to begin with."
"Why, good heavens! you said just the contrary when we decided to drop it."
"Yes, but that was when I thought you would be able to subdue Salome."
"There never was any question of subduing Salome; it was a question of subduing Atland!"
"It's the same thing; keeping the love-business in the background."
"I give it up!" Maxwell flung down his manuscript in sign of doing so. "The whole thing is a mess, and you seem to delight in tormenting me about it. How am I to give the love-business charm, and yet keep it in the background?"
"I should think you could."
"How?"