"Why not?"
"Simply because every night at every house is taken six months beforehand."
"Who would ever have dreamt," said Louise, ruefully, "that simply writing a play would involve any one in all these exasperating business details."
"Nobody can get free of business," Maxwell returned.
"Then I will tell you," she brightened up to say. "Why not sell him the piece outright, and wash your hands of it?"
"Because he wouldn't buy it outright, and if I washed my hands of it he could do what he pleased with it. If he couldn't tinker it up himself he could hire some one else to do it, and that would be worse yet."
"Well, then, the only thing for us to do is to go on to New York, and wait there till Godolphin comes. I suppose papa and mamma would like to have us stay through October with them in Boston, but I don't see much sense in that, and I don't choose to have the air of living on them. I want to present an unbroken front of independence from the beginning, as far as inquiring friends are concerned; and in New York we shall be so lost to sight that nobody will know how we are living. You can work at your new play while we're waiting, and we can feel that the onset in the battle of life has sounded."
Maxwell laughed, as she meant him, at the mock heroics of her phrase, and she pulled off his hat, and rubbed his hair round on his skull in exultation at having arrived at some clear understanding. "I wouldn't have hair like silk," she jeered.
"And I wouldn't have hair like corn-silk," he returned. "At least not on my own head."
"Yes, it is coarse. And it's yours quite as much as mine," she said, thoughtfully. "We do belong to each other utterly, don't we? I never thought of it in that light before. And now our life has gone into your work, already! I can't tell you, Brice, how sweet it is to think of that love-business being our own! I shall be so proud of it on the stage! But as long as we live no one but ourselves must know anything about it. Do you suppose they will?" she asked, in sudden dismay.