"Why, you've got hold of it already."
"Oh yes, so I have! Well, I'll just grasp it in mine firmly, and let them both rest on your knee, so; and fling the edge of whatever I'm wearing on my shoulders over them, or my mantle, if it's hanging on the back of the chair, so"—she flung the edge of her shawl over their clasped hands to illustrate—"and nobody will suspect the least thing. Suppose the sea was the audience—a sea of faces you know; would any one dream down there that I was squeezing your hand at all the important moments, or you squeezing mine?"
"I hope they wouldn't think me capable of doing anything so indelicate as squeezing a lady's hand," said Maxwell. "I don't know what they might think of you, though, if there was any such elaborate display of concealment as you've got up here."
"Oh, this is merely rehearsing. Of course, I shall be more adroit, more careless, when I really come to it. But what I mean is that when we first see it together, the love-business, I shall want to feel that you are feeling every instant just as I do. Will you?"
"I don't see any great objection to that. We shall both be feeling very anxious about the play, if that's what you mean."
"That's what I mean in one sense," Louise allowed. "Sha'n't you be very anxious to see how they have imagined Salome and Atland?"
"Not so anxious as about how Godolphin has 'created' Haxard."
"I care nothing about that. But if the woman who does me is vulgar, or underbred, or the least bit coarse, and doesn't keep the character just as sweet and delicate as you imagined it, I don't know what I shall do to her."
"Nothing violent, I hope," Maxwell suggested languidly.
"I am not so sure," said Louise. "It's a dreadfully intimate affair with me, and if I didn't like it I should hiss, anyway."