"Oh, that's all right. Why have you taken it from him?"
Maxwell felt that he could make up for his want of earlier frankness now. "I didn't take it from him; he gave it back to me."
He sketched the history of his relation to the actor, and the manager said, with smiling relish, "Just like him, just like Godolphin." Then he added, "I'll tell you, and you mustn't take it amiss. Godolphin may not know just why he gave the piece up, and he probably thinks it's something altogether different, but you may depend upon it the trouble was your trying to ride two horses in it. Didn't you feel that it was a mistake yourself?"
"I felt it so strongly at one time that I decided to develop the love-business into a play by itself and let the other go for some other time. My wife and I talked it over. We even discussed it with Godolphin. He wanted to do Atland. But we all backed out simultaneously, and went back to the play as it stood."
"Godolphin saw he couldn't make enough of Atland," said the manager, as if he were saying it to himself. "Well, you may be sure he feels now that the character which most appeals to the public in the play is Salome."
"He felt that before."
"And he was right. Now, I will tell you what you have got to do. You have either got to separate the love-business from the rest of the play and develop it into a comedy by itself—"
"That would mean a great deal of work, and I am rather sick of the whole thing."
"Or," the manager went on without minding Maxwell, "you have got to cut the part of Salome, and subordinate it entirely to Haxard"—Maxwell made a movement of impatience and refusal, and the manager finished—"or else you have got to treat it frankly as the leading part in the piece, and get it into the hands of some leading actress."
"Do you mean," the author asked, "that you—or any manager—would take it if that were done?"