She stopped him with another little cry of delight that was very sweet
to him, and full of moment.

"Oh, how glad I am!" she said. "How proud you must be! Now, why do you
pretend you are not? And I suppose Tree and the rest of them will be
in the cast, and all that dreadful American colony in the stalls, and
you will make a speech--and I won't be there to hear it." She rose
suddenly with a quick, graceful movement, and held out her hand to
him, which he took, laughing and conscious-looking with pleasure.

She sank back on the divan, and shook her head doubtfully at him.
"When will you stop?" she said. "Don't tell me you mean to be an
Admirable Crichton. You are too fine for that."

He looked down at the fire, and said, slowly, "It is not as if I were
trying my hand at an entirely different kind of work. No, I don't
think I did wrong in dramatizing it. The papers all said, when the
book first came out, that it would make a good play; and then so many
men wrote to me for permission to dramatize it that I thought I might
as well try to do it myself. No, I think it is in line with my other
work. I don't think I am straying after strange gods."

"You should not," she said, softly. "The old ones have been so kind to
you. But you took me too seriously," she added.

"I am afraid sometimes," he answered, "that you do not know how
seriously I do take you."

"Yes, I do," she said, quickly. "And when I am serious, that is all