CHAPTER II

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY

With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again

through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the opening

skirmish had distinctly, though intangibly, gone her way; secondly by

the small bit of luck that North End Hall would be, judging by its

number on North Clark Street, not more than a block or two from her

three-dollar room.

The sight of the entrance to it gave her a pang of misgiving. A pair of

white painted doors opened from the street level upon the foot of a

broadish stair which took you up rather suddenly; there was space enough

between the foot of the stair and the doors for a ticket-window, but it

was too small to be called a lobby; an arc lamp hung there though, and

two more--all three were extinct--hung just outside. What gave the place

its air of vulgarity, a suggestion of being the starting and finishing

point for lewd, drink sodden revels, she couldn't determine. It did

suggest this plainly. But, in the light of what Jimmy Wallace had told

her, she didn't think it likely there'd be any reveling to speak of at

rehearsal.

At the head of the stairway, tilted back in a kitchen chair beneath a

single gas-jet whose light he was trying to make suffice for the perusal

of a green newspaper, sat a man, under orders no doubt, to keep

intruders away.

Rose cast about as she climbed for the sort of phrase that would

convince him she wasn't an intruder. She would ask him, but in the

manner of one who seeks a formal assurance merely, if this was where

they were rehearsing _The Girl Up-stairs_. Three steps from the top, she

changed her tactics, as a result of a glance at his unshaven face. The

thing to do was to go by as if he weren't there at all--as if, for such

as she, watchmen didn't exist. The rhythmic pounding of feet and the

frayed chords from a worn-out piano, convinced her she was in the right

place.

Her stratagem succeeded, but not without giving her a bad moment. The

man glanced up and, though she felt he didn't return to his paper again,

he made no attempt to stop her. But right before her was another pair of

big white doors, closed with an effect of permanence--locked, she

suspected. A narrower door to the left stood open, but over it was

painted the disconcerting legend "Bar," flanked on either side, to make

the matter explicit even to the unlearned, by pictorial representations

of glasses of foaming beer. She hadn't time to deliberate over her

choice. The watchman's eyes were boring into her back. If she chose

wrong, or if she visibly hesitated, she knew she'd hear a voice say,

"Here! Where you going!"

She caught a quick breath, turned to the left and walked steadily

through the narrower door into the bar. It proved to be a deserted,

shrouded, sinister-looking place, with an interminable high mahogany

counter at one side, and with a lot of little iron tables placed by

pairs, their tops together, so that half of them had their legs in the

air. Its lights were fled, its garlands dead all right, but there wasn't

anything poetic about it. However, there was another open door at the

far end of the room, through which sounds and light came in. And the

watchman hadn't interfered with her. Evidently she had chosen right.

She paused for a second steadying breath before she went through that

farther door, her eyes starry with resolution, her cheeks, just for the

moment, a little pale. If the comparison suggests itself to you of an

early Christian maiden about to step out into an arena full of wild

beasts, then you will have mistaken Rose. The arena was there, true

enough. But she was stepping out into it with the intention of, like

Androcles, taming the lion.

The room was hot and not well lighted--a huge square room with a very

high ceiling. In the farther wall of it was a proscenium arch and a

raised stage somewhat brighter than the room itself, though the stained

brick wall at the back, in the absence of any scenery, absorbed a good

deal of the light. On the stage, right and left, were two irregular

groups of girls, with a few men, awkwardly, Rose thought, disposed among

them. All were swaying a little to mark the rhythm of the music

industriously pounded out by a sweaty young man at the piano--a swarthy,

thick young man in his undershirt. There were a few more people, Rose

was aware without exactly looking at any of them, sprawled in different

parts of the hall, on sofas or cushioned window-seats.

It was all a little vague to her at first, because her attention was

focused on a single figure--a compact, rather slender figure, and tall,

Rose thought--of a man in a blue serge suit, who stood at the exact

center of the stage and the extreme edge of the footlights. He was

counting aloud the bars of the music--not beating time at all, nor

yielding to the rhythm in any way; standing, on the contrary, rather

tensely still. That was the quality about him, indeed, that riveted

Rose's attention and held her as still as he was, in the doorway--an

exhilarating sort of intensity that had communicated itself to the

swaying groups on the stage. You could tell from the way he counted that

something was gathering itself up, getting ready to happen. "Three ...

Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... _Now!_" he shouted on the eighth

bar, and with the word, one of the groups transformed itself. One of the

men bowed to one of the girls and began waltzing with her; another

couple formed, then another.

Rose watched breathlessly, hoping the maneuver wouldn't go wrong;--for

no reason in the world but that the man, there at the footlights, was so

tautly determined that it shouldn't.

Determination triumphed. The number was concluded to John Galbraith's

evident satisfaction. "Very good," he said. "If you'll all do exactly

what you did that time from now on, I'll not complain." Without a pause

he went on, "Everybody on the stage--big girls--all the big girls!" And,

to the young man at the piano, "We'll do _Afternoon Tea_." There was a

momentary pause then, filled with subdued chatter, while the girls and

men re-alined themselves for the new number--a pause taken advantage of

by an exceedingly blond young man to scramble up on the stage and make a

few remarks to the director. He was the musical director, Rose found out

afterward. Galbraith, to judge from his attitude, gave his colleague's

remarks about twenty-five per cent. of his attention, keeping his eye

all the while on the chorus, to see that they got their initial

formation correctly. Rose looked them over, too. The girls weren't, on

an average, extravagantly beautiful, though, with the added charm of

make-up allowed for, there were no doubt many the audiences would

consider so. What struck Rose most emphatically about them, was their

youth and spirit. How long they had been rehearsing this afternoon she

didn't know. But now, when they might have gone slack and silent, they

pranced and giggled instead and showed a disposition to lark about,

which evidently would have carried them a good deal further but for the

restraining presence of the director. They were dressed in pretty much

anything that would allow perfect freedom to their bodies; especially

their arms and legs; bathing suits mostly, or middy-blouses and

bloomers. Rose noted this with satisfaction. Her old university

gymnasium costume would do perfectly. Anything, apparently, would do,

because as her eye adjusted itself to details, she discovered romper

suits, pinafores, chemises, overalls--all equally taken for granted.

There weren't nearly so many chorus men as girls. She couldn't be sure

just how many there were, because they couldn't be singled out. As they

wore no distinctly working costume, merely took off their coats,

waistcoats and collars, they weren't distinguishable from most of the

staff, who, with the exception of the director, garbed themselves

likewise.

Galbraith dismissed the musical director with a nod, struck his hands

together for silence, and scrutinized the now motionless group on the

stage.

"We're one shy," he said. "Who's missing?" And then answered his own

question: "Grant!" He wheeled around and his eyes searched the hall.

Rose became aware for the first time, that a mutter of conversation had

been going on incessantly since she had come in, in one of the recessed

window-seats behind her. Now, when Galbraith's gaze plunged in that

direction, she turned and looked too. A big blonde chorus-girl was in

there with a man, a girl, who, with twenty pounds trained off her, and

that sulky look out of her face, would have been a beauty. She had

roused herself with a sort of defiant deliberation at the sound of the

director's voice, but she still had her back to him and went on talking

to the man.

"Grant!" said John Galbraith again, and this time his voice had a

cutting edge. "Will you take your place on the stage, or shall I suspend

rehearsal until you're ready?"

For answer she turned and began walking slowly across the room toward

the door in the proscenium that led to the stage. She started walking

slowly, but under Galbraith's eye, she quickened her pace,

involuntarily, it seemed, until it was a ludicrous sort of run.

Presently she emerged on the stage, looking rather artificially

unconcerned, and the rehearsal went on again.

But just before he gave the signal to the pianist to go ahead, Galbraith

with a nod summoned a young man from the wings and said something to

him, whereupon, clearly carrying out his orders, he vaulted down from

the stage and came walking toward the doorway where Rose was still

standing. The director's gaze as it flashed about the hall, had

evidently discovered more than the sulky chorus-girl.

The young man wasn't intrinsically formidable--a rather limp,

deprecatory sort, he looked. But, as an emissary from Galbraith, he

quickened Rose's heart-beat a trifle. She smiled though as she made a

small bet with herself that he wouldn't be able to turn her out, even in

his capacity of envoy.

But he didn't come straight to Rose; deflected his course a little

uncertainly, and brought up before a woman who sat in a folding chair a

little farther along the wall.

Rose hadn't observed her particularly before, though she was aware that

one of the "big girls" who had responded promptly to Galbraith's first

call for them, had been talking to her when Rose came in, and she had

assumed her to be somebody connected with the show; at least with an

unchallengeable right to watch its rehearsals. But she had corrected

this impression even before she had heard what John Galbraith's

assistant said to the woman and what she said to him; for she drew

herself defensively erect when she saw him turn toward her, assumed a

look of calculated disdain; tapped a foot inadequately shod for

Chicago's pavements in December, although evidently it had experienced

them--gave, on the whole, as well as she could, an imitation of a

duchess being kept waiting.

But the limp young man didn't seem disconcerted, and inquired in so many

words, what her business was. The duchess said in a harsh high voice

with a good deal of inflection to it, that she wanted to see the

director; a very partic'lar friend of his, she assured the young man,

had begged her to do so. "You'll have to wait till he's through

rehearsing," said the young man, and then he came over to Rose.

The vestiges of the smile the duchess had provoked were still visible

about her mouth when he came up. "May I wait and see Mr. Galbraith after

the rehearsal?" she asked. "If I won't be in the way?"

"Sure," said the young man. "He won't be long now. He's been rehearsing

since two." Then, rather explosively, "Have a chair."

He struck Rose as being a little flustered and uncertain, somehow, and

he now made a tentative beginning of actually bringing a chair for her.

"Oh, don't bother," said Rose, and now she couldn't help smiling

outright. "I'll find one for myself."

But, whenever he had begun rehearsing, it was evident that John

Galbraith didn't mean to stop until he got through, and it was a long

hour that Rose sat there in a little folding chair similar to the one

occupied by the duchess; an hour which, in spite of all her will could

do, took some of the crispness out of her courage. It was all very well

to reflect with pitying amusement on the absurdities of the duchess. But

it was evident the duchess was waiting with a purpose like her own. She

meant to get a job in the chorus. Her rather touching ridiculousness as

a human being wouldn't stand in her way. It was likely that she had had

dozens of jobs in choruses before, knew exactly what would be wanted of

her, and was confident of her ability to deliver it.

As Rose's heart sank lower with the dragging minutes she even took into

account the possibility that the duchess had spoken the truth about John

Galbraith's "partic'lar friend." Just the mention of a name might settle

the whole business. Then her spirits went down another five degrees.

Here she had been assuming all along that there was a job for either of

them to get! But it was quite likely there was not. The chorus looked

complete enough; there was no visible gap in the ranks crying aloud for

a recruit.

When at last, a little after six o'clock, Galbraith said, "Quarter to

eight, everybody," and dismissed them with a nod for a scurry to what

were evidently dressing-rooms at the other side of the ball, the ship of

Rose's hopes had utterly gone to pieces. She had a plank to keep herself

afloat on. It was the determination to stay there until he should tell

her in so many words that he hadn't any use for her and under no

conceivable circumstances ever would have.

The deprecatory young man was talking to him now, about her and the

duchess evidently, for he peered out into the hall to see if they were

still there; then vaulted down from the stage and came toward them.

The duchess got up, and with a good deal of manner, went over to meet

him. Rose felt outmaneuvered here. She should have gone to meet him

herself, but a momentary paralysis kept her in her chair. She didn't

hear what the duchess said. The manner of it was confidential, in marked

protest against the proximity of a handful of other people--the blond

musical director, the thick pianist in his undershirt, a baby-faced man

in round tortoise-shell spectacles, three or four of the chorus people,

each of whom had serious matters to bring before the director's

attention.

But all the confidences, it seemed, were on the side of the duchess.

Because, when John Galbraith answered her, his voice easily filled

the room. "You tell Mr. Pike, if that's his name, that I'm very much

obliged to him, but we haven't any vacancies in the chorus at present.

If you care to, leave your name and address with Mr. Quan, the assistant

stage manager; then if we find we need you, we can let you know."

[Illustration: "I want a job in the chorus."]

He said it not unkindly, but he exercised some power of making it

evident that as he finished speaking, the duchess, for him, simply

ceased to exist. Anything she might say or do thereafter, would be so

much effort utterly wasted.

The duchess drew herself up and walked away.

And Rose? Well, the one thing she wanted passionately to do just then,

was to walk away herself out of that squalid horrible room; to soften

her own defeat by evading the final sledge-hammer blow. What he had said

to the duchess licensed her to do so. If there were no vacancies ... But

she clenched her hands, set her teeth, pulled in a long breath, and

somehow, set herself in motion. Not toward the door, but toward where

John Galbraith was standing.

But before she could get over to him, the pianist and the musical

director had got his attention. So she waited quietly beside him for two

of the longest minutes that ever were ticked off by a clock. Then, with

disconcerting suddenness, right in the middle of one of the musical

director's sentences, he looked straight into her face and said: "What

do you want?"

She'd thought him tall, but he wasn't. He was looking on a perfect level

into her eyes.

"I want a job in the chorus," said Rose.

"You heard what I said to that other woman, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Rose, "but ..."

"But you thought you'd let me say it to you again."

"Yes," she said. And, queerly enough, she felt her courage coming back.

She managed the last "yes" very steadily. It had occurred to her that if

he'd wanted merely to get rid of her, he could have done it quicker than

this. He was looking her over now with a coolly appraising eye.

"What professional experience have you had?" he asked.

"I haven't had any."

He almost smiled when she stopped there.

"Any amateur experience?" he inquired.

"Quite a lot," said Rose; "pageants and things, and two or three little

plays."

"Can you dance?"

"Yes," said Rose.

He said he supposed ballroom dancing was what she meant, whereupon she

told him she was a pretty good ballroom dancer, but that it was

gymnastic dancing she had had in mind.

"All right," he said. "See if you can do this. Watch me, and then

imitate me exactly."

In the intensity of her absorption in his questions and her own answers

to them, she had never given a thought to the bystanders. But now as

they fell back to give him room, she swept a glance across their faces.

They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about

this--something out of the regular routine. A little knot of

chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood

watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded

like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders guffawed

outright.

It wasn't pretty, the dance step he executed--a sort of stiff-legged

skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with a

straight-out sidewise kick.

A sick disgust clutched at Rose as she watched--an utter revulsion from

the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors--starve if she had

to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle

of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make

it tolerable--and before that row of leering faces.

"Well?" he asked, turning to her as he finished. He wasn't smiling at

all.

"I'm not dressed to do that," she said.

"I know you're not," he admitted coolly, "but it can be done. Pick up

your skirts and do it as you are,--if you really want a job."

There was just a faint edge of contempt in that last phrase and,

mercifully, it roused her anger. A blaze kindled in her blue eyes, and

two spots of vivid color defined themselves in her cheeks.

She caught up her skirts as he had told her to do, executed without

compromise the stiff-legged skip and the wriggle, and finished with a

horizontal sidewise kick that matched his own. Then, panting, trembling

a little, she stood looking straight into his face.

The first thing she realized when the processes of thought began again

was that even if there had been a hoax, she was not, in the event, the

victim of it. The attitude of her audience told her that. Galbraith was

staring at her with a look that expressed at first, clear astonishment,

but gradually complicated itself with other emotions--confusion, a glint

of whimsical amusement. That gleam, a perfectly honest, kindly one,

decided Rose to take him on trust. He wasn't a brute, however it might

suit his purposes to act like one. And with an inkling of how her blaze

of wrath must be amusing him, she smiled slowly and a little

uncertainly, herself.

"We've been rehearsing this piece two weeks," he said presently, looking

away from her when he began to talk, "and I couldn't take any one into

the chorus now whom I'd have to teach the rudiments of dancing to. I

must have people who can do what I tell them. That's why a test was

necessary. Also, from now on, it would be a serious thing to lose

anybody out of the chorus. I couldn't take anybody who had come down

here--for a lark."

"It's not a lark to me," said Rose.

Now he looked around at her again. "I know it isn't," he said. "But I

thought when you first came in here, that it was."

With that, Rose understood the whole thing. It was evidently a fact that

despite the plain little suit, the beaver hat, the rough ulster she was

wearing, she didn't look like the sort of girl who had to rely on

getting a job in the chorus for keeping a roof over her head. Looks,

speech, manner--everything segregated her from the type. It was all

obvious enough, only Rose hadn't happened to think of it. It accounted,

of course, for the rather odd way in which the landlady, the

ticket-seller at the Globe, and meek little Mr. Quan, the assistant

stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn't

classify. John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had

classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a

moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the

stage. The test he had applied wasn't, from that point of view,

unnecessarily cruel. The girl he had taken her for, would, on being

ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her

dignity about her like a cloak, and gone back in a chastened spirit to

the world where she belonged.

A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the

dressing-room to the door--a figure that, with regal deliberation, was

closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic

Callot frock. The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last

seen in a Michigan Avenue shop. She had amused herself by trying to

vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it. It had found its

proper buyer at last--fulfilled its destiny.

"Oh, Grant!" said John Galbraith.

The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump,

as the sulky chorus-girl. Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of

surplus fat didn't show.

Galbraith walked over to her. "I shan't need you any more, Grant." He

spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a

good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to

work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth

my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again."

He nodded not unamiably, and turned away. Evidently she had ceased to

exist for him as completely as the duchess. She glared after him and

called out in a hoarse throaty voice, "Thank Gawd I don't _have_ to work

for you."

He'd come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile. "When

you do it," he said over his shoulder, "thank Him for me too." Then to

Rose: "She's a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking;

audiences like her. I'm giving you her place because as long as she's

got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won't get down to

business. I'd rather have a green recruit who will. I'm hiring you

because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like

doing isn't important and that what I tell you to do is. The next

rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night. Give your name and address

to Mr. Quan before you go. By the way, what is your name?"

"Rose Stanton," she said. "But ..." She had to follow him a step or two

because he had already turned away. "But, may I give some other name

than that to Mr. Quan?" He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how

old she was. And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn't look

altogether reassured.

"That's the truth, is it? I mean, there's nobody who can come down here

about three days before we open and call me a kidnaper, and lead you

away by the ear?"

"No," said Rose gravely, "there's no one who'll do that."

"Very good," he said. "Tell Quan any name you like."

The name she did tell him was Doris Dane.

It was a quarter to seven when she came out through the white doors into

North Clark Street. The thing that woke her out of a sort of daze as she

trudged along toward her room in the unrelenting rain was a pleasurable

smell of fried onions; whereupon she realized that she was legitimately

and magnificently hungry. In any other condition, the dingy little

lunch-room she presently turned into, would hardly have invited her. But

the spots on the frayed starchy table-cloth, the streakiness of the

glasses, the necessity of polishing knife and fork upon her damp napkin,

couldn't prevent her doing ample justice to a small thick platter of ham

and eggs, and a plate of thicker wheat-cakes.

It occurred to her as she finished, that a quarter to eight probably

meant the hour at which the rehearsal was to begin. She'd have to be

back at the hail at least fifteen minutes earlier, in order to be

dressed and ready. She had no time to waste; would even have to hurry a

little.

She didn't try to explore for the reason why this discovery pleased her

so much. It was enough that it did. She flew along through the rain to

her tunnel, charged up the narrow stair, and in the unlighted corridor

outside her room, collided with her trunk. Well, it was lucky it had

come anyway. She tugged it into her room after she had lighted the gas.

You might have seen, if you had been there to see, just a momentary

hesitation after she'd got her trunk key out of her purse before she

unlocked it. It was a sort of Jack-in-the-box, that trunk. Would the

emotions with which she'd packed it, spring out and clutch her as she

released the hasp? The saving factor in the situation was that it was a

quarter past seven. In fifteen minutes she must be back at North End

Hall, getting ready to go to work at her job. Suppose she hadn't found a

job this afternoon? The thought turned her giddy.

She plunged into her trunk, rummaged out a middy-blouse, a pair of black

silk bloomers, and her gymnasium sneakers, rolled them all together in a

bundle, got into her rubbers and her ulster again, and--I'm afraid there

is no other word for it--fled.

She was one of the first of the chorus to reach the hail and she had

nearly finished putting on her working clothes before the rest of them

came pelting in. But she didn't get out quickly enough to miss the

sensation that was exciting them all--the news that Grant had been

dropped. A few of them were indignant; the rest merely curious. The

indignant ones allowed themselves a license in the expression of this

feeling that positively staggered Rose; made use in a quite

matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man

would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman. She

made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who

never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction

between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and

those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few

minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some

foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency.

One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn't finally been

dropped; it was absurd that she should be. She was one of the most

popular chorus-girls in Chicago. The director was merely trying to scare

her into doing better work for him. She'd come back, all right. She had

reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite

the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine. Her

"friend," it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson. Grant

would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to

induce Galbraith to take her back.

If this theory were sound, and it had a dreadful plausibility to Rose,

her only chance for keeping her job would be to do as well as Grant

could do, to-night, in this very first rehearsal; and she went out on

the stage in a perfect agony of determination. She must see everything,

hear everything; put all she knew and every ounce of energy she had,

into the endeavor to make John Galbraith forget that she was a recruit

at all.

The intensity of this preoccupation was a wonderful protection to her.

It kept away the sick disgust that had threatened her in the

dressing-room; prevented her even glancing ahead to a future that would,

had she taken to guessing about it, utterly have overwhelmed her. The

intensely illuminated present instant kept her mind focused to its

sharpest edge.

It is true that before she had been working fifteen minutes, she had

forgotten all about Grant and the possibility of her return. She'd even

forgotten her resolution not to let John Galbraith remember she was a

recruit. Indeed, she had forgotten she was a recruit. She was nothing at

all but just a reflection of his will. She'd felt that quality strongly

in him even behind his back during the afternoon rehearsal. Now, on the

stage in front of him, she was completely possessed by it.

She didn't know she was tired, panting, wet all over with sweat. Really,

of course, she was pretty soft, judged by her own athletic standards.

She hadn't done anything so physically exacting as this for over a year.

But she had the illusion that she wasn't _doing_ anything now; that she

was just a passive plastic thing, tossed, flung, swirled about by the

driving power of the director's will. It wouldn't have surprised her if

the chairs had danced for him.

It couldn't of course have occurred to her that she was producing her

own effect on the director; she couldn't have surmised that he was

driving his rehearsal at a faster pace and with a renewed energy and

fire because of the presence, there in the ranks of his chorus, of a

glowing, thrilling creature who devoured his intentions half formed, met

them with a blue spark across the poles of their two minds.

She realized, when the rehearsal was over, that it had gone well and

that it couldn't have gone so if her own part had been done badly. She

hesitated a moment after he'd finally dismissed them with a nod, and an,

"Eleven o'clock to-morrow morning, everybody," from a previously formed

intention of asking him if she'd do. But she felt, somehow, that such a

question would be foolish and unnecessary.

He had marked her hesitation and shot her a look that she felt followed

her as she walked off, and she heard him say to the world in general and

in a heartfelt sort of way, "Good God!" But she didn't know that it was

the highest encomium he was capable of, nor that it was addressed to

her.

She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and

through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it

faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she

could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext,

even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone

turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to

herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the

whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since

shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back.

Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark

Street, having deserted her husband and her babies--a loving honest

husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old--to

become a member of the chorus in a show called _The Girl Up-stairs!_ Was

there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the

most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could

she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she

wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged

fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to

have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and

find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a

crazy act like this?

It didn't matter now. She couldn't go back. She never could go back

after the things she had said to Rodney, until she had made good those

fantastic theories of hers. Probably he wouldn't want her to come back

even then. He'd find out where she was of course--what she was doing.

Why had she been such a fool, going away, as not to have gone far enough

to be safe? He'd feel that she'd disgraced him. Any man would. And he'd

never forgive her. He'd divorce her, perhaps. He'd have a right to, if

she stayed away long enough. And, without her there, with nothing of her

but memories--tormenting memories, he'd perhaps fall in love with some

one else--marry some one else. And her two babies would call that

unknown some one "mother." She must have been crazy! She'd thought she

didn't love them. That had been a delusion anyway. Her heart ached for

them now--an actual physical ache that almost made her cry out. And for

Rodney himself, for his big strong arms around her! Would she ever feel

them again?

She told herself this was a nightmare--something to be fought off, kept

at bay. But how did that help her now, when the armor must be laid

aside? Sometime or other she must turn out that light and lie down in

that bed, defenseless. She had never in her life asked more of her

courage than when, at last, she did that thing. There were nine hours

then ahead of her before eleven o'clock and the next rehearsal.