tly work a burden.

"Miss Nicholas."

The orchestra, never silent for long at the Flower Garden, had started
again, and Lee Schoenstein, the master of ceremonies, was presenting a
new partner. She got up mechanically.

"This is the first time I have been in this place," said the man, as
they bumped over the crowded floor. He was big and clumsy, of course.
To-night it seemed to Sally that the whole world was big and clumsy.
"It's a swell place. I come from up-state myself. We got nothing like
this where I come from." He cleared a space before him, using Sally as
a battering-ram, and Sally, though she had not enjoyed her recent
excursion with Mr. Cracknell, now began to look back to it almost with
wistfulness. This man was undoubtedly the worst dancer in America.

"Give me li'l old New York," said the man from up-state,
unpatriotically. "It's good enough for me. I been to some swell shows
since I got to town. You seen this year's 'Follies'?"

"No."

"You go," said the man earnestly. "You go! Take it from me, it's a swell
show. You seen 'Myrtle takes a Turkish Bath'?"

"I don't go to many theatres."

"You go! It's a scream. I been to a show every night since I got here.
Every night regular. Swell shows all of 'em, except this last one.
I cert'nly picked a lemon to-night all right. I was taking a chance,
y'see, because it was an opening. Thought it would be something to
say, when I got home, that I'd been to a New York opening. Set me back
two-seventy-five, including tax, and I wish I'd got it in my kick
right now. 'The Wild Rose,' they called it," he said satirically, as
if exposing a low subterfuge on the part of the management. "'The Wild
Rose!' It sure made me wild all right. Two dollars seventy-five tossed
away, just like that."

Something stirred in Sally's memory. Why did that title seem so
familiar? Then, with a shock, she remembered. It was Gerald's new play.
For some time after her return to New York, she had been haunted by the
fear lest, coming out of her apartment, she might meet him coming out of
his; and then she had seen a paragraph in her morning paper which had
relieved her of this apprehension. Gerald was out on the road with a new
play, and "The Wild Rose," she was almost sure, was the name of it.

"Is that Gerald Foster's play?" she asked quickly.

"I don't know who wrote it," said her partner, "but let me tell you he's
one lucky guy to get away alive. There's fellows breaking stones on the