r) kept Rose from
losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in this mood
gave her the uneasy sensation one experiences when walking abroad under
a sultry overcast sky with mutterings and flashes in it. And then one
night the storm broke.

They had lingered in the theater after the dismissal of a rehearsal, to
talk over a change in one of the numbers Rose had been working on. It
refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing
it that would work better and she had been telling him about it.
Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became
clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a
difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong
preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure him away
from.

But to-night after an angry turn down the aisle and back he suddenly
cried out, "I don't know. I don't know what you've been talking about. I
don't know and I don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not
a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped
together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the
half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded,
"Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen it yet? My
God!"

Of course she saw it now, plainly enough. She sat down again, managing
an air of deliberation about it, and gripped the back of the orchestra
chair in front of her. He remained standing over her there in the aisle.

When the heightening tension of the silence that followed this outburst
had grown absolutely unendurable she spoke. But the only thing she could
find to say was almost ludicrously inadequate.

"No, I didn't see it until now. I'm sorry."

"You didn't see it," he echoed. "I know you didn't. You've never seen me
at all, from the beginning, as anything but a machine. But why haven't
you? You're a woman. If I ever saw a woman in my life you're one all the
way through. Why couldn't you see that I was a man? It isn't because
I've got gray hair, nor because I'm fifty years old. You aren't like
that. I don't believe you're like that. But even back there in Chicago,
the night we walked down the avenue from Lessing's store--or the night
we had supper together after the show...."

"I suppose I ought to have seen," she said dully. "Ought to have known
that that was all there was to it. That there couldn't be anything else
in