the world. But I didn't."

"Well, you see it now," he said savagely fairly, and strode away up the
aisle and then back to her. He sat down in the seat in front of her and
turned around. "I want to see your face," he said. "There's something
I've got to know. Something you've got to tell me. You said once, back
there in Chicago, that there was only one person who really mattered to
you. I want to know who that one person is. What he is. Whether he's
still the one person who really matters. If he isn't I'll take my
chance. I'll make you love me if it's the last thing I ever do in the
world."

Remembering the scene afterward Rose was a little surprised that she'd
been able to answer him as she did, without a hesitation or a stammer,
and with a straight gaze that held his until she had finished.

"The only person in the world," she said, "who ever has mattered to me,
or ever will matter, is my husband. I fell in love with him the day I
met him. I was in love with him when I left him. I'm in love with him
now. Everything I do that's any good is just something he might be proud
of if he knew it. And every failure is just something I hope I could
make him understand and not despise me for. It's months since I've seen
him but there isn't a day, there isn't an hour in a day, when I don't
think about him and--want him. I don't know whether I'll ever see him
again but if I don't it won't make any difference with that. That's why
I didn't see what I might have seen about you. It wasn't possible for me
to see. I'd never have seen it if you hadn't told me in so many words,
like this. Do you see now?"

He turned away from her with a nod and put his hands to his face. She
waited a moment to see whether he had anything else to say, for the
habit of waiting for his dismissal was too strong to be broken even in a
situation like this. But finding that he hadn't she rose and walked out
of the theater.

There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment,
when she pretty well went to pieces. So this was all, was it, that she
owed her illusory appearance of success to? The amorous desires of a man
old enough to be her father! Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly
unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go
round. The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long
ago had told her about. But for that attraction she'd never have got
this job in New York, never have had the chance to