means, that she called
it back into her mind. There was no use blinking the facts. The one
marketable asset she would possess when she walked out of her husband's
house, was simply--how she looked.

Well then, if that was all you had, there was no degradation in using it
until you could make yourself the possessor of something else. And the
merit of this particular sort of job, for her, lay precisely in the
thing that Jimmy had cited as its chief disadvantage--it left you
abundant leisure. You might occupy that leisure getting into
mischief--no doubt most chorus-girls did. But there was nothing to
prevent your using it to better advantage.

With this in mind, on the Sunday before Rose went away, she had studied
the dramatic section of the morning paper with a good deal of care and
was rewarded by finding among the news notes, an item referring to a
new musical comedy that was to be produced at the Globe Theater
immediately after the Christmas holidays. _The Girl Up-stairs_ was the
title of it. It was spoken of as one of the regular Globe productions,
so it was probable that Jimmy Wallace's experience with the production
of an earlier number in the series would at least give her something to
go by. The thing must be in rehearsal now.

Granted that she was going to be a chorus-girl for a while, she could
hardly find a better place than one of the Globe productions to be one
in. According to Jimmy Wallace, it was a decent enough little place, and
yet it possessed the advantage of being spiritually as well as actually,
west of Clark Street. Rodney's friends were less likely to go there, and
so have a chance of recognizing her, than to any other theater in the
city, barring of course the flagrantly and shamelessly vulgar ones of
the purlieus.

Among her older friends of school and college days, the chances were of
course worse. But even if she were seen on the stage by people who knew
her, even though they were to say to each other that that girl looked
surprisingly like Rose Aldrich, this would be a very different thing
from full recognition. She would be well protected by the utter
unlikelihood of her being in such a place; by the absence of anybody's
knowledge that she had flown off at a tangent from the orbit of Rodney's
world. Then, too, she'd be somewhat disguised no doubt, by make-up. Of
course with all those considerations weighed at their full value, there
remained a risk that she would be fully discovered and r