ith 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 whe