sking him if she'd do. But she felt, somehow, that such a
question would be foolish and unnecessary.

He had marked her hesitation and shot her a look that she felt followed
her as she walked off, and she heard him say to the world in general and
in a heartfelt sort of way, "Good God!" But she didn't know that it was
the highest encomium he was capable of, nor that it was addressed to
her.

She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and
through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it
faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she
could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext,
even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone
turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to
herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the
whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since
shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back.

Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark
Street, having deserted her husband and her babies--a loving honest
husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old--to
become a member of the chorus in a show called _The Girl Up-stairs!_ Was
there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the
most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could
she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she
wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged
fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to
have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and
find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a
crazy act like this?

It didn't matter now. She couldn't go back. She never could go back
after the things she had said to Rodney, until she had made good those
fantastic theories of hers. Probably he wouldn't want her to come back
even then. He'd find out where she was of course--what she was doing.
Why had she been such a fool, going away, as not to have gone far enough
to be safe? He'd feel that she'd disgraced him. Any man would. And he'd
never forgive her. He'd divorce her, perhaps. He'd have a right to, if
she stayed away long enough. And, without her there, with nothing of her
but memories--tormenting memories, he'd perhaps fall in love with some
one els