e--marry some one else. And her two babies would call that
unknown some one "mother." She must have been crazy! She'd thought she
didn't love them. That had been a delusion anyway. Her heart ached for
them now--an actual physical ache that almost made her cry out. And for
Rodney himself, for his big strong arms around her! Would she ever feel
them again?

She told herself this was a nightmare--something to be fought off, kept
at bay. But how did that help her now, when the armor must be laid
aside? Sometime or other she must turn out that light and lie down in
that bed, defenseless. She had never in her life asked more of her
courage than when, at last, she did that thing. There were nine hours
then ahead of her before eleven o'clock and the next rehearsal.

CHAPTER III

ROSE KEEPS THE PATH

Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest
conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs."
She didn't know what sort of scene it was for instance that they burst
in on through the space marked by two of the little folding chairs
brought up from the floor of the dance-hall for the purpose. The group
of iron tables borrowed from the bar and set solidly together in the
upper right-hand corner of the stage whenever they rehearsed a certain
one of their song numbers, might with equal plausibility represent a
mountain in Arizona, the front veranda of a house or a banquet table in
the gilded dining-hall of some licentious multi-millionaire. They got up
on the insecure thing and tried to dance; that was all she knew.

During the entire period, and for that matter, right up to the opening
night she never saw a bar of music except what stood on the piano rack,
nor a written word of the lyrics she was supposed to sing. Rose couldn't
sing very much. She had a rather timorous, throaty little contralto that
contrasted oddly with the fine free thrill of her speaking voice. But
nobody had asked her what her voice was, nor indeed, whether she could
sing at all. She picked up the tunes quickly enough, by ear, but the
words she was always a little uncertain about.

It all seemed too utterly haphazard to be possible, but Rose decided not
to ask any of the authorities about this, because, while the possibility
of Grant's return dangled over her head, she didn't want to remind
anybody how green she was. But she finally questioned one of her
colleagues in the chorus about it, and was told t