and later, when
Benedict was relegated to a place in the back line, the natural
explanation was that Galbraith was crazy about the new girl.

Of course it set Rose all ablaze with wrath when she became aware of
this. It was precisely because she had rebelled against the theory that
love was what made the world go round, that she was here in the chorus.
Had she been content to let it make her world go round, she never would
have left Rodney. The only way she had of refuting the assumption in
this case would be by making good so demonstrably and instantaneously,
that they'd be compelled to see that her promotion had been inevitable.

It was in this spirit, with blazing cheeks and eyes, that she attacked
the next morning's rehearsal. She was only dimly aware of Benedict out
in the hall in front, viperishly waiting for the arrival of one of the
owners to make an impassioned plea for reinstatement. Her tears or her
tantrums were matters of supremely little importance. But that John
Galbraith should see that he had promoted her on merit and on nothing
but merit, mattered enormously.

Lacking the clue, he watched her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way
of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of
carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under
the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the impetus of an
unexpected promotion.

"Don't make such hard work of it, Dane," he said at last. "You're all
right, but have a little fun out of it. There are eight hundred people
out there," he waved his arm out toward the empty hall, "who have paid
their hard-earned money to feel jolly and have a good time. If you go on
looking like that, they'll think this piece was produced by Simon
Legree."

There came the same gleaming twinkle in his eye that had disarmed her
resentment once before, and as before, she found herself feeling rather
absurd. What mattered the microcephalic imaginings of greasy Dave and
his friends among the chorus? John Galbraith wasn't the sort of man to
get infatuated with a chorus-girl. The gleam in his eye was enough, all
by itself, to make that plain.

So, flushing up a little, she grinned back at him, gave him a nod of
acquiescence, and fell back to her place for the beginning of the next
evolution.

"If she smiles like that," thought John Galbraith, "she'll break up the
show." At the end of the rehearsal, he said to her, "You're doing very
well ind