d stared at her. "What on earth are you talking about?" he
asked.

"If I have words to say, even only a few, wouldn't anybody who happened
to be in the audience, know who I was?--I mean if they knew me already."

"Of course they would. What of it?"

"I told you," said Rose, "the day you gave me a job, that it wasn't a
lark. I had to begin earning my own living suddenly, and without any
training for it at all, and this seemed to be the best way. That's--all
true, and it's true that no one could come and, as you say, lead me away
by the ear. Nobody's responsible for me but myself. But there are people
who'd be terribly shocked and hurt if they found out I'd gone on the
stage. They know I'm earning my own living, but they don't know how I'm
doing it. I thought that as just one of the chorus, made up and all, I'd
be safe. But with these lines to say ..."

"Now listen to me," said John Galbraith; "listen as hard as you can.
Because when I've done talking, you will have to make up your mind. In
the first place you wouldn't be 'safe,' as you said, even in the chorus.
A make-up isn't a disguise. You will be rouged and powdered, your
eyelashes blackened, your lips reddened and so on, not to make you look
different, but to keep you looking the same under the strong lights.
You're not the sort of person to escape notice. That's the reason I made
up my mind to hire you before I knew you could dance. I saw you standing
back there in the doorway. You've got the quality about you that makes
people see you. That's one of your assets.

"So, if you're ashamed of being recognized in this business, you'd
better get out of it altogether. On the other hand, it seems to me that
if you've got to earn your living, it's nobody's business but your own
how you do it. You're the one who'll go hungry if you don't earn it, not
these friends of yours. So, if it seems a legitimate way of earning a
living to you, if you don't feel disgraced or degraded by being in it,
you'd better forget your friends and go ahead. You've made an excellent
start; you've earned a legitimate promotion. It will mean that instead
of getting twenty dollars a week when the show opens, you will get
twenty-five. It's a long time since I've given a person without
experience a chance like that. I gave it to you because you seemed
ambitious and intelligent--the sort who'd see me through. But if you
aren't ambitious, if the game doesn't look worth playing to you, and you
aren't