willing to play it for all it's worth--why, good as you are, I
don't want you at all. So that's your choice!"

His manner wasn't quite so harsh as his words, but it convinced her that
he meant every one of them right to the foot of the letter.

She couldn't answer for a moment. She hadn't guessed that the choice he
was going to offer her would be between taking the little part he had
given her and playing it for all it was worth, defiant of Rodney's
feelings and of the scandal of the Lake Shore Drive--and going back to
her three-dollar room this afternoon, out of a job and without even a
glimmering chance of finding another.

"Take your time," he said. "I don't want to be a brute about it, but
look here! Try to see it my way for a minute. Here are my employers, the
owners of this piece. They're putting thousands of dollars into the
production of it. They've hired me to make that production a success.
Well, I don't know about other games, but this game's a battle. If we
win, it will be because we put every bit of steam and every bit of
confidence we've got into it and _make_ it win. That goes for me, and
for the principals, and right down through to the last girl in the
chorus. Every night there'll be a new audience out there that you will
have to fight--shake up out of the grouch they get when they pay for
their tickets; persuade to laugh and loosen up and come and play with
you.

"Will you be able to do your share, do you suppose, if you're slinking
around, afraid of being recognized? We don't care whether your pussy-cat
friends get their fur rubbed the wrong way or not. The only thing we
care about is putting this show across. Well, if you feel the way we do
about it, if you can make it the one thing you do care about, too--why,
come along. Let the pussy-cats go ..." He finished with a snap of his
fingers.

"The only one that really matters isn't a pussy-cat," said Rose, with a
reluctant wide smile, "and--he'd agree with you altogether, if he didn't
know you were talking to me. And I'm really very much obliged to you."

"You will come along then?"

"Yes," said Rose, "I'll come."

"No flutters?" questioned Galbraith. "No eleventh-hour repentance?"

"No," said Rose, "I'll see it through."

John Galbraith went away satisfied. Rose had the same power that he had,
of making a simple unemphatic statement irresistibly convincing. When
she said that she would go through, he knew that unless struck by
lightning, s