gh cosmopolites to bridge across the antipodal distances between
their respective traditions and environments. Patricia hated the tenor
as bitterly as Anabel. And, in her own way, she was as pleasantly
friendly to Rose. There were no endearments or caresses, naturally, but
her brusk nods of greeting and farewell seemed to have real good feeling
behind them.

The men principals--this was rather a surprise to Rose--weren't nearly
so pleasant nor so friendly. Most of them professed to be totally
unaware of her existence and the one or two who showed an
awareness--Freddy France, who played the comic detective, was chief of
these offenders--did it in a way that brought the fighting blood into
her cheeks.

My astronomical figure for the expression of Rose's rise in her
profession is, in one important particular, misleading. There was
nothing precalculable about it, as there is about the solemn swing of
the stars. The impetus and direction of Rose's career derived from two
incidents that might just as well not have happened--two of the flukiest
of small chances.

The first of these chances concerned itself with Olga Larson and her bad
voice. Olga, as I think I have told you, was one of the sextette. And,
oddly enough, she owed her membership in this little group of quasi
principals, to her voice and nothing else. Because it was a bad voice
only when she talked. When she sang, it had a gorgeous thrilling ring to
it that made Patricia Devereux, when she heard it, clench her hands and
narrow her eyes. She'd never been taught what to do with it, but then,
for what Galbraith wanted of her she needed no teaching. Her ear was
infallible; let her hear a tune once and she could reproduce it
accurately, squarely up to time, squarely, always, in the middle of the
pitch. When she opened her rather dainty-looking mouth and sang, she
could give you across the footlights the impression that at least four
first-class sopranos were going uncommon strong. She hadn't a salient or
commonplace enough sort of beauty to have singled her out from the
chorus and she was no better a dancer than passable. But none of the
girls who would be picked out by a committee of automobile salesmen as
the prettiest and the best dancers in the chorus could sing a note, and
the sextette would have been dumb without her voice.

It was natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own
position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its