were badly
costumed. But this time she did it a good deal more vividly, partly
because her interest in the piece was more intense, partly because her
imagination had a blank canvas to work on.

All the while, like Sister Anne in the tower, she kept one eye on the
door and prayed for the arrival of John Galbraith.

He came in just as Mrs. Goldsmith finished her task--just when, by a
process of studious elimination, every passable thing in the store had
been discarded and the twelve most utterly hopeless ones--two for each
girl--laid aside for purchase. The girls were despatched to put on the
evening frocks first, and were then paraded before the director.

He was a diplomat as I have said (possibly I spoke of him before as an
acrobat. It comes to the same thing), and he was quick on his feet.
Rose, watching his face very closely, thought that for just a split
second, she caught a gleam of ineffable horror. But it was gone so
quickly she could almost have believed that she had been mistaken. He
didn't say much about the costumes, but he said it so promptly and
adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls
away to put on the other set--the afternoon frocks, and once more the
director's approbation, though laconic, was one hundred per cent. pure.

"That's all," he said in sudden dismissal of the sextette. "Rehearsal at
eight-thirty."

Five of them scurried like children let out of school, around behind the
set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing-room, and began
changing in a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners
eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show
before the evening's rehearsal.

But Rose didn't avail herself of her dismissal--remained hanging about,
a couple of paces away from where Galbraith was talking to Mrs.
Goldsmith. The only question that remained, he was telling her, was
whether her selections were not too--well, too refined, genteel, one
might say, for the stage. Regretfully he confessed he was a little
afraid they were. It needed a certain crudity to withstand the glare of
the footlights and until these gowns had been submitted to that glare,
one couldn't be sure.

He wasn't looking at her as he talked, and presently, as his gaze
wandered about the store, it encountered Rose's face. She hadn't
prepared it for the encounter, and it wore, hardly veiled, a look of
humorous appreciation. His sentence broke, then complete