rategy of the game
that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her.

It was all against the rules, of course. But to this case--the one in a
thousand certainly, in ten thousand maybe--the rules manifestly did not
apply.

If it hadn't been for that opaque white veil, the glow of light and
eagerness in her face would probably have conquered his resistance
finally and for good, while they stood there in the entry to the store.
As it was, he was still hanging on a dead center as they walked down the
east side of the avenue together.

Ahead of them, and to the right, over in Grant Park, was the colossal
municipal Christmas tree, already built, and getting decorated against
the celebration of Christmas Eve, now only two days away.

"Shall we rehearse on Christmas Day?" Rose asked.

He came out of his preoccupation a little vaguely. "Why, yes. Yes, of
course," he said absently. Then, coming a little further, and with a
different intonation, he went on: "We're really getting pressed for
time, you see. And the opening won't wait for anybody. It's hard luck
though, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is, for the others;" Rose said, "but--I'm glad."

It wouldn't have needed so sensitive an ear as his to catch the girl's
full meaning. Christmas--this Christmas, the first since that mysterious
collapse of her life, whose effect he had seen, but whose cause he
couldn't guess--was going to be a terrible day for her. She had dreaded
lest it should be empty. He wanted to say, "You poor child!" But--this
was the simple fact--he was afraid to.

There was another momentary silence, and again Rose broke it.

"Do you think you'll be able to convince Mrs. Goldsmith," she asked,
"that her gowns don't look well on the stage?"

"Probably not," he said in quick relief. Rose had decided the issue for
herself; brought up the very topic he'd wanted to bring up; got him off
his dead center at last. Back of Rose, of course, was the municipal
Christmas tree with its power of suggesting a lot of ideas she must
fight out of her mind.

"Certainly not," he went on, "if you're right about her, and I fancy you
are, that her taste isn't negative, but bad, and that it's the very
hideousness of the things she likes. No, she won't be convinced, and if
I know Goldsmith, he'll say his wife's taste is good enough for him. So
if we want a change, we've a fight on our hands."

The way he had unconsciously phrased that sentence startled him a