itself suddenly from the pasty gray surface of them
that spread over the auditorium; became human--individual--and intensely
familiar. Became the face, unmistakably, of Jimmy Wallace!

It is probable that of all the audience, only two men saw that anything
had happened, so brief was the frozen instant while she stood
transfixed. One of them was John Galbraith, in the back row, and he let
his breath go out again in relief almost in the act of catching it. He
guessed what had happened well enough--that she'd recognized one of
those friends whose potential horror had made her willing to give up her
promotion and her little part--the one she'd spoken of, perhaps, as the
"only one that really mattered." But it was all right. She was going on
as if nothing had happened.

The other man was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh
of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary
falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at
his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic
critic's license and left the theater.

But it wasn't to go to his desk and write his story (he was on an
evening paper and so had no deadline staring him in the face) but to a
quiet corner in his club, where he could, undistractedly, think.

From the moment of Rose's first appearance on the stage he had been
tormented by a curiosity as to whether she was indeed Rose, or merely
some one unbelievably like her. Because the fantastic impossibility that
Rose Aldrich should be a member of the Globe chorus was reinforced by
the fact that her gaze had traveled unconcernedly across his face a
dozen times--his seat was in the fourth row, too--without the slightest
flicker of recognition. Of course the way she stood there frozen for a
second, when at last she did see him, settled that question. She was
Rose Aldrich and she was in the Globe chorus!

But this certainty merely left him with a more insoluble perplexity on
his hands; two, in fact--oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did
Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could
wait. But--what was he going to do about it?

As for Rose herself, it was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance
and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if
nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for
feeling were occupied and tested by something else.

Incredible as it see