person who'd be able to help him out,
here, but in the circumstances Jimmy was the last person he wanted to go
to. There was no telling how much Jimmy might know about the situation
already. The intolerable thought occurred to him that Rose might even
have talked with Jimmy about going on the stage before she left his
house. No, the person to see was the manager of the theater. He'd
describe Rose to him and ask him who she was.

His attempt to carry out this part of his plan was disastrously
unsuccessful. Theatrical managers no doubt cherish an ideal of courteous
behavior. But, since ninety-nine out of a hundred of the strangers who
ask for them at the box-office window, are actuated by a desire to get
into their theaters without paying for their seats, they develop,
protectively, a manner of undisguised suspicion toward all people who
don't know them, and toward about three-quarters of those who pretend
they do. It wasn't a manner Rodney was accustomed to, and it irritated
him. Then, until he had got his request half stated, it didn't occur to
him in what light the manager would be amply justified in regarding it.
That notion, which he interpreted from a look in the manager's face,
confused and angered him, and he stumbled and stammered, which angered
him still more.

"We don't do that sort of thing in this theater," the manager said
loudly (the conversation had taken place in the lobby of the theater,
too) and turned away.

The grotesque improbability of the true explanation that the woman whose
name he was inquiring about was his wife, silenced him and turned him
away. It was fortunate for Rodney it did so. The thing would have made a
wonderful story for the press agent, if he hadn't stopped just where he
did.

He spent the rest of that evening, and a good part of the next day,
trying to think of some alternative to waiting again at the stage door.
But, except for the still inadmissible one of going to Jimmy Wallace, he
couldn't think of one. So, at a quarter past seven that night, he
stationed himself once more in the miserable alley, to wait for Rose.
Seeing her before the show would, he thought, be an improvement on
waiting till after it. The mere fact that they wouldn't have very long
to talk, ought to reassure her that he didn't mean to take any
advantages. He could show her how contrite he was, how little he meant
to ask, and then leave it to her to select a place, at her own leisure
and convenience, to t