se, seriously injuring
Doris Dane's chances by going out on the road.

And, even with reference to Rodney, it was hard to see how her flight
could help the situation. If what she'd done had really disgraced him in
his own eyes and in those of his world, the disgrace was already
complete. Acquiescing in that point of view, as by her flight she did,
couldn't lighten it.

But all the power these considerations had, was to make her flight seem
more ignominious. They were utterly incapable of preventing it.

A disinterested friend, had she boasted such a possession just then,
might have pointed out for her comfort, that her rout was not complete.
It was a retreat, but not a surrender. She hadn't become Rose Stanton
again and gone back to Portia and her mother. Doris Dane, though badly
battered, was still intact!

The first ten days of her life on the road had, on the whole, a
distinctly restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's
recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously
exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits,
for all that. Certainly the regime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose.
The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for
practically all her time.

A typical day consisted in getting up in the morning at an hour
determined for you either by the call posted on the bulletin board in
the theater the night before, telling you what time you were to be at
the railway station, or by the last moment at which you could get into
the dining-room in the hotel. You ate all you could manage at breakfast,
because lunch was likely to consist of a sandwich and an orange bought
from the train butcher; with perhaps the lucky addition of a cup of
coffee at some junction point where you changed trains. You lugged your
suit-case down to the station, and had your arrival there noted by the
manager, who, of course, bought all the tickets for the company. You
needn't even bother to know where you were going, except out of idle
curiosity. The train came along and you got a seat by yourself on the
shady side, if you could; though the men being more agile, generally got
there first.

The convention of giving precedence to the ladies, Rose promptly
discovered, and with a sort of satisfaction, did not apply. Indeed, all
the automatic small courtesies and services which, in any life she'd
known, men had been expected to show to women, were here completely