like that, with that sort of company, the object of, at
least, experiments.

Men may consider these experiments worth trying in the face of a
determined hostility on the part of the subject of them. The most
rigorous primness of behavior does not daunt them, nor the assertion of
an icily virtuous intangibility. But the sort of good-humored
preoccupation that doesn't see them at all, that sees the pattern in the
wall-paper behind their backs, that tries, half-heartedly, to be
adequately courteous, is too much for them. And the more experienced
they are in conquests, and the higher, on the basis of their own
experience, they rate the irresistibility of their powers, the less of
his particular sort of treatment they can stand. The mere sight of her,
after the first day or two, was enough to give a professional "killer"
like Max Webber, the creeps.

But Rose's manner not only kept the men away from herself. It kept them
away from Dolly. Poor Dolly didn't know what the matter was, at first.

She had been told terrible stories by her mother and her elder brother,
about the perils that beset young girls who ran away from good
respectable homes. She had been told them with the misguided purpose of
keeping her from running away from her own home, which was no doubt
respectable, but was also deadly dull. She had run away and it was
perils she was looking for. She didn't mean to succumb to them. None of
the heroines of the only literature she knew--of the movies, that is to
say--succumbed to perils. They were beset by the most terrific perils.
It was over perils that they climbed to soul-entrancing heights of
romance. It was because they were the almost certain victims of
diabolical machinations, that wonderful heroes, with long eyelashes and
curly hair, came to their rescue and clasped them in their arms and
looked unutterable things into their eyes, just as the picture faded
out.

Dolly had joined the chorus of a musical comedy, because that profession
offered more alluring wares in the way of perils than any other that was
open to her. And then she discovered that her calculations had gone
awry. The impalpable shield her formidable friend carried with her,
turned the perils aside. The little group of half-grown boys one
sometimes found waiting at the stage door, never even spoke to Rose, and
Dolly, in her company, partook of this unwelcomed immunity. As for the
men in the company, Dolly found them letting her entirely alon