e.

She was bitterly unhappy at first about this, taking it as an
indication of the insufficiency of her charms. But once she got the
clue, she set about righting matters. She began taking tentative little
strolls about the hotel lobbies by herself, and on her train journeys,
when the motion and the odor of the men's pipes didn't make her too
sick, she'd kneel upon a seat and look over the back of it into one of
the perpetual poker-games they used to pass the time. It was astonishing
how quickly she got results.

She wandered over to the cigar-stand at one of their hotels, one
afternoon, a week before the arrival in Dubuque, to look at a rack of
picture postcards. One of the chorus-men came over to buy some
cigarettes. She felt him look at her, and she felt herself flush a
little. And then he came a step closer to look at the postcards for
himself, and sighed and said he wished he had somebody to send postcards
to. He supposed she sent _him_ one every day. Whereupon Dolly said she
wasn't going to send him one to-day, anyway. They strolled across the
lobby together and sat down in two of the wide-armed unsatisfactory
chairs they have at such places; chairs that kept them so far apart they
had to shout at each other. So, after a few minutes, it being a fine
day, he suggested they go out for a walk. She had on her outdoor wraps
and his overcoat lay across a chair.

She had already nodded acquiescence to his proposal, when she saw Rose
coming in through the door.

"Wait," she whispered to him. "Don't come out with me. I'll wait
outside." And with that she walked up to Rose and told her she was going
out to get some cold cream.

Five per cent., perhaps, of the motive that prompted this maneuver, was
what it pretended to be, a fear of Rose's disapprobation and a wish to
avoid it. The other ninety-five per cent. of it was just instinctive
love of intrigue.

The chorus-boy waited, blankly wooden enough to have attracted the
suspicion of any eye less preoccupied than Rose's, until she had got
around the curve of the stair. Then, joining Dolly on the pavement, he
demanded to be told what it was all about.

Dolly, making up her little mystery as she went along, and making
herself more interesting at every step, told him. They took a long walk,
and by the time they got back to the hotel, they were in love. But they
were separated by the malign influence of Dolly's friend. They developed
a code of signals for circumventing