her watchful eye. They slipped
unsigned notes to each other.

So Dolly, on this blustering morning in Dubuque, fidgeting about the
room, thinking up a perfectly unnecessary excuse for going out, to give
to Rose, answered a knock at the door very promptly and took the folded
bit of paper the bell-boy handed her, without listening to what he said,
if indeed he said anything at all to her.

She carried it over to the window, turned her back to Rose, unfolded the
bit of paper and read it; read it again, frowned in a puzzled way, and
said:

"I didn't know there was anybody in the company named Rodney."

"What's his last name?" asked Rose. There was nothing in her tone that
challenged Dolly's attention, though the quality of it would have caught
a finer ear. And even if Dolly had looked up, she'd have seen nothing.
Rose lay there just as she had been lying a moment ago. It would have
needed a better observer than Dolly to see that she had stopped
breathing.

"There ain't any last name," said Dolly. "He seems to think I'll know
him by the first one." It pleased Dolly to make a parade of frankness
about this note. She couldn't be sure Rose had been as oblivious as she
seemed, to those the chorus-man had been sending her. This, to her
rudimentary mind, seemed a good opportunity to allay Dane's suspicions.
"See if you can make anything out of it," she said, and handed it over
to Rose.

Rose got up off the bed and carried the note to the window. She stood
there with it a long time.

"What's the matter?" said Dolly. "Can't you read his writing?"

"Yes," said Rose. "I know who he is. It's meant for me."

The tone, though barely audible, was automatic. It brushed Dolly away
as if she had been a buzzing fly, and she felt distinctly aggrieved by
it. That Dane, with all her loftily assumed indifference to men, even to
a star like Max Webber, should get a note like that, and should have the
nerve to betray no confusion over having her pretense thus confounded!
Dolly had read the note thoroughly, and it had struck her as cryptic and
suggestive in the extreme.

"I want to sec you very much," it said, "and shall wait in the lobby
unless you say impossible. I'll submit to any conditions you wish to
make. No bad news."

It sounded like a code to Dolly.

Rose stood there a long time. When she turned around, Dolly saw she was
pale. She'd crumpled the note tight in one palm, and her hands were
trembling. Then, with great swiftnes