s, she began to dress. But though
her haste was evident, she didn't ask Dolly to help her; didn't seem to
know, indeed, that she was in the room. It was no way for a friend to
act!

The thing that had moved Rose to an extent that terrified her was that
last phrase. The desire it showed to play fair with her; the
unwillingness to take advantage of a fear his coming like that might
have inspired her with. And then the way he had made it possible for
her, with a single word, to send him away! And the restraint of that "I
want to see you very much!" It wasn't like any Rodney she knew, to be
humble like that. His humility stripped her of her armor. If he'd been
imperious, exigeant, she could have gone down to meet him with her head
up. Suppose she found him broken, aged, with a dumb need for her crying
out in his eyes, what would she do? What could she trust herself not to
do? But just in human mercy to him she mustn't let him see she was
wavering.

The Rose he was waiting for, there in the lobby, the only Rose he had
been able to picture to himself for more than a fortnight of distressful
days, was the Rose he'd last seen in that North Clark Street room; the
Rose with a look of dumb frozen agony in her face. The one idea he'd
clung to since starting for Dubuque, had been that he mustn't frighten
her. She must see, with her first glance at him, that she had nothing
to fear from a repetition of his former behavior. She must see that the
brute in him--that was the way he put it to himself--was completely
tamed.

Their meeting was a shock to both of them; an incredible mocking sort of
anti-climax.

He was standing near the foot of the stairs when she came down, with a
raincoat on, and a newspaper twisted up in his hands, and at sight of
her, he took off his soft wet hat, and crunched it up along with the
newspaper. He moved over toward her, but stopped two or three feet away.
"It's very good of you to come," he said, his voice lacking a little of
the ridiculous stiffness of his words, not much. "Is there some place
where we can talk a little more--privately than here? I shan't keep you
long."

"There's a room here somewhere," she said. "I noticed it this morning
when we came in. Oh, yes! It's over there."

The room she led him to, was an appropriately preposterous setting for
the altogether preposterous talk that ensued between them. It had a
mosaic floor with a red plush carpet on it, two stained glass windows in
yell