tell him certain material facts that
might change his feeling? They'd both been victims, if one cared to put
it like that, of an accident; had ventured, incautiously, into the rim
of a whirlpool whose irresistible force they both knew.

She fought the realization down with a frantic repression. It wasn't--it
couldn't be true! Why hadn't she seen it was true before? Why must the
reflection have come at a moment like this, while he sat there, across
the table from her in a public room, laboriously apologizing?

The formality of his phrases got stiffer and finally congealed into a
blank silence.

Finally she said, with a gasp: "I have something to ask you to--forgive
me for. That's for leaving you to find out--where I was, the way you
did. You see, I thought at first that no one would know me, made up and
all. And when I found out I would be recognizable, it was too late to
stop--or at least it seemed so. Besides, I thought you knew. I saw Jimmy
Wallace out there the opening night, and saw he recognized me, and--I
thought he'd tell you. And then I kept seeing other people out in front
after that, people we knew, who'd come to see for themselves, and I
thought, of course, you knew. And--I suppose I was a coward--I waited
for you to come. I wasn't, as you thought, trying to hurt you. But I can
see how it must have looked like that."

He said quickly: "You're not to blame at all. I remember how you offered
to tell me what you intended to do before you went away, and that I
wouldn't let you."

Silence froze down on them again.

"I can't forgive myself," he said at last, "for having driven you
out--as I'm sure I did--from your position in the Chicago company. I
went back to the theater to try and find you, three days after--after
that night, but you were gone. I've been trying to find you ever since.
I've wanted to take back the things I said that night--about being
disgraced and all. I was angry over not having known when the other
people did. It wasn't your being on the stage. We're not so bigoted as
that.

"I've come to ask a favor of you, though, and that is that you'll let
me--let us all, help you. I can't--bear having you live like this,
knocking about like this, where all sorts of things can happen to you.
And going under an assumed name. I've no right to ask a favor, I know,
but I do. I ask you to take your own name again, Rose Aldrich. And I
want you to let us help you to get a better position than this; that