on the way to the
hotel; and her manner toward Rose, when any of these manifestations fell
beneath her eye, was one of uneasy challenge. Let Rose just try to
remonstrate with her if she dared! She no longer came back to the hotel
with Rose after the performances, took to turning up at their room at
hours that grew steadily later and more outrageous, and while at first
she stole in very quietly, undressed in the dark and tried to creep into
bed without awakening her, she grew rapidly more brazen about it; turned
on the light and undressed before the mirror, talked elaborately about
nothing and laughed her high nervous little laugh without occasion.

It was not a lack of daring that kept Rose from asking the questions
that were so patently waiting to be answered, or from making the
remonstrances that Dolly's behavior so definitely invited. She knew she
ought to stir herself up and do something. She had assumed, she knew, a
measure of moral responsibility for the fluffy helpless little thing she
had conquered so easily at first and taken for her chum. Of course
remonstrances, moral lectures, scoldings, wouldn't accomplish anything.
What the situation called for was a second conquest; a reassertion of
her moral dominance over the girl. She would have to reconstruct the
relation which, since the first week of their tour, she had, in her
apathy, allowed to lapse. But that apathy had become too strong to
break. She couldn't rouse herself from it. And, failing that, she kept
silent; let Dolly go her ways.

But a fortnight after Dubuque, an incident occurred that even her
acquiescent passivity couldn't ignore. There came a fine bright
afternoon with no matinee and no washing or mending that needed to be
done, when she suggested to Dolly that they go out for a good walk.
Dolly didn't assent to the proposal, though the suggestion seemed to
interest her.

"Where is there to walk to?" she asked. "These towns are all alike."

"I don't mean just a stroll around the town," Rose said. "Look here!
I'll show you." She pointed from the window. "Across that bridge (they
were playing one of the Mississippi River towns) and up to the top of
that hill on the other side."

"Gee!" said Dolly. "That's miles."

"Do you good," said Rose.

"Are you going there anyway?" asked Dolly.

Rose nodded. "You'd better come along," she said. By turning on her full
powers of persuasion, she might, she felt, have pulled Dolly along with
her; swept her