Dolly, just after the two
of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in
Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had
shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the
man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly
told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering
ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their
closest friendship--this was the way it looked to her distorted
vision--Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a
man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga
had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for
inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that
Dolly would go straight to Rose with it.

That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy
indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she
wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be
angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her
hope was quite unconscious.

As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail;
didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an
explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene
would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations
of undying love, fondlings ...

So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole
unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it.

It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was
evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous
hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral
derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of
standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of
them.

Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of
the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy
stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she
knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus.

At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the
duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a
permanent cold in the head, came in with her.

Somehow the days dragged along until t