The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1917-06-29


a policeman, like Moses cleaving the
Red sea, had opened a way through
the tide of motors for a throng of Pc
deStrians.
"Come across here" said Galbraith,
taking her by the arm and stemming
this current with her. "We've got to
have a minute of shelter to finish this
up in," and he led her into the north
lobby of the public library. The stale,
baked air of the place almost made
them gasp. But, anyway, it was quiet
and altogether deserted. They could
hear themselves think in there, he said,
and led the way to a marble bench
alongside the staircase.
Rose unpinned her veil and, to his
surprise, because of course she was
going in minute, put it into her ulster
pocket. But, curiously enough, the
sight of her face only intensified an
impression that had been strong upon
him during the last part of their walk
the impression that she was a long
way off. 1t wasn't the familiar con-
templative brown study, either. There
was an active, eager excitement about
it that made it more beautiful than
he had ever seen it before. But it
was as if she were looking at some
thing he couldn't see-listening to
words he couldn't hear.
"Well," he said a little impatiently,
'are you going to do it?"
And at that the glow of her was
turned fairly upon him. "Yes," she
said, 'Tm going to do it. I suppose I
mustn't thank you," she went on, "be-
cause you say it isn't anything you're
doing for me. But it is-a great thing
for me-greater-than could tell you.
And I won't fail. You needn't be
afraid"
He counted out q hundred and twen-
ty dollars, which he handed over to
her. She folded it and put it away in
her wristbag. The glow of her hadn't
faded, but once more it was turned on
something someone-else. 1t wasn't
until he rose little abruptly from the
marble bench that she reused herself
with q shake of the head, arose too,
and once more faced him.
you're right about our having to
hurry" she said, and before he could
find the first of the words he wanted,
she had given him that curt farewell
nod which from the first had stirred
and warmed him, and turned away
toward the door.
And she had never seen what was
fairly shining in his face.
She couldn't, of course, have missed
q thing as plain as that but for a COM
plete preoccupation of thought and
feeling that would have left her OBJ
livious to almost anything that could
happen to her.
The flaming vortex of thoughts,
hopes, desires which enveloped her
was so intense as almost to evoke a
subject of them-of that big, powerful
minded, clean-souled husband of hers,
who loved her so rapturously, and who
had driven her away from him because
that rapture was the only thing he
would share with her.
Since she had left his house and
begun this new life of hers, she had,
as best she could, been fighting him
out of her thoughts altogether. She
had shrunk from anything that car
all thoughts and memories of him
must necessarily be painful, she had
taken for granted.
But with this sudden lighting up of
hope, she flung the closed door wide
and called her husband back into her
thoughts. This hard thing that she
was going to do-this thing that meant
sleepless nights, and feverishly active
days-was an expression simply of
her love for him-a sacrificial offering
to be laid before the shrine of him
in her heart.
Yet, the fact that Roses heart was
racing and her nerves were tingling
with a newly welcomed sense of her
lovers spiritual presence, did not pre-
vent her flying along west on Ran
dolph street and south again on the
west side of State, with a very clear
ly visualized purpose. Half an hour
later she hailed a passing cab and de-
posted in it one dreSsmaking form, q
huge bundle of paper cambric-in
black, white and washed-out blue, and
her own weary but still excited and
exultant self.
It was after eight o'clock when she
reached her room. Rehearsal was at
eight-thirty and she had had nothing
to eat since noon. But she stole the
time, nevertheless, to tear the wrap
pings off her form" and gaze on it's
respectable nakedness for two or three
minutes with contemplative eye.
Then, reluctantly-it was the first
time she had left that room with re-
luctance-she turned out the light and
hurried off to the little lunch room
that lay on the way to the dance hall.
It was during that first rehearsal,
which she so narrowly missed being
late for, that she got the general
schemes for both sets of costumes.
She began studying the girls for their
individual peculiaritieS of style. Each
one of the costumes she made was 60
ing to be for particular girl.
At last when a shout from Gal
braith aroused her to the fact that
she had missed an entrance cue alto
gether, in her entranced absorption in
these visions of hers, and had caused
that objectionable thing, stage wait,
she resolutely clamped down the lid
upC- her imagination and, until they
were dismissed, devoted herself to the
But the pressure kept mounting
higher and higher, and she found her
self furiously impatient to get away.
back to her own private wonderland,
the squalid little room down the
street, that had three bolts of cam.