The Benson signal., 1918-02-09

ried ASSOCIATION Of fISf-. with Il. That
all thoughts and meNories 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 meanr
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 very clear
ly visualized purpose. Half an hour
later she hailed passing cab and de-
posted in it one dressmaking form, a
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 its
respectable nakedness for two or three
minutes with a 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 go
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
rehearsal.
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
brio in it and dressmaker's name
quin-the raw materials for her magic {!
Rose couldn't draw a bit. She
hadn't the eaintest impulse to make a
beginning by putting a picture down
on paper and making dress from it
afterward. She couldn't have told just
why she had bought those three shades
Of paper cambria.
What she had felt, of course, at the
very outset, was the need Of something
to indicate, roughly, the darks and
1
wild extravaganza Of slashing into the
fabrics themselves and making her
mistakes at their expense, she could
think Of nothing better than the
scheme she chose.
Rehearsal was dismissed little
early that night, and she was back in
her room by eleven. Arrived there,
she took off her outer clothes, sat
down cross-legged on the floor. and
went to work.
When at last. with little sigh, and
a tremulously smiling acknowledge
ment Of fatigue, she got up and looked
at her watch, it was four o'clock In
the morning. She'd had one Of those
experiences Of which every artist can
remember a few in his life, when it is
impossible for anything to go wrong
when the vision miraculously betters
itself in the execution; when the only
difficulty is that which the hands have
in the purely mechanical operation Of
| keeDing ND