it.  It accounted, of course, for the rather odd way in which the landlady, the ticket-seller at the Globe, and meek little Mr. Quan, the assistant stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn’t classify.  John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the stage.  The test he had applied wasn’t, from that point of view, unnecessarily cruel.  The girl he had taken her for, would, on being ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her dignity about her like a cloak, and gone back in a chastened spirit to the world where she belonged.

A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the dressing-room to the door—­a figure that, with regal deliberation, was closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic Callot frock.  The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last seen in a Michigan Avenue shop.  She had amused herself by trying to vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it.  It had found its proper buyer at last—­fulfilled its destiny.

“Oh, Grant!” said John Galbraith.

The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump, as the sulky chorus-girl.  Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of surplus fat didn’t show.

Galbraith walked over to her.  “I shan’t need you any more, Grant.”  He spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a good deal of carrying power.  “It’s hardly worth your while trying to work, I suppose, when you’re so prosperous as this.  And it isn’t worth my while to have you soldiering.  You needn’t report again.”

He nodded not unamiably, and turned away.  Evidently she had ceased to exist for him as completely as the duchess.  She glared after him and called out in a hoarse throaty voice, “Thank Gawd I don’t have to work for you.”

He’d come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile.  “When you do it,” he said over his shoulder, “thank Him for me too.”  Then to Rose:  “She’s a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking; audiences like her.  I’m giving you her place because as long as she’s got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won’t get down to business.  I’d rather have a green recruit who will.  I’m hiring you because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like doing isn’t important and that what I tell you to do is.  The next rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night.  Give your name and address to Mr. Quan before you go.  By the way, what is your name?”

“Rose Stanton,” she said.  “But ...”  She had to follow him a step or two because he had already turned away.  “But, may I give some other name than that to Mr. Quan?” He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how old she was.  And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn’t look altogether reassured.