Rose; made use in a quite matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman.  She made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and those who were driven to it only by anger.  But for these first few minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency.

One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn’t finally been dropped; it was absurd that she should be.  She was one of the most popular chorus-girls in Chicago.  The director was merely trying to scare her into doing better work for him.  She’d come back, all right.  She had reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine.  Her “friend,” it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson.  Grant would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to induce Galbraith to take her back.

If this theory were sound, and it had a dreadful plausibility to Rose, her only chance for keeping her job would be to do as well as Grant could do, to-night, in this very first rehearsal; and she went out on the stage in a perfect agony of determination.  She must see everything, hear everything; put all she knew and every ounce of energy she had, into the endeavor to make John Galbraith forget that she was a recruit at all.

The intensity of this preoccupation was a wonderful protection to her.  It kept away the sick disgust that had threatened her in the dressing-room; prevented her even glancing ahead to a future that would, had she taken to guessing about it, utterly have overwhelmed her.  The intensely illuminated present instant kept her mind focused to its sharpest edge.

It is true that before she had been working fifteen minutes, she had forgotten all about Grant and the possibility of her return.  She’d even forgotten her resolution not to let John Galbraith remember she was a recruit.  Indeed, she had forgotten she was a recruit.  She was nothing at all but just a reflection of his will.  She’d felt that quality strongly in him even behind his back during the afternoon rehearsal.  Now, on the stage in front of him, she was completely possessed by it.

She didn’t know she was tired, panting, wet all over with sweat.  Really, of course, she was pretty soft, judged by her own athletic standards.  She hadn’t done anything so physically exacting as this for over a year.  But she had the illusion that she wasn’t doing anything now; that she was just a passive plastic thing, tossed, flung, swirled about by the driving power of the director’s will.  It wouldn’t have surprised her if the chairs had danced for him.

It couldn’t of course have occurred to her that she was producing her own effect on the director; she couldn’t have surmised that he was driving his rehearsal at a faster pace and with a renewed energy and fire because of the presence, there in the ranks of his chorus, of a glowing, thrilling creature who devoured his intentions half formed, met them with a blue spark across the poles of their two minds.