And all the while he was a director and she was a chorus-girl and an unyielding etiquette of their respective professions forbade a word of human intercourse between them!  He had violated it, as both of them had been aware, when he shook hands with her and thanked her for having taught Olga Larson to talk.  And just because he recognized quite well how necessary the barrier was in all but one out of a thousand cases, its existence in this one case baffled and irritated him.

Up to the hour when he had turned into Lessing’s store this afternoon, for a look at the dresses Mrs. Goldsmith had been picking out for the sextette, this feeling of baffled curiosity and of irritation over the etiquette that forbade his satisfying it, would have summed up, adequately enough, all the emotions he was conscious of toward the girl.  His professional admiration for her was another thing of course—­a perfectly legitimate thing.  But with her appearance from behind the screen, in that French evening gown—­a gown she wore with the indescribable air of belonging in it—­with all her vibrant, irregular, fascinating, eupeptic beauty fully revealed, his mood of impatient acquiescence had fallen away.  The basis of his feeling toward her shifted in a manner that James Randolph wouldn’t have had a moment’s difficulty in explaining, although Galbraith didn’t understand it himself.

The thing he was conscious of was, when she made that offer to copy this gown herself for twenty dollars and so leave him leeway for the purchase of the Empire frock for Olga—­offering to go to that trouble not for herself or her friend, but to further the accomplishment of what he wanted; namely, the success of his production—­what he was conscious of then, was an overpowering desire to make a confidante of her; to talk matters out with her, show her some of the major strategy of the game that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her.

It was all against the rules, of course.  But to this case—­the one in a thousand certainly, in ten thousand maybe—­the rules manifestly did not apply.

If it hadn’t been for that opaque white veil, the glow of light and eagerness in her face would probably have conquered his resistance finally and for good, while they stood there in the entry to the store.  As it was, he was still hanging on a dead center as they walked down the east side of the avenue together.

Ahead of them, and to the right, over in Grant Park, was the colossal municipal Christmas tree, already built, and getting decorated against the celebration of Christmas Eve, now only two days away.

“Shall we rehearse on Christmas Day?” Rose asked.

He came out of his preoccupation a little vaguely.  “Why, yes.  Yes, of course,” he said absently.  Then, coming a little further, and with a different intonation, he went on:  “We’re really getting pressed for time, you see.  And the opening won’t wait for anybody.  It’s hard luck though, isn’t it?”