Goldsmith’s heart was touched.  The costumes were a bargain at four hundred and sixty-five, and he knew it.  There was an indescribable sort of dash to them that would lend tone to the whole production.  And then the face of that pretty young girl who must have worked so desperately hard to make them and who was so obviously helpless at this bargaining game, would have moved a harder heart than his.

“Oh, all right!” he said.  “We’ll give in.  Four hundred”—­he began making out the check, but his hand hung over it a moment—­“and fifty.  How’s that?”

Rose drew in a long breath.  “That’s all right,” she said.

It was just as she turned away with the check made out to Doris Dane in her wrist-bag, that the mystery of that phantom hundred dollars solved itself.  It was the hundred dollars she’d borrowed from Rodney and could now return to him!

Galbraith took the first chance he could make to shoot her a low-voiced question.  “How much did you get?” he asked, and his face showed downright surprise when she told him.  “That’s a pretty fair price,” he commented.  “I was afraid they’d screw you way down on it, and I wanted to help you out, but ...”

“Oh, you did,” said Rose.  “Telling me they were good.  Of course you couldn’t have done anything more.  The first thing I want to do,” she went on, “is to pay you back.  But I don’t know just how to do it.  I can’t go to the bank where they know me and—­anyway, the name on the check isn’t right.”

He told her how easily that could be fixed.  He’d take her to the bank he used here in town and identify her.  Then she could pay him and deposit the balance to her own account.  It was a bank where they didn’t mind small accounts.  That would be much better than carrying her money around with her where it could too easily be stolen.

He was very kind about it all and they put the program through that day.  Yet she was vaguely conscious of a sense that he seemed a little chilled, as if something about the transaction unaccountably depressed him.

And indeed it was true that he’d have found his tendency to fall in love with her a good deal harder to resist if she’d shown herself more helpless in the hands of Goldsmith and Block.  She’d actually driven a good bargain—­an unaccountably good bargain!  He wished he’d been on hand to see how she did it.  Well, women were queer, there was no getting away from that.

But Goldsmith and Block came back the next day and drove, in turn, a good bargain of their own.

“You’ve certainly got a good eye for costumes, Miss Dane,” Goldsmith said, “and here’s a proposition we’d like to make.  A lot of these other things we’ve got for the regular chorus don’t look so good as they might.  You’ll be able to see changes in them that’ll improve them maybe fifty per cent.  Well, you take it on, and we’ll begin paying you your regular salary now; you understand, twenty-five dollars a week, beginning to-day.”