There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment, when she pretty well went to pieces.  So this was all, was it, that she owed her illusory appearance of success to?  The amorous desires of a man old enough to be her father!  Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go round.  The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long ago had told her about.  But for that attraction she’d never have got this job in New York, never have had the chance to design those costumes for Goldsmith and Block.  Never, in all probability, have got even that job in the chorus of The Girl Up-stairs.  All she’d accomplished in that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall in love with her!

But she didn’t let herself go like that for long.  The situation was too serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl.  Here she was in an apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month.  She’d got to earn a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it.  Of course she couldn’t go on working for Galbraith.  The question was, what could she do?  Well, she could do a good many things.  Whatever Galbraith’s motives had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made the most of it.  Gertrude Morse knew what she could do.  For that matter, so did Abe Shuman himself.  The thing to do now was to go to bed and get a night’s sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the morning.

It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards’ A Man’s World, and then put out her light and sleep till morning.

It was barely nine o’clock when Galbraith called her up on the telephone.  She hadn’t had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to think out what the day’s program must be.

He apologized for calling her so early.  “I wanted to be sure of catching you,” he said, “before you did anything.  You haven’t yet, have you?  Not written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?”

Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she told him she had not.  “I want to talk with you,” he said.  “It’s got to be somewhere where we won’t be interrupted.”  He added, “I shan’t say again what I said last night.  You’ll find me perfectly reasonable.”

Somehow his voice carried entire conviction.  The man she visualized at the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago.

“All right,” she said, “I don’t know any better place than here in my apartment, if that’s convenient for you.”