But before she could get over to him, the pianist and the musical director had got his attention. So she waited quietly beside him for two of the longest minutes that ever were ticked off by a clock. Then, with disconcerting suddenness, right in the middle of one of the musical director's sentences, he looked straight into her face and said: "What do you want?" She'd thought him tall, but he wasn't. He was looking on a perfect level into her eyes. "I want a job in the chorus," said Rose. "You heard what I said to that other woman, I suppose?" "Yes," said Rose, "but ..." "But you thought you'd let me say it to you again." "Yes," she said. And, queerly enough, she felt her courage coming back. She managed the last "yes" very steadily. It had occurred to her that if he'd wanted merely to get rid of her, he could have done it quicker than this. He was looking her over now with a coolly appraising eye. "What professional experience have you had?" he asked. "I haven't had any." He almost smiled when she stopped there. "Any amateur experience?" he inquired. "Quite a lot," said Rose; "pageants and things, and two or three little plays." "Can you dance?" "Yes," said Rose. He said he supposed ballroom dancing was what she meant, whereupon she told him she was a pretty good ballroom dancer, but that it was gymnastic dancing she had had in mind. "All right," he said. "See if you can do this. Watch me, and then imitate me exactly." In the intensity of her absorption in his questions and her own answers to them, she had never given a thought to the bystanders. But now as they fell back to give him room, she swept a glance across their faces. They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about this--something out of the regular routine. A little knot of chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders guffawed outright. It wasn't pretty, the dance step he executed--a sort of stiff-legged skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with a straight-out sidewise kick. A sick disgust clutched at Rose as she watched--an utter revulsion from the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors--starve if she had to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make it tolerable--and before that row of leering faces. "Well?" he asked, turning to her as he finished. He wasn't smiling at all. "I'm not dressed to do that," she said. "I know you're not," he admitted coolly, "but it can be done. Pick up your skirts and do it as you are,--if you really want a job." There was just a faint edge of contempt in that last phrase and, mercifully, it roused her anger. A blaze kindled in her blue eyes, and two spots of vivid color defined themselves in her cheeks.