Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the
dressing-room to the door--a figure that, with regal deliberation, was
closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic
Callot frock. The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last
seen in a Michigan Avenue shop. She had amused herself by trying to
vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it. It had found its
proper buyer at last--fulfilled its destiny.
"Oh, Grant!" said John Galbraith.
The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump,
as the sulky chorus-girl. Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of
surplus fat didn't show.
Galbraith walked over to her. "I shan't need you any more, Grant." He
spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a
good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to
work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth
my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again."
He nodded not unamiably, and turned away. Evidently she had ceased to
exist for him as completely as the duchess. She glared after him and
called out in a hoarse throaty voice, "Thank Gawd I don't _have_ to work
for you."
He'd come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile. "When
you do it," he said over his shoulder, "thank Him for me too." Then to
Rose: "She's a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking;
audiences like her. I'm giving you her place because as long as she's
got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won't get down to
business. I'd rather have a green recruit who will. I'm hiring you
because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like
doing isn't important and that what I tell you to do is. The next
rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night. Give your name and address
to Mr. Quan before you go. By the way, what is your name?"
"Rose Stanton," she said. "But ..." She had to follow him a step or two
because he had already turned away. "But, may I give some other name
than that to Mr. Quan?" He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how
old she was. And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn't look
altogether reassured.
"That's the truth, is it? I mean, there's nobody who can come down here
about three days before we open and call me a kidnaper, and lead you
away by the ear?"
"No," said Rose gravely, "there's no one who'll do that."
"Very good," he said. "Tell Quan any name you like."
The name she did tell him was Doris Dane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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