their own, except the barest minimum required to
indicate respectful acquiescence--carrying out these instructions, was
in its novelty, as sensuously delightful a thing to her feelings as the
contact with a fine fabric was to her finger-tips.

"I haven't," Rose, in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed,
mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had
been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling
seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinee party. So, she
concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the day was empty.

"Oh, that's too bad," he said with concern. "Can't you manage
something ...?"

"Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. "It's too heavenly! I've got a
whole day just to enjoy being myself;--being"--she reached across to the
other bed for his hand, and getting it, stroked her cheek with
it--"being my new self. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting
all the little things about it are. State Street's so different
now--going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding
something I can make do, and then faking it up to look as much like the
real thing as I could. Portia used to think I faked pretty well. It was
the one thing she really admired about me, because she couldn't do it
herself at all. But I never was--don't you know?--right.

"And then when I was going anywhere, I'd figure out the through routes
and where I'd take transfers, and how many blocks I'd have to walk, and
what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner
always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it simply never
occurred to me that everybody else didn't do it that way. Except"--she
smiled--"except in Robert Chambers' novels and such."

It wasn't necessary to see Rose smile to know she did it. Her voice,
broadening out and--dimpling, betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly
enough, went rather below the surface, carried a reference to something.
But Rodney didn't interrupt. He let her go on and waited to inquire
about it later.

"So you see," she concluded, "it's quite an adventure just to say--well,
that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly
where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as if I ought to say that
if he'll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey Street, I can
walk."

He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful
state of things would last.

"Forever," she