he would. But there had been something at once ironic and
tender about the girl's smile, when she had spoken of the only one who
really mattered, that he couldn't account for. Who was the only one that
really mattered, anyway? Her husband? He didn't think it likely. Young
women who quarreled with their husbands and ran away from them to go on
the stage, wouldn't, as far as his experience went, be likely to smile
over them like that. More probably a brother--a younger brother,
perhaps, fiercely proud as such a boy would be of such a sister.

She certainly had sand, that girl. He was mighty glad his bluff that he
would put her out of the chorus altogether, unless she took the little
part in the sextette, had worked. He'd have felt rather a fool if she
had called it.

Of course the thing that had got Rose was the echo, through everything
John Galbraith had said, of Rodney's own philosophy; his dear, big,
lusty, rather remorseless way. And now again, as before when she had
left him, it was his view of life that was recoiling upon his own head.

She was really grateful to Galbraith. What had she left Rodney for,
except to build a self for herself; to acquire, through whatever pains
might be the price of it, a life that didn't derive from him; that was,
at the core of it, her own? Yet here, right at the beginning of her
pilgrimage, she'd have turned down the by-path of self-sacrifice; have
begun ordering her life with reference to Rodney, rather than herself,
if John Galbraith hadn't headed her back.

CHAPTER IV

THE GIRL WITH THE BAD VOICE

The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot
fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its
lineage. Its foci were Sylvia Huntington, the beautiful
multi-millionairess, and Richard Benham, nephew of Minim, the Cosmetic
King and head of the Talcum Trust. Sylvia, tired of being sought for her
wealth, and yearning to be loved for herself alone, has run away to
Bohemia and installed herself in an attic over a studio occupied by two
penniless artists, one a poet, the other a musician. Only they aren't
penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely
successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo,
the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious
nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a
truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him