sters of them, but servants to
the underlying thing you wanted.

And if only she could have believed her own vision, the outlines of the
underlying thing she wanted were beginning to appear, as in a half
developed negative. It hadn't been from a cold sense of duty, or from a
cold fear of losing her job, that she had thrown herself into the
accomplishment of John Galbraith's wishes, or had felt that almost
fierce desire that some effect he was trying for and that she
understood, should get an objective validity. It hadn't been out of pure
altruism that she'd spent those twelve solid hours compelling Olga
Larson to talk better. She might have felt sorry for the girl--might
have loaned her money, comforted her; but she wouldn't have locked her
in her room and beaten down her sullen opposition, set her afire with
her own vitality, except that it was a thing that had to be done for the
good of the show.

In short, she was, to fall back on Rodney's phrase again, for the first
time driving herself with the motive power of her own desires--riding
the back of a hitherto unsuspected passion. But the binding force of
that fixed idea of hers had been sufficient all along to keep up the
delusion of unreality about the real half of her life and to make the
nightmare half of it seem true.

It wasn't until she heard herself telling John Galbraith that she could
design those costumes for him, and in a flame of suddenly kindled
excitement, resolved to make that unexpected promise good, that the
fetters of her false logic fell away from her.

The truth of the matter, the wonderful, almost incredible truth, kept
coming up brighter and clearer as she walked silently along beside him
down the avenue. The real beginning of the pilgrimage that was to carry
her back into her husband's life, wasn't a thing that had to be waited
for. It could begin now! No, the truth was better than that; it had
begun already! Because if John Galbraith had come to her house a month
ago, when she was casting about so desperately for a way of earning a
living, and had offered her the chance just as he had offered it
to-night, she'd have declined it. She wouldn't have known what he
wanted. She'd rightly have said that the thing was utterly beyond her
powers. To-night she knew what he wanted and she was utterly confident
of her ability to give it to him.

And the one word that blaze of confidence spelled for her in letters of
fire, was her husband's name. This