Jimmy. "Why should I?"

"You haven't even been curious," she questioned, "to find out what a
girl who looked and talked as much like Rose as that, was like?" She
concluded, for good measure, with one more question voiced a little
differently--more casually. "Have you happened to see Rodney lately?"

"Why, yes," Jimmy said unwarily. "I met him at the club the other day;
only saw him for a minute or two. We had one drink."

"And did you happen to tell him," she asked, "about this dressmaker in
_The Girl Up-stairs_ who looked so wonderfully like Rose? Did you offer
to take him round to see for himself?"

"I tell you there's nothing to that!" said John. He'd been caught in the
same trap, it seemed. "What's the use of butting in? If anything has
gone wrong with those two ..."

"You've always said there hasn't," Violet interrupted.

"And you've said," he countered, "that you were sure there had. Well,
then, if there's a chance of it, why run the risk, just for nothing?"

Jimmy, as it happened, had never heard even a suggestion that Rose and
Rodney were on any other terms than those of perfect amity. He hoped
they'd go on and tell him more. So to prevent their becoming suddenly
discreet, he promptly changed the subject.

"I thought you had a taboo against the Globe," he said to Violet. "How
did you happen to go there?"

"John went while I was in New York," she explained.

[Illustration: "Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"]

"He's--well, a regular fan, you know. He hasn't missed a show there in
years. And he was _too_ queer and absent-minded and fidgety for words,
when I came back. I thought a bank must be going to fail, or something.
And when he said, after dinner last night, that he felt like going to a
musical show, of course I said I'd go with him. And when I found it was
the Globe--he already had tickets--I was too--kind and sorry for him to
make a fuss. Well, and then she came out on the stage, and I knew what
it was all about."

"Where did you sit?" Jimmy asked.

"Fifth row," said John.

Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't
mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now."

"Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?"

"They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights,--can they?"

Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the
house. But it seems she didn't recognize you."

"Look here!" said Vio