Neither of the men could offer, on the spur of the moment, the alternative explanation she demanded.  Indeed it would have taken a good deal of ingenuity to construct one.  It was safer, anyway, just to go on looking incredulous.

There was silence for a minute or two, then Violet burst out again.  “And then, after all Freddy had done, for Rose to come back here to Chicago, with all the other cities in the country where it wouldn’t matter what she did, and start to be, of all things, a chorus-girl!  It’s just a”—­she hesitated over the word, and then used it with an inflection that gave it its full literal meaning—­“just a dirty trick.  And poor Freddy, when she knows ...!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said John Williamson.  “I don’t believe Doris Dane—­if that’s her name—­is Rose, in the first place.  And I don’t believe Rose has had a quarrel with Rodney.  But if she has, and if she’s really there in that show ...  Well, I know Rose—­not so well as I’d have liked to, but pretty well—­and I know she’s a fine girl and I know she’s square.  And if I ever saw a girl in love with her husband, she was.  Well, and if she has done it, she’s got a reason for it.  Oh, I don’t mean another woman or a trunk-strap, or any of the regular divorce court stuff.  That’s absurd, of course.  And it may be, really, a fool reason.  But you can bet it didn’t look like that to her.  She wouldn’t have done it, admitting it’s what she’s done, unless she felt she had to.”

“Oh, yes,” said Violet, “I expect she’s feeling awfully noble about it, and I’ll admit she was in love with Rodney.  And that makes it all the worse!  If she’d fallen in love with some other man and run off with him—­well, that isn’t pretty, but it’s happened before and people have got away with it.  But this running away on account of some silly idea that she’s picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running away from a man like Rodney, too, just makes you sick.”

Her husband didn’t try to answer her, except with a regretful sigh.  He recognized in the stinging contempt of his wife’s words, the voice of their world.  If Doris Dane of the sextette were really Rose—­and in the bottom of his heart, despite his valiant pretense, he couldn’t manage more than a feeble doubt of it—­she had committed the unforgivable sin.  Or so he thought, leaving out of his calculations one ingredient in the situation.  She had done an unconventional thing for the sake of a principle!

“Well,” said Jimmy Wallace after a while, heading the conversation away, as he was wont to do, from what might be an endless discussion of moral principles, “the purpose of this council of war is to decide what we are going to do about it.  Are we going to tell Aldrich or his sister about the dressmaker who looks so much like his wife, and let them find out for themselves whether she is or not?  Or are we going to make sure first by going back on the stage there and having a talk with her?  Or are we just going to shut up about it—­never have been to the Globe at all; or, in my case, never to have noticed the resemblance?”