She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and
through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it
faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she
could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext,
even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone
turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to
herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the
whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since
shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back.
Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark
Street, having deserted her husband and her babies--a loving honest
husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old--to
become a member of the chorus in a show called _The Girl Up-stairs!_ Was
there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the
most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could
she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she
wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged
fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to
have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and
find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a
crazy act like this?
It didn't matter now.
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