Acquiescing in that point of view, as by her flight she did,
couldn't lighten it.
But all the power these considerations had, was to make her flight seem
more ignominious. They were utterly incapable of preventing it.
A disinterested friend, had she boasted such a possession just then,
might have pointed out for her comfort, that her rout was not complete.
It was a retreat, but not a surrender. She hadn't become Rose Stanton
again and gone back to Portia and her mother. Doris Dane, though badly
battered, was still intact!
The first ten days of her life on the road had, on the whole, a
distinctly restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's
recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously
exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits,
for all that. Certainly the regime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose.
The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for
practically all her time.
A typical day consisted in getting up in the morning at an hour
determined for you either by the call posted on the bulletin board in
the theater the night before, telling you what time you were to be at
the railway station, or by the last moment at which you could get into
the dining-room in the hotel.
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