The nightmare tour on the road with _The Girl Up-stairs_
company was a part of Rose; the day in Centropolis, the night when
Galbraith had made love to her. The hour in the University Club, when
Rodney's heart had first shrunk from an unacknowledged fear; the days
and weeks of humiliation and distress that had succeeded it, were a part
of him--an ineffaceable part.
So it was natural enough--though not, therefore, the less
distressing--that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to
revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in
New York; a tendency to be--of all things--polite. He didn't swear any
more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, picked up
things she dropped. And when she was quite sure she was safe from
discovery, she sometimes wept forlornly, for the rough, outrageous,
absent-minded, imperious lover of the old days.
She did not know that she was different too--as remote from the girl she
had been during the first six months of their marriage--the girl who,
"all eyes," had held her breath while Doctor Randolph told her things;
the girl who had smiled over Bertie Willis' love-making, because she
didn't know that such things happened except in books--as he was from
the old Rodney.
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