It was nearly noon before she, dressed with unconscious care, stood in the street doorway looking about uncertainly as if she did not know which way to turn. She finally moved in the direction of the theater where Rod's play was rehearsing. She had gone to none of the rehearsals because Rod had requested it. "I want you to see it as a total surprise the first night," explained he. "That'll give you more pleasure, and also it will make your criticism more valuable to us." And she had acquiesced, not displeased to have all her time for her own affairs. But now she, dazed, stunned almost, convinced that it was all over for her with Brent, instinctively turned to Rod to get human help—not to ask for it, but in the hope that somehow he would divine and would say or do something that would make the way ahead a little less forbidding—something that would hearten her for the few first steps, anyhow. She turned back several times—now, because she feared Rod wouldn't like her coming; again because her experience—enlightened good sense—told her that Rod would—could—not help her, that her sole reliance was herself. But in the end, driven by one of those spasms of terror lest the underworld should be about to engulf her again, she stood at the stage door.
As she was about to negotiate the surly looking man on guard within, Sperry came rushing down the long dark passageway. He was brushing past her when he saw who it was. "Too late!" he cried. "Rehearsal's over."
"I didn't come to the rehearsal," explained Susan. "I thought perhaps Rod would be going to lunch."
"So he is. Go straight back. You'll find him on the stage. I'll join you if you'll wait a minute or so." And Sperry hurried on into the street.
Susan advanced along the passageway cautiously as it was but one remove from pitch dark. Perhaps fifty feet, and she came to a cross passage. As she hesitated, a door at the far end of it opened and she caught a glimpse of a dressing-room and, in the space made by the partly opened door, a woman half-dressed—an attractive glimpse. The woman—who seemed young—was not looking down the passage, but into the room. She was laughing in the way a woman laughs only when it is for a man, for the man—and was saying, "Now, Rod, you must go, and give me a chance to finish dressing." A man's arm—Rod's arm—reached across the opening in the doorway. A hand—Susan recognized Rod's well-shaped hand—was laid strongly yet tenderly upon the pretty bare arm of the struggling, laughing young woman—and the door closed—and the passage was soot-dark again. All this a matter of less than five seconds. Susan, ashamed at having caught him, frightened lest she should be found where she had no business to be, fled back along the main passage and jerked open the street door. She ran squarely into Sperry.
"I—I beg your pardon," stammered he. "I was in such a rush—I ought to have been thinking where I was going. Did I hurt you?" This last most anxiously. "I'm so sorry——"
"It's nothing—nothing," laughed Susan. "You are the one that's hurt."
And in fact she had knocked Sperry breathless. "You don't look anything like so strong," gasped he.
"Oh, my appearance is deceptive—in a lot of ways."
For instance, he could have got from her face just then no hint of the agony of fear torturing her—fear of the drop into the underworld.