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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Joan Thursday, by Louis Joseph Vance,
+Illustrated by Oscar Cesare
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Joan Thursday
+
+
+Author: Louis Joseph Vance
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 23, 2011  [eBook #36502]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN THURSDAY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 36502-h.htm or 36502-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36502/36502-h/36502-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36502/36502-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/joanthursday00vanciala
+
+
+
+
+
+JOAN THURSDAY
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
+
+With Illustrations by Oscar Cesare
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown, and Company
+1913
+
+Copyright, 1913,
+By Louis Joseph Vance.
+
+All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign
+languages, including the Scandinavian.
+
+Published, September, 1913.
+Reprinted, September, 1913.
+Reprinted, December, 1913.
+
+The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    GRANT RICHARDS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+   "Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"
+
+   "What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded, hotly
+
+   "Miss Thursday--my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge"
+
+   The door slammed. He was gone
+
+
+
+
+JOAN THURSDAY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+She stood on the southeast corner of Broadway at Twenty-second Street,
+waiting for a northbound car with a vacant seat. She had been on her
+feet all day and was very tired, so tired that the prospect of being
+obliged to stand all the way uptown seemed quite intolerable. And so,
+though quick with impatience to get home and "have it over with," she
+chose to wait.
+
+Up out of the south, from lower Broadway and the sweatshop purlieus of
+Union Square, defiled an unending procession of surface cars, without
+exception dark with massed humanity. Pausing momentarily before the
+corner where the girl was waiting (as if mockingly submitting themselves
+to the appraisal of her alert eyes) one after another received the
+signal of the switchman beyond the northern crossing and ground
+sluggishly on. Not one but was crowded to the guards, affording the girl
+no excuse for leaving her position.
+
+She waited on, her growing impatience as imperceptible as her fatigue:
+neither of them discernible to those many transient stares which she
+received with a semblance of blank indifference that was, in reality,
+not devoid of consciousness. Youth will not be overlooked; reinforced by
+an abounding vitality, such as hers, it becomes imperious. This girl was
+as pretty as she was poor, and as young.
+
+Judged by her appearance, she might have been anywhere between sixteen
+and twenty years of age. She was, in fact, something over eighteen, and
+at heart more nearly a child than this age might be taken to imply--more
+a child than any who knew her suspected. She herself suspected it least
+of all.
+
+She looked what she liked to believe herself, a young woman of
+considerable experience with life. Simple, and even cheap, her garments
+still owned a certain distinction which she would without hesitation
+have termed "stylish": a quality of smartness which somehow contrived
+not incongruously to associate with inferior materials. Her shirtwaist
+was of opaque linen, pleated, and while not laundry-fresh was still
+presentable; her skirt fitted her hips snugly, and fell in graceful
+lines to a point something short of her low tan shoes, showing stockings
+of a texture at once coarse and sheer; to her hat, an ordinary straw
+simply trimmed with a band and _chou_ of ribbon, she had lent some
+little factitious character by deftly twisting it a trifle out of the
+prevailing shape. Over one arm she carried a coat of the same material
+as her skirt, and in her hand a well-worn handbag of imitation leather,
+rather too large, and decorated with a monogram of two initials in
+German silver. The initials were J-T: her name was Joan Thursby.
+
+Uniform with a thousand sisters of the shop-counters, she was yet
+mysteriously different. Men looked twice in passing; after passing some
+turned to look again.
+
+Her face, tinted by the glow of the western sky, was by no means poor in
+native colour: a shade thin, its regular features held a promise, vague,
+fugitive, and provoking. Her hair was a brown which hardly escaped being
+ruddy, and her skin matched it, lacking alike the dusky warmth of the
+brune and the purity of the blonde. She was neither tall nor short, but
+seemed misleadingly smaller than she was in fact, thanks to the
+slightness of a body more stupidly nourished than under-nourished or
+immature. Her eyes were brown and large, and they were very beautiful
+indeed when divorced from the vacancy of weary thinking.
+
+It was only in this look of the unthinking toiler that unconsciously
+she confessed her immense fatigue. Her features were relaxed into lines
+and contours of apathy. She seemed neither to think nor even to be
+capable of much sustained thought. Yet she was thinking, and that very
+intensely if unconsciously. Her mind was not only active but was one of
+considerable latent capacity: something which she did not in the least
+suspect; indeed, it had never occurred to Joan to debate her mental
+limitations. Her thoughts were as a rule more emotional than psychical:
+as now, when she was intensely preoccupied with pondering how she was to
+explain at home the loss of her position, and what would be said to her,
+and how she would feel when all had been said ... and what she would
+then do....
+
+Daylight was slowly fading. Though it was only half-after six of an
+evening in June, the sun was already invisible, smudged out by a
+portentous bank of purplish cloud whose profile was edged with
+fire-of-gold against a sky of tarnished blue--a sky that seemed dimmed
+with the sweat of day-long heat and toil. The city air was close and
+moveless, and the cloud-bank was lifting very slowly from behind the
+Jersey hills; it might be several hours before the promised storm would
+break and bring relief to a parched and weary people.
+
+At length despairing of her desire, the girl moved out to the middle of
+the street and boarded the next open car of the Lexington Avenue line.
+
+She was able to find standing-room only between two seats toward the
+rear, where smoking was permitted. She stood just inside the
+running-board, grasping the back of the forward seat. Her hand rested
+between the shoulders of two men. She was the only woman in that
+section. Behind her were ten masculine knees in a row, before her five
+masculine heads: ten men crowding the two transverse benches, some
+smoking, all stolidly absorbed in newspapers and indifferent to the
+intrusion of a woman. None dreamed of offering the girl a seat; nor did
+she find this anything remarkable, in whom use had bred the habit of
+accepting without question such everyday phenomena. If she was weary, so
+were the men; if she desired the consideration due her sex, then must
+she enfranchise herself from the sexless struggle for a living wage....
+
+The car, swerving into Twenty-third Street, plunged on to and turned
+north on Lexington Avenue. Thereafter its progress consisted of a series
+of frantic leaps from street-corner to street-corner. When it was in
+motion, there was a grateful rush of air; when at pause, the heat was
+stifling and the fumes of cigarettes, pipes, and cheap cigars blended to
+manufacture a mephitic reek. A slight sweat dewed the face of the girl,
+and her colour faded to pallor. Her feet and legs were aching, her back
+ached with much lifting of boxes to and from shelves, her head
+ached--chiefly because of the inevitable malnutrition of a shop-girl's
+lunch.
+
+From time to time more passengers were taken on; a lesser number
+alighted: Joan found herself obliged to edge farther in between the rank
+of knees and the rigid back of the forward seat. By the time the car
+crossed Forty-second Street, she was at the inside guard-rail: ten
+persons, half of them standing, were occupying a space meant for five.
+
+It was then, or only a trifle later, that she became conscious of the
+knee which the man behind her was purposely pressing against her. Then
+for a minute or two she was let alone. But she was sick with
+apprehension....
+
+
+She stood it as long as she could. Then abruptly she twisted round and
+faced her persecutor.
+
+Before her eyes, half blinded by rage and disgust, his face swam like
+the mask of an incubus--a blur of red flesh fixed in an insolent smirk.
+
+She was dimly aware of curious glances lifting to the sound of her
+tremulous voice:
+
+"Must I leave this car? Or will you let me alone?"
+
+There was the pause of an instant; then she had her answer in a tone of
+truculent contempt:
+
+"Ah, wha's the matter with you, anyhow?"
+
+She choked, stammering, and looked round in despair. But the man at her
+elbow was grinning with open amusement, and another, seated beside her
+tormentor, was pretending to notice nothing, his nose buried in a
+newspaper.
+
+"If y'u don't like the goin', sister, why doncha get off 'n' walk?"
+
+This from him who had compelled that frantic protest.
+
+With a lurch, the car stopped; and as it did so the girl turned
+impulsively, grasped the guard-rail, swung her lithe body between it and
+the floor of the car, and dropped to the cobbles between the tracks. She
+staggered a foot or two away, followed by an indistinguishable taunt
+amid derisive laughter. Fortunately there was no car bearing down on the
+southbound track to endanger her; while that which she had left flung
+away as, recovering, she ran to the sidewalk.
+
+She began to trudge northward. The first street lamp she encountered
+told her she had alighted at Forty-seventh Street, and had another mile
+and a half to walk. But with all her weariness, she no longer thought of
+riding; it was impossible ... she could never escape annoyance ... men
+just wouldn't let her alone....
+
+_Men!..._
+
+Shuddering imperceptibly, her eyes hot with tears of shame and
+indignation, she walked rapidly, anxious to gain the refuge of her home,
+to be secure, for a time at least, from Man....
+
+They called themselves _Men_! She despised them all--_all_! Beasts!...
+What had she ever done?... It wasn't as if this was the first time: they
+were always plaguing her: hardly a day passed.... Well, anyway, never a
+week.... It wasn't her fault if she was pretty: she never even so much
+as looked at them: but they kept on staring ... nudging.... She didn't
+believe there was a decent fellow living ... except, of course, That
+One....
+
+He was different; at least, he had been, somehow: like a perfect
+gentleman. He had come between her and a gang of tormentors, had knocked
+one down and thrown the rest into confusion with a lively play of fists,
+and then, whisking Joan into a convenient taxicab, had taken her to the
+corner nearest her home--never so much as asking her name, or if he
+might call.... She had expected him to--like in a book; but he didn't,
+nor had he (likewise contrary to her expectations) at any time
+thereafter been known to haunt her neighbourhood. To her the affair was
+like a dream of chivalry: she remembered him as very handsome (probably
+far more handsome than he really was) and _different_, with grand
+clothes and manners (the man had helped her out of the cab and lifted
+his hat in parting): all in all, vastly unlike any of the fellows whose
+rude attentions she somewhat loftily permitted in the streets after
+supper or at the home of some other girl.
+
+That One remained her dream-lord of romance. And in her heart of hearts
+she was sure that some day their paths would cross again. But it had all
+happened so long ago that she had grown a little faint with waiting.
+
+So, smothering her indignation with roseate fancies, she plodded her
+weary way to Seventy-sixth Street; where, turning eastward, she
+presently ascended a squat brown-stone stoop, entered the dingy
+vestibule of a dingier tenement, pressed the button below a mail-box
+labelled "Thursby," waited till the latch clicked its spasmodic welcome,
+and then began her weary climb to the topmost floor.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The five flights of steps were long and steep and covered with a
+compound of fabric, grease, and dirt which, today resembling a thin
+layer of decayed rubber, had once been bright linoleum. There was no
+light other than a dejected dusk filtering down the wall from a grimy
+sky-light in the roof, a twilight lacking little of the gloom of night.
+
+On each landing five doors opened--three toward the back, two toward the
+front of the building: most of them ajar, for purposes of ventilation
+and publicity. It was a question which was the louder, the clatter of
+tongues or the conflict of odours from things cooking and things that
+would doubtless have been the better for purification by fire.
+
+At the top conditions were a little more endurable: and when Joan had
+shut behind her the door giving access to her home, the clatter and
+squalling came from below, a familiar and not unpleasant blend of
+dissonances. And within the smells were individual: chiefly of boiled
+cabbage and fried pork, with a feebly contending flavour of cheap
+tobacco-smoke.
+
+She was in the dining-room of the Thursby flat. Behind it lay the
+kitchen; forward, three small cubicles successively denominated on the
+architect's plans as "bedchamber," "alcove," and "parlour." They were
+all, however, sleeping-rooms. The nearest was occupied by Joan's
+brother; the next, the alcove, contained a double-bed dedicated to Joan
+and her young sister; while the parlour held a curiosity called a
+folding-bed, which had long since ceased to fold, and on which slept
+Anthony Thursby and his wife.
+
+Mrs. Thursby was now in the kitchen, preparing dinner with the
+assistance of her fifteen-year-old daughter, Edna. "Butch," the son of
+the house, was not at home.
+
+Anthony Thursby sat at the dining-table, head bent over a ragged
+note-book and a well-thumbed collection of white and pink newspaper
+clippings.
+
+It was the sight of him that checked Joan in her explicit intention. She
+had meant to enter dramatically to her mother, blurt out the news, with
+the cause, of her misfortune, and abandon herself to the luxury of
+self-pity soothed by sympathy. But she had also meant to have it
+understood that nobody was to tell "the Old Man"--at least not until she
+should have established herself in a new job. In short, she had not
+thought to find Thursby at home.
+
+Hesitating beside the table, she removed the long pins from her hat
+while she stared with narrowed eyes at her father. She was wondering
+whether she hadn't better confess and have it out with him first as
+last. The only thing, indeed, that made her pause was the knowledge that
+there would be no living with him until she was once more "earning good
+money" behind a counter. And she was firmly determined not again to seek
+employment in a department store.
+
+Regarding fixedly the round but unpolished bald head with its neglected
+fringe of grey hair, she asked herself if the bitterness in her heart
+for her father were in truth hatred or mere premonitory resentment of
+the opposition he would unquestionably set against her plans for the
+future....
+
+He was a man of nearly fifty, who looked more, in spite of a tendency to
+genial corpulence. At thirty he had been a fair and handsome man; today
+his round red face was mottled, disfigured by a ragged grey moustache,
+discoloured by several days' growth of scrubby beard, and lined and
+seamed with the imprint of that consuming passion whose sign was also
+set in his grey, passionate, haunted eyes. Shabbily dressed in a soiled
+madras shirt and shoddy trousers, he wore neither tie nor collar: his
+unkempt chin hung in folds upon his chest. Fat and grimy forearms
+protruded from his rolled-up sleeves; fat and mottled hands trembled
+slightly but perceptibly as they rustled the pink and white clippings
+and with a stubby pencil scrawled mysterious hieroglyphics in the
+battered note-book.
+
+Thursby was intent upon what he, and indeed all his family, knew as his
+"dope": checking and re-checking selections for tomorrow's races. This
+pursuit, with its concomitants, its attendant tides of hope and
+disappointment, was his infatuation, at once the solace and the terror
+of his declining years.
+
+Now and again he muttered unintelligibly.
+
+There rose a sound of voices in the kitchen. Annoyed by the
+interruption, he started, looked up, and discovered Joan.
+
+She offered to his irritated gaze a face of calm, with unsmiling
+features.
+
+"Hello!" he growled. "How the h--how long've you been in?"
+
+"Only a few minutes, pa," the girl returned quietly.
+
+"Well--what're you standing there--staring!--for, anyhow?"
+
+"I didn't mean anything: I was just taking off my hat."
+
+"Well"--his face was now purple with senseless anger--"cut along! Don't
+bother me. I'm busy."
+
+"I see."
+
+There was a damnable superciliousness in the tone of the girl as she
+turned away. Thursby meditated an explosion, but refrained at
+discretion: Joan had taught him that, unlike her browbeaten mother and
+timid sister and her sleek, loaferish brother, she could give as good as
+he could send. He bent again, grumbling, over his dope. Instantly it
+gripped him, obliterating all else in his cosmos. He frowned, moistened
+the pencil at his mouth, and scrawled another note in the greasy little
+book.
+
+Joan slipped quietly away to her bedroom. She found it stifling;
+ventilated solely from the parlour and the open door to Butch's kennel,
+it reeked with the smell of human flesh and cheap perfume. She noted
+resentfully the fact that her sister had neglected to make up the bed:
+its rumpled sheets and pillows, still retaining the impression of
+over-night, lent the cubicle the final effect of sordid poverty.
+
+Hanging up her hat and coat, she sat for a time on the edge of the bed,
+thinking profoundly.
+
+Such an existence, she felt, passed human endurance. And a gate of
+escape stood ajar to her, with a mundane paradise beyond, if only she
+had the courage to adventure....
+
+In any event, conditions as they were now with the Thursbys could not
+obtain much longer. If the Old Man continued to follow the races through
+the poolrooms, he would soon be forced out of his small business and his
+family dispossessed of their mean lodgings; and there was no longer any
+excuse for hope that he would ever shake off the bondage of his
+infatuation. As it was, he gave little enough toward the support of his
+family, and grudged that little; almost all his meagre profits went to
+the poolrooms; it was only when he won (or seldom otherwise) that he
+would spare his wife a few dollars. Furthermore, his business was
+heavily involved in an intricate meshing of debt.
+
+Thursby, at least, persisted in calling it a business; though Joan's
+lips shaped scornfully at mention of that mean and insignificant
+newspaper shop, crowded in between a saloon and a delicatessen shop, in
+the shadow of the Third Avenue Elevated Railway. In her understanding it
+was chiefly remarkable as the one place where one could be certain of
+not finding Thursby during the afternoon or Butch at night. They were
+seldom there together: it was as if father and son could not breathe the
+same atmosphere for long at a time.
+
+Nominally, Butch was his father's assistant; actually, he alone kept the
+business alive; had it not been for his supervision of the morning and
+evening paper deliveries, it would long since have wasted
+inconspicuously away. By way of compensation, Butch, shrewdly alive to
+signs of a winning day, would now and again wheedle a dollar or two out
+of the Old Man. Wages he neither received nor expected, being well
+content with a nominal employment which served to cover many an hour of
+unlicensed liberty; and he seemed to have access to some mysterious if
+occasionally scanty fund, for he was never without some little money in
+pocket. After dinner, if Butch elected to eat the evening meal at home,
+he invariably disappeared; and his return was a matter of his personal
+convenience. He had been known not to sleep at home at all; his
+favourite bedtime was between one and two in the morning--after the
+saloons had closed. Yet no one had ever seen him drunk.
+
+He was younger than Joan by a year. Born to the name of Edgar, he had
+been dubbed Butch in the public schools, and the name had stuck; even
+his mother and father employed it. And yet it could not be said to suit
+him; rather, the boy suggested a jocky. He was short, slender, and wiry;
+with a strong, emaciated nose flanked by small eyes sunk deep in sallow
+cheeks--his mouth set in a perpetually sardonic curve. He dressed
+neatly, whatever the straits and necessities of the family (to the
+mitigation of which he contributed nothing whatever) and had a failing
+for narrow red neckties and flashy waistcoats. His hard, thin lips were
+generally tight upon a cigarette; they were forever tight upon his
+personal affairs: if he opened them at home it was to "kid" the girls,
+which he did with a slangy, mordant wit, or to drop some casually
+affectionate word to his mother. His conversation with his father, whom
+he seemed always to be watching with a narrow, grim suspicion, was
+ordinarily confined to monosyllables of affirmation or negation.
+
+He went his secret ways, self-sufficient, wary, reserved; a perpetual
+subject of covert speculation to the women of his family.
+
+Joan had heard it whispered that he was a member of the "Car-barn Gang."
+But she never dared question Butch, though she trembled every time she
+came upon newspaper headlines advertising some fresh hooliganism on the
+part of the gang--a policeman "beaten up," a sober citizen "held up and
+frisked" in the small hours, or a member of some rival organization
+found stabbed and weltering on the sawdust floor of a grisly dive.
+
+Between this girl and her brother there existed a strange harmony of
+understanding, quite tacit and almost unrecognized by either. Joan's
+nearest approach to acknowledgment of it resided in infrequent
+admissions to friends that she could "get on with Butch," whereas "the
+rest of the bunch made her weary."
+
+Almost all the vigour and vitality of the mother seemed to have been
+surrendered to Butch and Joan; there had been little left for Edna. The
+girl was frail, anæmic, flat-chested, pretty in an appealing way: fit
+only for one of two things, tuberculosis or reconstruction in the
+country. As it was, in the busy seasons she found underpaid employment
+in the workrooms of Sixth Avenue dressmaking establishments; between
+whiles she drudged at housework to the limits of her small strength.
+
+As for Mrs. Thursby.... It was singularly difficult for Joan to realize
+her mother. There was about the woman something formless and intangible.
+She seemed to fail to make a definite impression even upon the retina of
+the physical eye. She had the faculty of effacing herself, seemed more a
+woman that had been than a woman who was. The four boundary walls of the
+flat comprehended her existence; she seldom left the house; she never
+changed her dress save for bed. It might have been thought that she
+would thus dominate her world: to the contrary, she haunted it, more a
+wraith than a body, a creature of functions rather than of faculties.
+She had a way of being in a room without attracting a glance, of passing
+through and from it without leaving an impression of her transit.
+
+When Joan made herself look directly at her mother, she was able to
+detect traces of ravaged beauty. A living shell in which its tenant lay
+dormant, her subjective will to live alone kept this woman going her
+sempiternal rounds of monotony. Capacity for affection she apparently
+had none; she regarded her children with as little interest as her
+husband. Nor had she the power to excite or sustain affection.
+
+Joan believed she loved her mother. She did not: she accepted her as a
+convention in which affection inhered through tradition alone....
+
+Seated on the edge of the bed, her face flushed with the heat of the
+smouldering evening, sombre eyes staring steadfastly at the threadbare
+carpet, the girl shook her head silently, in dreary wonder.
+
+She stood at crossroads. She could, of course, go on as she had
+gone--bartering youth and strength for a few dollars a week. But every
+fibre of her being, every instinct of her forlorn soul, was in vital
+mutiny against such servitude. In fact, doubt no longer existed in
+Joan's mind as to which way she would turn: dread of the inevitable
+rupture alone deterred her from the first steps.
+
+From the rear of the flat Edna called her fretfully: "Joan! Jo-an! Ain't
+you coming to eat?"
+
+Joan rose. She answered affirmatively in a strong voice. Her mind was
+now made up: she would tell them after supper--after the Old Man had
+gone back to the shop.
+
+She posed before a mirror, touching her hair with deft fingers while she
+stared curiously at the face falsified in the depths of the uneven sheet
+of glass.
+
+Then placing her hands on her hips, at the belt-line, thumbs to the
+back, she lifted her shoulders, at one and the same time smoothing out
+the wrinkles in her waist and settling her belt into place.
+
+"Oh," she said, as casually as if there had been any one to hear, "I
+guess I'll _do_, all right, all right!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+With a careless nod to her mother and sister, Joan slipped into her
+chair and helped herself mechanically but liberally to the remains of
+pork and cabbage. Her mother tilted a granite-ware pot over a cup and
+filled the latter with the decoction which, in the Thursby menu,
+masqueraded as coffee.
+
+Joan acknowledged the service with an outspoken "Thanks."
+
+At this Edna plucked up courage to say, with some animation: "Joan--"
+
+The mother interrupted with a sibilant warning, "_Hush!_"
+
+Thursby lifted his head and raked the three faces with an angry glance.
+"In God's name!" he cried--"can't you women hold your tongues?"
+
+The girls made their resentment variously visible: Joan with a scowl and
+a toss of her head, Edna with a timid pout. The mother's face betrayed
+no emotion whatsoever. Thereafter, as far as they were concerned, the
+meal progressed in silence.
+
+Thursby bent low over his plate, in the intervals devoted to mastication
+intently studying the file of dope at his elbow. Now and again he would
+drop knife and fork to take up his pencil and check the name of a horse
+or jot additional memoranda in his note-book. Infrequently he spoke or,
+rather, grunted, to indicate a desire for some dish beyond his reach.
+Curiously enough (Joan remarked for the thousandth time) he was
+punctilious to say "please" and "thank you." The idiosyncrasy was all a
+piece (she thought) with the ease with which he employed knife, fork,
+and spoon: a careless grace which the girl considered "elegant" and did
+him the honour to imitate.
+
+Furtively throughout the meal she studied her father. These little
+peculiarities of his, these refinements which sat so strangely on his
+gross, neglected person and were so exotic to his circumstances, exerted
+a compelling fascination upon the nimble curiosity of the girl. She both
+feared and despised him, but none the less cherished a sneaking
+admiration for the man. Beyond the fact that their estate had not always
+been so sorry, she knew nothing of the history of her parents; but she
+liked to think of her father, that he had once been, in some unknown
+way, superior: that he was a man ruined by a marriage beneath his
+station. To think this flattered her own secret dreams of rising out of
+her environment: girls, she had heard, took after their fathers--and
+_vice-versa_: perhaps she had inherited some of Anthony Thursby's keener
+intelligence, adaptability, and sensitiveness--those qualities with
+which she chose to endow the man who had been Thursby before he became
+her father. Other circumstances lent colour to this theory: Butch, for
+instance, had unquestionably inherited his mother's physique and her
+reticence, while Joan had her father's vigorous constitution and a body
+like his for sturdiness and good proportion....
+
+Suddenly thrusting back his chair, Thursby rose, buttoned a soiled
+collar round his neck, shrugged a shabby coat upon his shoulders and,
+pocketing his dope, departed with neither word nor glance for his
+womenfolk.
+
+His heavy footsteps were pounding the second flight of steps before a
+voice broke the hush in the stuffy little room, a voice faint and
+toneless, dim and passionless. It was Mrs. Thursby's.
+
+"He's had a bad day, I guess...."
+
+Edna placed a tender hand over the scalded, listless one that rested on
+the oilcloth. Joan, abandoning her determination to air her personal
+grievances at the first available instant, said suddenly:
+
+"Never mind, ma. It ain't like he was a drinking man."
+
+The vacant eyes in the faded face of the mother were fathoming distances
+remote from the four walls of the slatternly room. Her thin and
+colourless lips trembled slightly; little more than a whisper escaped
+them:
+
+"Sometimes I wish he was--wish he had been. It'd 've been easier to
+stand--all this." A faltering gesture indicated vaguely the misery of
+their environment.
+
+Edna continued to pet the unresponsive hand.
+
+"Don't, mother!" she pleaded.
+
+The woman stirred, withdrew her hand, and slowly got up.
+
+"Come on, Edna. Le's get done with them dishes."
+
+With eyes hard and calculating, Joan watched the two drift into the
+kitchen. Their wretched state touched her less than the fact that she
+must continue forever to share it, or else try to better it in open
+defiance of her father's prejudices.
+
+"Something's got to be done for this family," she grumbled--"and I don't
+see anybody even thinking of doing anything but me!"
+
+She rose and strode angrily back to the cubicle she shared with Edna. In
+a fit of unreasoning rage, snatching her hat from its hook, she impaled
+it upon her hair with hatpins that stabbed viciously. It had grown too
+dark to see more than a vague white shape moving on the surface of the
+mirror. But she did not stop to light the gas to make sure she was
+armoured against the public eye. In another moment, bag in hand, coat
+over her arm, she was letting herself out into the hallway.
+
+Time enough tomorrow morning to fret her mother and sister with news of
+her misfortune: tonight she was in the humour to make a bold move toward
+freedom....
+
+But on the door-stoop she checked, a trifle dashed by apprehension of
+the impending storm, which she had quite forgotten. She drew back into
+the vestibule: she could hardly afford to subject her only decent waist
+and skirt to danger of a drenching.
+
+An atmosphere if anything more dense than that of the day blanketed
+heavily the city. Even the gutter-children seemed to feel its influence,
+and instead of making the evening hideous with screams and rioting,
+moved with an uncommon lethargy, or stood or squatted apart in little
+groups, their voices hushed and querulous. The roar of the trains on the
+nearby Elevated seemed muted, the clangour of the Third Avenue surface
+cars blunted, and Joan fancied that the street lamps burned with an
+added lustre. Wayfarers moved slowly if near home, otherwise briskly,
+with a spirit as unwilling as unwonted: one and all with frequent
+glances skyward.
+
+Overhead, a low-hung bosom of dusky vapour borrowed a dull blush from
+the fires of life that blazed beneath. In the west, beyond the
+silhouetted structure of the Elevated and the less distinct profile of
+buildings on the far side of Central Park, the clouds blazed luridly
+with their own dread fires--a fitful, sheeted play athwart gigantic
+curtains, to an accompaniment of dull and intermittent grumbles.
+
+A soft, warm breath sighed down the breathless street, and sighing,
+died. Another, more cool and brusque, swept sharp upon the heels of the
+first, played with the littered rubbish of the pavements, caressed with
+a grateful touch flesh still stinging with the heat of day, and drove
+on, preceded by a cloud of acrid dust. A few drops of lukewarm water
+maculated the sidewalks with spots as big as dollars. There followed a
+sharper play of fire, and one more near. Children ran shrieking to
+shelter, and men and women dodged into convenient doorways or scudded
+off clumsily. The wind freshened, grew more chill.... Then, so suddenly
+that there might as well have been no warning, on the wings of the
+howling blast, laced continually with empyrean fire, timed by the
+rolling detonations of heavy artillery now near, now far, a shining
+deluge sluiced the streets and made its gutters brawling rivulets.
+
+A lonely, huddled figure, standing back in the entry, well out of the
+spray from the spattering drops, Joan waited the passing of the storm
+with neither fascination nor fear. Self-absorbed, her mood almost
+altogether introspective, she weighed her reckless plans. The crisis
+bellowed overhead in a series of tremendous, shattering explosions,
+bathing the empty street in wave after wave of blinding violet light,
+without seriously disturbing the slow, steady processes of the girl's
+mentality.
+
+Then she became aware of a young man who had emerged from the darksome
+backwards of the tenement, so quietly that Joan had no notion how long
+he might have been standing there, regarding her with interest and
+amusement in his grey eyes and on his broad, good-humoured countenance.
+He had a long, strong body poised solidly on sturdy legs, short arms
+with large and efficient hands; and bore himself with a careless
+confidence that did much to dissemble the negligence of his mode of
+dress--the ill-fitting coat and trousers, the common striped "outing
+shirt," the rusty derby set aslant on his round, close-cropped head.
+Joan knew him as Ben Austin, one of the few admirers whose attentions
+she was wont to suffer: by occupation a stage-hand at the Hippodrome; a
+steady young man, who lived with his mother in one of the rear flats.
+
+He greeted her with a broadening grin and a "Hello, Joan!"
+
+She said with indifference: "Hello, Ben."
+
+"Waitin' for the rain to let up?"
+
+"No, foolish; I'm posing for a statue of Patience by a sculptor who's
+going to be born tomorrow."
+
+This answer was brilliantly in accord with the humour of the day. Austin
+chuckled appreciatively.
+
+"I thought maybe you was waitin' for Jeems to bring around your
+limousine, Miss Thursby."
+
+"I was, but he won't be here till day before yesterday."
+
+The strain of such repartee proved too much for Austin; he felt himself
+outclassed and, shuffling to cover his discomfiture, sought another
+subject.
+
+"Whacha doing tonight, Joan? Anythin' special?"
+
+"I've got an engagement to pass remarks on the weather with the Dook de
+Bonehead," the girl returned with asperity. "He ain't late, either."
+
+"I guess that was one off the griddle, all right," said Austin
+pensively. "Excuse me for livin'."
+
+There fell a pause, Joan contemptuously staring away through the
+glimmering rain-drops, Austin desperately casting about for a
+conversational opening less calculated than its predecessors to educe
+rebuffs.
+
+"Say, Joan, lis'en--"
+
+"Move on," the girl interrupted: "you're blocking the traffic."
+
+"Nah--serious': howja like to go to a show tonight?"
+
+She turned incredulous eyes to him. "What show?" she drawled.
+
+"I gotta pass for Ziegfield's Follies--N'Yawk Roof. Wanta go?"
+
+"Quit your kidding," she replied after a brief pause devoted to analysis
+of his sincerity. "Y' know you've got to work."
+
+"Nothin' like that!" he insisted. "The Hip closed last Sat'dy and I got
+a coupla weeks lay-off while they're gettin' ready to rehearse the new
+show. On the level, now: will you go with me?"
+
+"_Will_ I!" The girl drew a long, ecstatic breath. Then her face
+darkened as she glanced again at the street: "But we'll get all wet!"
+
+"No, we won't: I'll get an umbrella. Besides, it's lettin' up."
+
+With this Austin vanished, to return in a few minutes with a fairly
+presentable umbrella. The shower was, in fact, fast passing on over Long
+Island, leaving in its wake a slackening drizzle amid deep-throated
+growls at constantly lengthening intervals.
+
+Half-clothed children were seeping in swelling streams from the
+tenements as the two--Austin holding the umbrella, Joan with a hand on
+her escort's arm, her skirts gathered high about her trim
+ankles--splashed through lukewarm puddles toward Third Avenue. A faint
+and odorous vapour steamed up from wet and darkly lustrous asphalt.
+
+They hurried on in silence: Austin dumbly content with his conquest of
+the aloof tolerance which the girl had theretofore shown him, and
+planning bolder and more masterful steps; Joan all ecstatic with the
+prospect of seeing for the first time a "Broadway show"....
+
+A few minutes before nine they left the cross-town car at Broadway and
+Forty-second Street.
+
+Though she had lived all her young years within the boundaries of New
+York, never before had Joan experienced the sensation of being a unit of
+that roaring flood of life which nightly scours Longacre Square, with
+scarce a perceptible change in volume, winter or summer. Yet she
+accepted it with apparently implacable calm. She felt as if she
+had been born to this, as if she were coming tardily into her
+birthright--something of which each least detail would in time become
+most intimate to her.
+
+They were already late, and Austin hurried her. A brief, hasty walk
+brought them to the theatre, where Austin left her in a corner of the
+lobby with the promise that he would return in a very few minutes: he
+had to see a friend "round back," he explained in an undertone. But Joan
+remained a target for boldly enquiring glances for full ten minutes
+before he reappeared. Even then, with a nod to her to wait, Austin went
+to the box-office window. She was not deceived as to the general tenor
+of his fortunes there--saw him place a card on the ledge and confer
+inaudibly with the ticket-seller, and then reluctantly remove the card
+and substitute for it two one-dollar bills, for which he received two
+slips of pasteboard.
+
+"House 'most sold out," he muttered uncomfortably in her ear as an
+elevator carried them to the roof. "Best I could get was table seats."
+
+"They're just as good as any," she whispered, with a look of gratitude
+that temporarily turned his head.
+
+The elevator discharged them into a vast hall with walls and a roof of
+glass. Artificial wistaria festooned its beams and pillars of steel,
+palms and potted plants lined the walls. A myriad electric bulbs
+glimmered dimly throughout the auditorium, brilliantly upon the small
+stage. Deep banks of chairs radiated back from the footlights, to each
+its tenant staring greedily in one common direction.
+
+An usher waved the newcomers to the left. Ultimately they found seats at
+a small table in a far corner of the enclosure.
+
+Austin was disappointed, and made his disappointment known in a public
+grumble: the table was too far away; they couldn't see nothin'--might's
+well not've come. Joan smiled his ill-humour away, insisting that the
+seats were fine. Mollified, he summoned a waiter and ordered beer for
+himself, for Joan a glass of lemonade--a weirdly decorated and insipid
+concoction which, nevertheless, Joan absorbed with the keenest relish.
+
+In point of fact, the distance from their seats to the stage offered
+little obstacle to her complete enjoyment: her senses were all youthful
+and unimpaired; she saw and heard what many another missed of those in
+their neighbourhood. Furthermore, Joan brought to an entertainment of
+this character a point of view fresh, virginal, and innocent of the very
+meaning of ennui. She sat forward on the extreme edge of her chair,
+imperceptibly a-quiver with excitement, avid of every sight and sound.
+All that was tawdry, vulgar, and contemptible escaped her: she was
+sensitive only to the illusion of splendour and magnificence, and lived
+enraptured by dream-like music, exquisite wit, and the poetic beauty of
+femininity but half-clothed, or less, and viewed through a kaleidoscopic
+play of coloured light.
+
+During the intermission she bent an elbow on the sloppy table-top and
+chattered at Austin with a vivacity new in his knowledge of her, and for
+which he had no match....
+
+At one time during the second part of the performance, the auditorium
+was suddenly darkened, while attention was held to the stage by the
+antics of a pair of German comedians. But in the shadows that now
+surrounded them (quite unconscious that Austin had seized this
+opportunity to capture her warm young hand) Joan became aware of a
+number of figures issuing from a side-door to the stage. She saw them
+marshalled in ranks of two--a long double file, vaguely glimmering
+through the obscurity. And then the comedians darted into the wings, the
+lights blazed out at full strength all over the enclosure, and a roll of
+drums crescendo roused the audience to a tremendous and exhilarating
+novelty: a procession of chorus girls in hip-tights and hussar tunics
+who, each with a snare-drum at waist, had stolen down the aisle, into
+the heart of the auditorium.
+
+For a long moment they marked time, drumming skilfully, their leader
+with her polished baton standing beside Joan. Then the orchestra blared
+out an accompaniment, and they strode away, turning left and marching up
+the centre aisle to the stage.... Joan marked, with pulses that seemed
+to beat in tune to the drumming, the wistful beauty of many of the
+painted faces with their aloof eyes and fixed smiles of conscious
+self-possession, the richness of their uniforms, their bare powdered
+arms, the pretty legs in their silken casings. Oblivious to the
+libidinous glances of the goggling men they passed, she envied them one
+and all--the meanest and homeliest of them even as the most proud and
+beautiful--this chance of theirs _to act_, to be admired, to win the
+homage of the herd....
+
+She awoke as from idyllic dreams to find herself again in a Third Avenue
+car, homeward bound. But still her brain was drowsy with memories of the
+splendour and the glory; fragments of haunting melody ran through her
+thoughts; and visions haunted her, of herself commanding a similar meed
+of adoration....
+
+Austin's arm lay along the top of the seat behind her; his fingers
+rested lightly against the sleeve of her shirtwaist. She did not notice
+them. To his clumsily playful advances she returned indefinite,
+monosyllabic answers, accompanied by her charming smile of a grateful
+child....
+
+On the third landing of their tenement they paused to say good night,
+visible to one another only in a faint light reflected up from the
+gas-jet burning low in the hall below. The smell of humanity and its
+food hung in the clammy air they breathed. A hum of voices from the many
+cells of the hive buzzed in their ears. But Joan forgot them all.
+
+She hesitated, embarrassed with the difficulty of finding words adequate
+to express her thanks.
+
+Austin tried awkwardly to help her out: "Well, I guess it's good night,
+kid."
+
+She said, exclamatory: "O Ben! I've had _such_ a good time!"
+
+"Dja? Glad to hear it. Will you go again--next week? I guess I can work
+som'other show, all right."
+
+Compunction smote as memory reminded her. "But--Ben--didn't you have to
+pay for those tickets?"
+
+"Oh, that's all right. I couldn't find the fella I was lookin' for,
+round back."
+
+"I'm so sorry--"
+
+"Gwan! It wasn't nothin'. Cheap at the price, if you liked it, little
+girl."
+
+"I liked it _awfully_! But I won't go again, unless you show me the pass
+first."
+
+"Wel-l, we'll see about that." He edged a pace nearer.
+
+Suddenly self-conscious, Joan drew back and offered her hand. "Good
+night and--thank you so much, Ben."
+
+He took the hand, but retained it. "Ah, say! is this all I get? I
+thought you kinda liked me...."
+
+"I do, Ben, but--"
+
+"Well, a kiss won't cost you nothin'. It's your turn now."
+
+"But, Ben--but, Ben--"
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the way you feel about it--"
+
+He made as if to relinquish her hand. But to be thought lacking in
+generosity had stung her beyond endurance. Without stopping to
+think--blindly and quickly, so that she might not think--she gave
+herself to his arms.
+
+"Well," she breathed in a soft voice, "just one...."
+
+"Just one, eh?" He pressed his lips to hers. "Oh, I don't know about
+that!"
+
+He tightened his embrace. Her heart was hammering madly. His mouth hurt
+her lips, his beard rasped her tender skin. She wanted frantically to
+get away, to regain possession of herself; and wanted it the more
+because, dimly through the tumult of thought and emotion, she was
+conscious of the fact that she rather liked it.
+
+"Joan...." Austin murmured in a tone that, soft with the note of wooing,
+was yet vibrant with the elation of the conqueror, "Joan...."
+
+One arm shifted up from her waist and his big hand rested heavily over
+her heart.
+
+For a breath she seemed numb and helpless, suffocating with the tempest
+of her senses. Then like lightning there pierced her confusion the
+memory of the knee that had driven her from the car, only that
+afternoon: symbolic of the bedrock beastliness of man. With a quick
+twist and wrench she freed herself and reeled a pace or two away.
+
+"Ben!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anger. "You--you brute--!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"What right had you to--to touch me like that?" she panted, retreating
+as he advanced.
+
+He paused, realizing that he had made a false move which bade fair to
+lose him his prey entirely. Only by elaborate diplomacy would he ever be
+able to reëstablish a footing of friendship; weeks must elapse now
+before he would gain the advantage of another kiss from her lips. He
+swore beneath his breath.
+
+"I didn't mean nothin'," he said in a surly voice. "I don't see as you
+got any call to make such a fuss."
+
+"Oh, don't you?... _Don't_ you!" She felt as if she must choke if she
+continued to parley with him. "Well, I do!" she flashed; and turning,
+ran up the fourth flight of steps.
+
+He swung on his heel, muttering; and she heard him slam the door to his
+flat.
+
+She continued more slowly, panting and struggling to subdue the signs of
+her emotion. But she was poisoned to the deeps of her being with her
+reawakened loathing of Man. On the top landing she paused, blinking back
+her tears, digging her nails into her palms while she fought down a
+tendency to sob, then drew herself up, took a deep breath, and advancing
+to the dining-room, turned the knob with stealth, to avoid disturbing
+her family.
+
+To her surprise and dismay, as the first crack widened between the door
+and jamb, she saw that the room was lighted.
+
+Wondering, she walked boldly in.
+
+Her father was seated at the dining-table, a cheap pipe gripped between
+his teeth. Contrary to his custom, when he sat up late, he was not
+thumbing his dope. His fat, hairy arms were folded upon the oilcloth,
+his face turned squarely to the door. Instinctively Joan understood that
+he had waited up for her, that inexplicably a crisis was about to occur
+in her relations with her family.
+
+In a chair tilted back against the wall, near the window opening upon
+the air-shaft, Butch sat, his feet drawn up on the lower rung, purple
+lisle-thread socks luridly displayed, hands in his trouser-pockets, a
+cigarette drooping from his cynical mouth, a straw hat with brilliant
+ribbon tilted forward over his eyes.
+
+Closing the door, Joan put her back to it, eyes questioning her parent.
+Butch did not move. Thursby sagged his chin lower on his chest.
+
+"Where have you been?" he demanded in deep accents, with the incisive
+and precise enunciation which she had learned to associate only with his
+phases of bad temper.
+
+"Where've I been?" she repeated, stammering. "Where.... Why--out
+walking--"
+
+"Street-walking?" he suggested with an ugly snarl.
+
+She sank, a limp, frightened figure, into a chair near the door.
+
+"Why, pa--what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean I'm going to find out the why and wherefore of the way you're
+behaving yourself. You're my daughter, and not of age yet, and I have a
+right to know what you do and where you go. Keep still!" he snapped, as
+she started to interrupt. "Speak when you're spoken to.... I'm going to
+have a serious talk with you, young woman.... What's all this I hear
+about your losing your job and going on the stage?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+For a brief moment Joan sat agape, meeting incredulously the keen,
+contemptuous gaze of her father. Then she pulled herself together with
+determination to be neither browbeaten nor overborne.
+
+"Where'd you hear that about me?" she demanded ominously.
+
+Thursby shook his ponderous head: "It makes no difference--"
+
+"It makes a lot of difference to me!" she cut in, sharply contentious.
+"You might's well tell me, because I won't talk to you if you don't."
+
+Butch brushed the brim of his hat an inch above his eyes and threw her a
+glance of approbation. Thursby hesitated, his large, mottled face sullen
+and dark in the bluish illumination provided by the single gas-jet
+wheezing above the table. Then reluctantly he gave in.
+
+"Old Inness was in the store this evening. He said--"
+
+"Never mind what _he_ said! I guess I know. Gussie's been shooting off
+her face about me at home. And of course old Inness hadn't nothing
+better to do than to run off and tell you everything he knew!"
+
+"Then you don't deny it?" Thursby insisted.
+
+"I don't have to. It's true. No, I don't deny it," she returned, aping
+his manner to exasperation.
+
+"How'd you come to lose your job?"
+
+"Mr. Winter insulted me--one of the floor-walkers--if you've got to
+know."
+
+Thursby's head wagged heavily while he weighed this information, and he
+regarded his daughter with a baleful, morose glare, his fat hands
+trembling.
+
+"What did you say to this man, Winter?" he asked presently.
+
+"Told him I'd slap his face if he tried anything like that on me again.
+So he reported me up to the management--lied about me--and I got fired."
+
+There was a long silence, through which Thursby pondered the matter, his
+thick lips moving inaudibly, while Joan sat upright, maintaining her
+attitude of independence and defiance, and Butch, grinning lazily, as if
+at some private jest, manufactured ring after ring of smoke in the
+still, close air.
+
+Before her father spoke again, Joan became cognizant of Edna and her
+mother, like twin ghosts in their night-dresses, stealing silently,
+barefooted, to listen just within the door of the adjoining bedroom.
+
+"And what do you propose to do now?" asked Thursby at length, lifting
+his weary, haunted gaze to his daughter's face. "What's this about your
+going on the stage?"
+
+Joan set her jaw firmly. "That's what I'm going to do."
+
+Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.
+
+"Oh, you won't? Well, I'd like to know how you're going to stop me. I'm
+tired slaving behind a counter for a dog's wages--and that eaten up by
+fines because I won't go out with the floor-walkers. I'm going to do the
+best I can for myself. I'm going to be an actress, so's I can make a
+decent living for Edna and ma and myself."
+
+"A decent living!" Thursby mocked without mirth. "You're old enough to
+know better than that."
+
+"I'm old enough to know which side my bread's buttered on," the girl
+flashed back angrily. "I'm through living in this dirty flat and giving
+up every dollar I make to keep us all from starving. God knows what we'd
+do if it wasn't for me with a steady job, and Edna working during the
+season. You don't do anything to help us out: all _you_ get goes on the
+ponies. I don't see any reason why I got to consult you if I choose to
+better myself."
+
+She rose the better to end her tirade with a stamp of her foot. Thursby
+likewise got up, if more sluggishly, and moved round the table to
+confront her.
+
+"You don't go on the stage--no!" he said. "That's settled. Understand?"
+
+"Oh, I get you," she replied, with a flirt of her head, "but I don't
+agree with you. I'm going down town first thing tomorrow to try for a
+job with--with," she hesitated, "Ziegfield's Follies!"
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," he insisted fiercely, congested veins
+starting out upon his forehead. "You're my daughter, and those are my
+orders to you, and you'll obey 'em or I'll know the reason why. You...."
+He faltered as if choking. Then he flung out an arm, with a violent
+gesture indicating the shrinking woman in the doorway. "You--your mother
+was an actress when I married her and took her off the stage.
+She--she--"
+
+"Don't you dare say a word against my mother!" Joan screamed
+passionately into his louring face. "Don't you dare! You hear me: don't
+you dare!"
+
+Her infuriated accents were echoed by a smothered gasp and a spasm of
+sobbing from the other room.
+
+Momentarily abashed by the sheer force of this defiance, the father fell
+back a pace. An expression of almost ludicrous disconcertion shadowed
+his discoloured features. Then slowly, as if thoughtfully, he lifted one
+hand and deliberately tore his collar from its fastening and cast it
+from him.
+
+At this, hastily jerking his cigarette into the air-shaft, Butch got up,
+removed his hat and carefully placed it on the mantel, out of harm's
+way.
+
+"You," said Thursby with apparent difficulty, breathing heavily
+between his words--"you shan't use that tone to me, young woman, and
+live in this house. More than that, you'll leave it this very
+night--now!--unless you promise to give up this fool's notion of the
+stage."
+
+"Tonight!"
+
+Joan paled; her lips tightened; but the glint in her eyes wasn't one of
+fright.
+
+"Tonight!" her father reiterated with malicious pleasure in what he
+thought to be evidences of consternation. "And what's more, you're going
+to apologize to me now."
+
+"Apologize to you!" Joan caught her breath sharply, and her next words
+came without premeditation; she was barely conscious, in her rage, that
+she employed them: "I'll be damned if I do!"
+
+With an inarticulate cry, maddened beyond reason, Thursby lifted a heavy
+hand and stepped toward her.
+
+Simultaneously Butch sprang forward, seized the menacing fist and
+dragged it down and back, with a movement so swift and deft that its
+purpose was accomplished and the hand pinned to the small of Thursby's
+back actually before he appreciated what was happening.
+
+Even Joan was slow to comprehend the fact of this amazing
+intervention....
+
+Nodding emphatically, "Beat it, kid," Butch counselled in a pleasant,
+unstrained tone--"beat it while the going's good.... Easy, now, guvner!"
+
+Speechless, Joan slipped out into the hall and slammed the door.
+Stumbling blindly in the murk, she was none the less quick to find the
+head of the stairway.
+
+On the ground floor, panting and sobbing, she paused to listen. There
+came from above no sound of pursuit to speed her on; yet on she went,
+out of the house, to scurry away through the midnight hush of the
+squalid street like a hunted thing.
+
+There was no sort of coherence in her thoughts, nothing but shreds and
+tatters of rage, fear, and despair, all clouded with a faint and vain
+regret. She gave no heed to the way she went: impulse controlled and
+blind instinct guided her. But at the corner of Park Avenue she was
+obliged to pause for breath, and took advantage of that pause to review
+her plight and plan her future.
+
+Her first concern must be to find a lodging for the night. Tomorrow
+could take care of itself....
+
+Uttering a low cry of dismay, the girl clutched at the handbag swinging
+by its strap from her wrist: its latch was broken, its wide jaws yawned.
+In a breath she had grasped the empty substance of her most dire
+apprehensions: the slender fold of bills, handed her when she left the
+store for the last time that evening, was gone. Whether some sneak-thief
+had robbed her on a surface-car or in the Broadway rabble, or whether
+the lock had been broken, releasing its poor treasure, during her
+struggle with Austin on the stairs--or afterwards or before--she could
+not guess. But she was swift to recognize in its bitter fulness the
+heart-rending futility of retracing her steps to search for the vanished
+money--even though it was all that had stood between her and the world,
+between a common room with food for a week or two and starvation
+and--the streets.
+
+It was a fact, established and irrefutable in her understanding, that
+she could never go back....
+
+Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of
+small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers--eighty-seven
+cents wherewith to face the world!
+
+Further rummaging educed a handful of odds and ends, from which, by the
+light of a corner lamp, she presently succeeded in sorting out a folded
+scrap of paper bearing a pencilled memorandum, faint almost to
+illegibility, so that only with some difficulty could Joan decipher its
+legend: "_Maizie Dean_ (_Lizzie Fogarty_) 289 W. 45 St."
+
+Slowly conning the address with mute, moving lips, until she had it by
+heart, the girl trudged on to Madison Avenue and there signalled and
+boarded a southbound surface-car. It carried few passengers. She had a
+long seat all to herself, and about fifteen minutes wherein to debate
+ways and means....
+
+She reckoned it several years since Lizzie Fogarty (predecessor of
+faithless Gussie Inness, both at the stocking counter and in Joan's
+confidence) suddenly, and with no warning or explanation, had left the
+department store and for fully eight months thereafter had kept her
+where-abouts a mystery to her erstwhile associates--though rumours were
+not lacking in support of a shrewd suspicion that she had "gone on the
+stage." The truth only transpired when, one day, she drifted languidly
+up to the counter behind which she had once served, haughtily inspected
+and selected from goods offered her by a stupefied and indignant Gussie,
+and promptly broke down, confessing the truth amid giggles not guiltless
+of a suspicion of tears. Lizzie was in "vodeveal," partner in a
+"sister-act"--witness her card--"_The Dancing Deans, Maizie & May_."
+
+Beyond shadow of doubt she had prospered. Not only was she amazingly and
+awfully arrayed, but there was in evidence an accomplishment believed to
+be singular to people of great wealth, an "English accent"--or what Joan
+and Gussie ingenuously accepted as such. As practised by Miss Maizie
+Dean this embellishment consisted merely in broadening every A in the
+language (when she didn't forget) and speaking rapidly in a high,
+strained voice. Its effect upon her former associates was to render the
+wake she ploughed through their ranks phosphorescent with envy.
+
+Departing in good time to spare the girls the censure of the
+floor-walker, she had left with Joan the pencilled address and this
+counsel: "If ever you _dream_ of goin' into the business, my deah, don't
+do anythin' before you see _me_. That ad-dress will always make me, no
+mattah wheah 'm woikin': and I'd do _anythin'_ in the woild for you. I
+know you'd make good _anywheres_--with that _shape_ and them _eyes_!..."
+
+Of such stuff as this had Joan fashioned her dreams. Confident in the
+generosity of Lizzie Fogarty, she relied implicitly upon the willingness
+of Miss Maizie Dean to help her into the magic circle of "the
+profession." She had no more doubt that Maizie would make it her
+business, even at cost of personal inconvenience, to secure her an
+engagement, than she had that tomorrow's sun would rise upon a world
+tenanted by one Joan Thursby. Or if such doubt entered her mind by
+stealth, she fought it down and cast it forth with all the power of her
+will. For in Miss Dean, née Fogarty, now resided her sole immediate hope
+of friendly aid and advice....
+
+Alighting at Forty-fifth Street, Joan hastened westward, past Fifth
+Avenue and Sixth to Longacre Square. Here on the corner, she paused to
+don her coat; for the low-swinging draperies of the painted skies had
+begun to distil upon the city a gentle drizzle, soft and warm.
+
+Only two hours ago a vortex of vivid animation, the Square now presented
+a singular aspect of sleepy emptiness. With its high glittering walls of
+steel and glass, its polished black paving like moiré silk, its blushing
+canopy of cloud, its air filled with an infinity of globular atoms of
+moisture, swirling and weltering in a shimmer of incandescence: it was
+like a pool of limpid light, deep and still. Few moving things were
+visible: now and again a taxicab, infrequently a surface-car, here and
+there, singly, a few prowling women, a scattering of predacious men.
+
+Of these latter, one who had been skulking beneath the shelter of the
+New York Theatre fire-escapes strolled idly out toward Joan and
+addressed her in a whisper of loathly intimacy. Fortunately she did not
+hear what he said. Even as he spoke she slipped away from the curb and
+like a haunted shadow darted across the open space and into the kindly
+obscurity of the side-street.
+
+Number 289 reared its five-storey brown-stone front on the northern side
+of the street, hard upon Eighth Avenue. Joan inspected it doubtfully.
+Its three lower tiers of windows were all dark and lightless, but on the
+fourth floor a single oblong shone with gas-light, while on the fifth as
+many as three were dully aglow. The outer doors, at the top of the
+high, old-style stoop, were closed, and even the most hopeful vision
+could detect no definite illumination through the fan-light.
+
+Into the heart of Joan a wretched apprehension stole and there abode,
+cold and crawling. From something in the sedate aspect of the house she
+garnered grim and terrible forebodings.
+
+Nevertheless she dared not lose grasp on hope. Mounting the stoop, she
+sought the bell-pull, and found it just below a small strip of paper
+glued to the stone; frayed and weatherbeaten, it published in letters in
+faded ink scrawled by an infirm hand the information: "_Rooms to let
+furnished_."
+
+For some reason which she did not stop to analyze, this announcement
+spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought lustily at the bell.
+
+It evoked no sound that she could hear. Trembling with expectancy, she
+waited several minutes, then pulled again, and once more waited while
+the cold of dread spread from her heart to chill and benumb her hands
+and feet. She heard never a sound. It was no use--she knew it--yet she
+rang again and again, frantically, with determination, in despair. And
+once she vainly tried the door.
+
+The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant
+upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.
+
+A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand
+relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. Only vaguely did she
+recognize in this the symptoms of immense physical fatigue added to
+those of intense emotional strain: she only knew that she was all
+a-weary for her bed.
+
+Of a sudden, hope and courage both deserted her. Tears filled her eyes:
+she was so lonely and forlorn, so helpless and so friendless. Huddled in
+the shallow recess of the doorway, she fought her emotions silently for
+a time, then broke down altogether and sobbed without restraint into
+her handkerchief. Moments passed uncounted, despair possessing her
+utterly.
+
+The street was all but empty. For some time none remarked the
+disconsolate girl. Then a man, with a handbag but without an umbrella,
+appeared from the direction of Longacre Square, walking with a
+deliberation which suggested that he was either indifferent to or
+unconscious of the rain. Turning up the steps of Number 289, he jingled
+absently a bunch of keys. Not until he had reached the platform of the
+stoop did he notice the woman in the doorway.
+
+Promptly he halted, lifting his brows and pursing his lips in a
+noiseless whistle--his head cocked critically to one side.
+
+Then through the waning tempest of her grief, Joan heard his voice:
+
+"I say! What's the matter?"
+
+Gulping down a sob and dabbing hastily at her eyes with a sodden wad of
+handkerchief, she caught through a veil of tears a blurred impression of
+her interrogator. A man.... She ceased instantly to cry and shrank
+hastily out of his way, into the full swing of wind and rain. She said
+nothing, but eyed him with furtive distrust. He made no offer to move.
+
+"See here!" he expostulated. "You're in trouble. Anything I can do?"
+
+Joan felt that she was regaining control of herself. She dared to linger
+and hope rather than to yield to her primitive instinct toward flight.
+
+"Nothing," she said with a catch in her voice--"only I--I wanted to see
+Miss Dean; but nobody answered the bell."
+
+"Oh!" he said thoughtfully--"you wanted to see Miss Dean--yes!"--as
+though he considered this a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. "But
+Madame Duprat never does answer the door after twelve o'clock, you know.
+She says people have no right to call on us after midnight. There's a
+lot in that, too, you know." He wagged his head earnestly. "Really!" he
+concluded with animation.
+
+His voice was pleasant, his manner sympathetic if something original.
+Joan found courage to enquire:
+
+"Do you think--perhaps--she might be in?"
+
+"Oh, she never leaves the house. At least, I've never seen her leave it.
+I fancy she thinks one of us might move it away if she got out of sight
+for a minute or so."
+
+Puzzled, Joan persisted: "You really think Miss Dean is in?"
+
+"Miss Dean? Oh, beg pardon! I was thinking of Madame Duprat. Ah ... Miss
+Dean ... now ... I infer you have urgent business with her--what?"
+
+"Yes, very!" the girl insisted eagerly. "If I could only see her ... I
+must see her!"
+
+"I'm sure she's in, then!" the man declared in accents of profound
+conviction. "Possibly asleep. But at home. O positively!" He inserted a
+key in the lock and pushed the door open. "If you don't mind coming
+in--out of the weather--I'll see."
+
+Joan eyed him doubtfully. The light was indifferent, a mere glimmer from
+the corner lamp at Eighth Avenue; but it enabled her to see that he was
+passably tall and quite slender. He wore a Panama hat with dark
+clothing. His attitude was more explicitly impersonal than that of any
+man with whom she had as yet come into contact: she could detect in it
+no least trace either of condescension or of an ingratiating spirit. He
+seemed at once quite self-possessed and indefinitely preoccupied,
+disinterested, and quite agreeable to be made use of. In short, he
+engaged her tremendously.
+
+But what more specifically prepossessed her in his favour, and what in
+the end influenced her to repose some slight confidence in the man, was
+a quality with which the girl herself endowed him: she chose to be
+reminded in some intangible, elusive fashion, of that flower of
+latter-day chivalry who had once whisked her out of persecution into
+his taxicab and to her home. In point of fact, the two were vastly
+different, and Joan knew it; but, at least, she argued, they were alike
+in this: both were _gentlemen_--rare visitants in her cosmos.
+
+It was mostly through fatigue and helpless bewilderment, however, that
+she at length yielded and consented to precede him into the vestibule.
+Here he opened the inner doors, ushering Joan into a hallway typical of
+an old order of dwelling, now happily obsolescent. The floor was of
+tiles, alternately black and white: a hideous checker-board arrangement.
+A huge hat-rack, black walnut framing a morbid mirror, towered on the
+one hand; on the other rose a high arched doorway, closed. And there was
+a vast and gloomy stairway with an upper landing lost in shadows
+impenetrable to the feeble illumination of the single small tongue of
+gas flickering in an old-fashioned bronze chandelier.
+
+Listening, Joan failed to detect in all the house any sounds other than
+those made by the young man and herself.
+
+"If you'll be good enough to follow me--"
+
+He led the way to the rear of the hall, where, in the shadow of the
+staircase, he unlocked a door and disappeared. The girl waited on the
+threshold of a cool and airy chamber, apparently occupying the entire
+rear half of the ground floor. At the back, long windows stood open to
+the night. The smell of rain was in the room.
+
+"Half a minute: I'll make a light."
+
+He moved through the darkness with the assurance of one on old, familiar
+ground. In the middle of the room a match spluttered and blazed: with a
+slight _plup!_ a gas drop-light with a green shade leapt magically out
+of the obscurity, discovering the silhouette of a tall, spare figure
+bending low to adjust the flame; which presently grew strong and even,
+diffusing a warm and steady glow below the green penumbra of its shade.
+
+The man turned back with his quaint air of deference. "Now, if you
+don't mind sitting down and waiting a minute, I'll ask Madame Duprat
+about Miss--ah--your friend--"
+
+"Miss Dean--Maizie Dean."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+With this he left the girl, and presently she heard his footsteps on the
+staircase.
+
+She found a deeply cushioned arm-chair, and subsided into it with a
+sigh. The intensity of her weariness was indeed a very serious matter
+with her. Her very wits shirked the labour of grappling with the problem
+of what she should do if Maizie Dean were not at home....
+
+Wondering incoherently, she stared about her. The rich, subdued glow of
+the shaded lamp suggested more than it revealed, but she was impressed
+by the generous proportions of the room. The drop-light itself stood
+on a long, broad table littered with a few books and a great many
+papers, inkstands, pens, blotters, ash-trays, pipes: all in agreeable
+disorder. Beyond this table was one smaller, which supported a
+type-writing-machine. Against the nearer wall stood a luxurious, if
+worn, leather-covered couch. There were two immense black walnut
+bookcases. The windows at the back disclosed a section of iron-railed
+balcony.
+
+Joan grew sensitive to an anodynous atmosphere of quiet and comfort....
+
+Drowsily she heard a quiet knocking at some door upstairs; then a
+subdued murmur of voices, the closing of a door, footsteps returning
+down the long staircase. When these last sounded on the tiled flooring,
+the girl spurred her flagging senses and got up in a sudden flutter of
+doubt, anxiety, and embarrassment. The man entering the room found her
+so--poised in indecision.
+
+"Please do sit down," he said quietly, with a smile that carried
+reassurance; and, taking her compliance for something granted, passed on
+to another arm-chair near the long table.
+
+With a docility and total absence of distrust that later surprised her
+to remember, Joan sank back, eyes eloquent with the question unuttered
+by her parted lips.
+
+Her host, lounging, turned to her a face of which one half was in dense
+shadow: a keen, strongly modelled face with deep-set eyes at once
+whimsical and thoughtful, and a mouth thin-lipped but generously wide.
+He rested an elbow on the table and his head on a spare, sinewy hand,
+thrusting slender fingers up into hair straight, not long, and rather
+light in colour.
+
+"I'm sorry to have to report," he said gently, "that 'The Dancing Deans,
+Maizie and May,' are on the road. So I'm informed by Madame Duprat, at
+least. They're not expected back for several weeks.... I hope you aren't
+greatly disappointed."
+
+Her eyes, wide and dark with dismay, told him too plainly that she was.
+She made no effort to speak, but after an instant of dumb consternation,
+moved as if to rise.
+
+He detained her with a gesture. "Please don't hurry: you needn't, you
+know. Of course, if you must, I won't detain you: the door is open, your
+way clear to the street. But what are you going to do about a place to
+sleep tonight?"
+
+She stared in surprise and puzzled resentment. A warm wave of colour
+temporarily displaced her pallor.
+
+"What makes you so sure I've got no place to sleep?" she asked
+ungraciously.
+
+He lifted his shoulders slightly and dropped his hand to the table.
+
+"Perhaps I was impertinent," he admitted. "I'm sorry.... But you
+haven't--have you?"
+
+"No, I haven't," she said sharply. "But what's that--"
+
+"As you quite reasonably imply, it's nothing to me," he interrupted
+suavely. "But I'd be sorry to think of you out there--alone--in the
+rain--when there's no reason why you need be."
+
+"No reason!" she echoed, wondering if she had misjudged him after all.
+
+Without warning the man tilted the green lamp-shade until a broad,
+strong glow flooded her face. A spark of indignation kindled in the girl
+while she endured his brief, impersonal, silent examination. Sheer
+fatigue alone prevented her from rising and walking out of the
+room--that, and curiosity.
+
+He replaced the shade, and got out of the chair with a swift movement
+that seemed not at all one of haste.
+
+"I see no reason," he announced coolly. "I've got to run along now--I
+merely dropped in to get a manuscript. I think you'll be quite
+comfortable here--and there's a good bolt on the door. Of course, it's
+very unconventional, but I hope you'll be kind enough to overlook that,
+considering the circumstances. And tomorrow, after a good rest, you can
+make up your mind whether it would be wiser to stick to your first plan
+or--go home."
+
+He smiled with a vague, disinterested geniality, and added a pleading
+"Now don't say no!" when he saw that the girl had likewise risen.
+
+"How do you know I've left home?" she demanded hotly.
+
+"Well"--his smile broadened--"deductive faculty--Sherlock
+Holmes--Dupin--that sort of tommyrot, you know. But it wasn't such a bad
+guess--now was it?"
+
+"I don't see how you knew," she muttered sulkily.
+
+He ran his long fingers once or twice through his hair in a manner of
+great perplexity.
+
+"I can't quite tell, myself."
+
+"It wasn't my fault," she protested with a flash of passion. "I lost my
+job today, and because I said I wanted to go on the stage, my father put
+me out of the house."
+
+"Yes," he agreed amiably; "they always do--don't they? I fancied it was
+something like that. But there isn't really any reason why you
+shouldn't go home tomorrow and patch it up--or is there?"
+
+She gulped convulsively: "You don't understand--"
+
+"Probably I don't," he conceded. "Still, things may look very much
+otherwise in the morning. They generally do, I notice. One goes to bed
+with reluctance and wakes up with a headache. All that sort of thing....
+But if you'll listen to me a moment--why, then if you want to go, I
+shan't detain you.... My name is John Matthias. My trade is writing
+things--plays, mostly: I know it sounds foolish, but then I hate
+exercise. I live--sleep, that is--ah--elsewhere--down the street. This
+is merely my work-room. So your stopping here won't inconvenience me in
+the least...."
+
+He snatched up a mass of papers from the table, folded them hastily and
+thrust them into a coat pocket.
+
+"That manuscript I was after. Good night. I do hope you'll be
+comfortable."
+
+Before the amazed girl could collect herself, he had his hat and handbag
+and was already in the hallway.
+
+She ran after him.
+
+"But, Mr. Matthias--"
+
+He glanced hastily over his shoulder while fumbling with the
+night-latch.
+
+"I can't let you--"
+
+"Oh, but you must--really, you know."
+
+He had the door open.
+
+"But why do you--how can you trust me with all your things?"
+
+"Tut!" he said reprovingly from the vestibule--"nothing there but play
+'scripts, and they're not worth anything. You can't get anybody to
+produce 'em. I know, because I've tried."
+
+He closed the inner door and banged the outer behind him.
+
+Joan, on the point of pursuing to the street, paused in the vestibule,
+and for a moment stood doubting. Then, with a bewildered look, she
+returned slowly to the back room, shut herself in, and shot the bolt....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the platform of the stoop, Mr. Matthias delayed long enough to turn
+up his coat-collar for the better protection of his linen, and surveyed
+with a wry grin the slashing rush of rain through which he now must
+needs paddle unprotected.
+
+"Queer thing for a fellow to do," he mused dispassionately....
+
+"Daresay I am a bit of an ass.... I might at least have borrowed my own
+umbrella.... But that would hardly have been consistent with the
+egregious insanity of the performance....
+
+"I wonder why I do these awful things?... If I only knew, perhaps I
+could reform...."
+
+Running down the steps, he set out at a rapid pace for the Hotel Astor;
+which in due time received and harboured him for the night.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Awakening at a late hour in a small bedroom bright with sunlight, Mr.
+Matthias treated himself to a moment of incredulity. Such surroundings
+were strange to his drowsy perceptions, and his transitory emotions on
+finding himself so curiously embedded might be most aptly and tersely
+summed up in the exclamation of the old lady in the nursery rhyme:
+"Lack-a-mercy, can this be I?"
+
+Being, however, susceptible to a conviction of singular strength that he
+was himself and none other; and by dint of sheer will-power overcoming a
+tremendous disinclination to do anything but lie still and feel
+perfectly healthy, sound, and at peace with the world: he induced
+himself to roll over and fish for his watch in the pocket of the coat
+hanging on a nearby chair.
+
+The hour proved to be half-past ten.
+
+He fancied that he must have been uncommonly tired to have slept so
+late.
+
+Then he remembered.
+
+"One doesn't need to get drunk to be daft," was the conclusion he
+enunciated to his loneliness.
+
+"I hope to goodness she doesn't go poking through my papers!"
+
+The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more
+promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he
+forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was
+knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again
+flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.
+
+"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for
+the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her...."
+
+But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her
+personality. She remained a shadow--a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith
+of girlhood: more than that, nothing.
+
+He wagged his head seriously.
+
+"Something about her!... _Must_'ve been good-looking ... or
+something...."
+
+With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie
+which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief
+homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he
+was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new
+play--something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.
+
+A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily
+lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely.
+He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall
+and burst unceremoniously into his room--not in the least disconcerted
+to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been
+otherwise.
+
+His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang.
+He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a
+sheet of paper into the carriage and ... sat back at leisure, his gaze
+wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of
+sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.
+
+A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop
+his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers
+closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.
+
+He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.
+
+Half an hour elapsed before he was disturbed. Then someone knocked
+imperatively on the door. He recognized the knock; it was Madame
+Duprat's. Swinging round in his chair he said pleasantly: "Come in."
+
+Madame Duprat entered, filling the doorway. She shut the door and stood
+in front of it, subjecting it to an almost total eclipse. She was tall
+and portly, a grenadier of a woman, with a countenance the austerity of
+whose severely classic mould was somewhat moderated by a delicate, dark
+little moustache on her upper lip. Her mien was regal and portentous,
+sitting well upon the person of the widow of a great if unrecognized
+French tragedian; but her eyes were kindly; and Matthias had long since
+decided that it needed a body as big as Madame Duprat's to contain her
+heart.
+
+"Bon jour, monsieur."
+
+"Bon jour, madame."
+
+This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of
+Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into
+English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face
+of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance
+from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will,
+when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within
+the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather
+electrical.
+
+"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row?
+Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is
+behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles--that dachshund of
+Heaven!--turned suffragette--and proved it with pups?"
+
+"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the
+conduct of monsieur himself?"
+
+"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.
+
+"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is
+it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room
+last night?"
+
+"Oh--that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
+"But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I--"
+
+"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please--at my age?" madame
+demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost
+immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not
+from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through
+the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?"
+The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with
+monsieur is that he left the young woman here _alone_!"
+
+Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression:
+"I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is
+essentially Gallic."
+
+"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look
+forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of
+my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and
+my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because
+monsieur has a heart of pity?"
+
+"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as
+that. It's not likely to happen again ... and besides, the girl was a
+perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I
+wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."
+
+"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.
+
+By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box
+of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of
+typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a
+formless, untrained hand:
+
+"_Dear Sir_," he read with relief, "_thank you--Your friend, Joan
+Thursby_."
+
+He found the matches and used one before looking up.
+
+"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently
+respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her
+condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent
+opposition on the part of her father--a bigot of a man!--that she was
+obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite
+naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss
+Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I
+to turn her out to wander through the rain--at two o'clock in the
+morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the
+sort!"
+
+Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She
+hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.
+
+"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"
+
+"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a
+creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for
+more than he bargained.
+
+"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday,
+you said?"
+
+He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."
+
+"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"
+
+The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.
+
+With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's
+note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed
+her message and herself entirely from his mind.
+
+Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.
+
+But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only
+for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came
+a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young
+man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over
+again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of
+lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but
+the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and
+then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last
+quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust
+back his chair and groaned from his heart.
+
+He sat for a space, teetering on the rear legs of his chair, his lips
+pursed, forehead deeply creased from temple to temple. Then in a
+sepulchral tone uttering the single word "_Snagged!_" he rose and began
+to pace slowly to and fro between the door and the windows.
+
+At the end of an hour he was still patrolling this well-worn beat--his
+way of torment by day and by night, if the threadbare length of carpet
+were to be taken as a reliable witness. And there's no telling how long
+he might have continued the exercise had not Madame Duprat knocked once
+again at his door.
+
+Roused by that sound, he came suddenly out of profound speculations.
+Stopping short and bidding Madame enter, he waited with hands thrust
+deep in his trouser-pockets and shoulders hunched high toward his ears,
+a cloud of annoyance darkening his countenance.
+
+Madame Duprat came in with a "Pardon, monsieur," and a yellow envelope.
+Placing this last upon the table, she announced with simple dignity, "A
+telegram, if you please," and retired.
+
+Matthias strode to the table and with an air of some surprise and
+excitement tore open the message. He found its import unusual in more
+than one respect: it was not a "day-letter," and it had been written
+with a fine, careless extravagance of emotion that recked naught
+whatever of the ten-word limit.
+
+He conned its opening aloud: "'_Beast animal coward ingrate poltroon
+traitor beast_'--"
+
+At this point he broke off to glance at the signature and observe
+thoughtfully: "If Helena's going in for this sort of thing, I really
+must buy her a thesaurus: she's used '_beast_' twice in two lines...."
+
+He continued: "'_How dared you run away last night? You promised. I was
+counting on you. I am disgusted with you and never want to see your face
+again. Return at once. Perhaps you won't be too late after all.
+Imperative. I insist that you return._'"
+
+The signature was simply: "_Helena_."
+
+He said with considerable animation: "But--damn it!--I don't _want_ to
+get married yet! I don't see what I've done...."
+
+Throwing back his shoulders and lifting a defiant chin, he announced
+with invincible determination: "I won't go. That's all there is about
+it. I will--not--go!...
+
+"Besides," he argued plaintively, "I couldn't travel like this--clothes
+all out of shape from that drenching last night--no time to change--!"
+
+Consultation of his watch gave flat contradiction to this assertion.
+
+"And besides, I'm just getting this thing started nicely!" This with
+reference to the play.
+
+With another groan even more soulful than the first he sat down at the
+table, seized the telephone in a savage grasp, and in prematurely
+embittered accents detailed a suburban number to the inoffensive central
+operator. In the inevitable three minutes' wait for the connection to be
+put through he found ample opportunity to lash himself to a frenzy of
+exasperation.
+
+"Hello!" he roared suddenly. "Hel-lo, I say!... Who is this?... Oh, you,
+eh, Swinton? This is Mr. Matthias.... No--I say, no! Don't call Mrs.
+Tankerville. Haven't time.... Just tell her I'm coming down on the
+six-thirty.... Yes.... And send something to meet me at the station....
+Yes. Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Joan's was an awakening of another order; like the thoroughly healthy
+animal she was, the moment her eyes opened she was vividly and keenly
+alive, completely acquainted with her situation, in full command of
+every faculty.
+
+With no means of determining the time save by instinct, she was none the
+less sure that the hour wasn't late: not late, at all events, for people
+who didn't have to be behind counters by half-past eight. So she lay
+still for many minutes, on the worn leather couch, listening intently.
+There was a great hush in the lodging-house: not a foot-fall, not a
+sound. Yet it was broad daylight--a clear and sunny morning.
+
+Her quick eyes, reviewing the room in this new light, realized the
+substance of a dream come true. She liked it all: the high and dusty
+ceiling, the immense and gloomy bookcases, the disorderly writing-table,
+the three sombre and yellowing steel engravings on the walls, the bare,
+beaten path that crossed the carpet diagonally from door to window, the
+roomy and dilapidated chairs, even the faint, intangible, ineradicable
+smell of tobacco that haunted the air, even the generous cushion beneath
+her head.
+
+Against this last she cuddled her cheek luxuriously, a shadowy smile
+softening her lips, her lashes low. She was enchanted by the novel
+atmosphere of this roomy chamber, an atmosphere of studiousness and
+clear thinking. And her thoughts focussed sharply upon her memories of
+the early morning hours, especially those involving the man who had put
+himself out to shelter her. She was consumed with curiosity about him
+and all that concerned him. In her inexperience she found it rather more
+than difficult to associate his courtesy, his solicitude and generosity
+with his aloofness, abstraction and detachment: the type was new and
+difficult to classify.
+
+Was it true, then, that Man--flesh-and-blood Man as differentiated from
+the romantic abstractions that swaggered through the chapters of the
+ten-cent weekly libraries--could be disinterested with Woman, content to
+serve rather than be served, to give rather than take?
+
+On the one side stood That One of the taxicab adventure, together with
+John Matthias: arrayed against these, a host composed of Ben Austins and
+Mr. Winters and men with knees--beasts of prey who stalked or lay in
+ambush along all the trails that webbed her social wilderness.
+
+Were they truly different, Matthias and that other one? Or were they
+merely old enemies in new masks? How was one to know?...
+
+A noise in the basement, the rattle of a kitchen range being shaken
+clear of ashes, startled the girl to her feet in a twinkling. However
+sharp her inquisitiveness and her desire to see and to know more of this
+man, she entertained no idea of lingering to be found there by him....
+
+After bolting the door and before surrendering her tired body to the
+invitation of the couch, she had yielded to the temptation to make a
+brief tour of enquiry. The result had satisfied her that Matthias had
+lied in one particular, at least: unquestionably this was his work-room,
+but no less surely the man lived as well as worked in it, much if not
+all of the time. In its eastern wall Joan found a door opening into a
+small bedroom furnished with almost soldierly simplicity. And there were
+two large closets in the southern wall of the chamber; in one she found
+his wardrobe, a staggering array of garments, neatly arranged in sharp
+contrast to the confusion of his desk; the other was a bathroom
+completely equipped, a dazzling luxury in her eyes, with its white
+enamel, nickel-plate, glass and porcelain fittings.
+
+She refreshed herself there after rising--not without a guilty sensation
+of trespass--returning to the larger room to complete her dressing; no
+great matter, since she had merely laid aside skirt, coat, and
+shirtwaist, and loosened her corsets before lying down. In a very little
+time then, she was ready for the street; but with her hands on the
+doorknob and bolt, she hesitated, looking back, reluctant to go a
+thankless guest.
+
+Slowly she moved back to the centre-table, touching with diffident
+fingers its jumble of manuscripts, typewriter-paper, memoranda, and
+correspondence. There were letters in plenty, a rack stuffed with them,
+others scattered like leaves hither and yon, one and all superscribed
+with the name of _John Matthias, Esq._, many in the handwriting of
+women, a few scented, but very faintly. Joan wondered about these women
+and his relations with them. Was he greatly loved and by many? It would
+not be strange, she thought, if he were....
+
+Her temper curiously unsettled by these reflections, she stood for a
+long time, staring and thinking. Then a renewed disturbance in the lower
+regions of the house sent her packing--but not until she had left an
+inadequate scrawl of thanks, whose poverty and crudity she felt keenly.
+Why had she never learned to write a hand of delicately angular
+distinction to bear comparison with the hands that had addressed those
+impeccably "correct" notes?...
+
+The hallway was deserted. She let herself hastily out, believing she had
+escaped detection.
+
+Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering
+blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted
+up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those
+early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to
+shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In
+violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square
+on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.
+
+Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had
+gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. A clock in the
+window of a delicatessen shop told her the hour was half-past seven,
+while the sight of the food unattractively displayed proved a sharper
+reminder of breakfast-time. She had no other concern in the world just
+then. It would be hours before she could accomplish anything toward
+establishing her independence; and what steps she was to take toward
+that consummation remained altogether nebulous in her understanding.
+
+She had not gone far before a dairy lunch settled the question as to
+where she was to breakfast.
+
+It was a small, shabby, dingy place, its walls plastered with white
+tiling and mirrors. Joan's order comprised a cup of brownish-yellow
+liquid, which was not coffee, and three weighty cakes known as
+"sinkers." These last might have been crude, childish models in putty of
+the popular American "hot biscuit," but were larger and slightly
+scorched on top and bottom, and when pried open revealed a composition
+resembling aerated clay. Joan anointed them generously with butter and
+consumed them with evident relish. Her powers of digestion were
+magnificent. The price of the meal was ten cents. She went away with a
+sense of repletion and seventy-two cents.
+
+She turned northward again. An empty day of arid hours confronted her
+perturbed and questioning imagination. She was still without definite
+plans or notion which way to turn for shelter. She knew only that
+everything must be settled before nightfall: she dared not trust to find
+another John Matthias, she could not sleep in the streets or parks, and
+return to East Seventy-sixth Street she would not. She had her own
+exertions to rely upon--and seventy-two cents: the one as woefully
+inadequate as the other.
+
+Near Columbus Circle she bought a copy of the _New York World_ for the
+sake of its "Help Wanted" advertisements, and strolled on into Central
+Park.
+
+Here she found some suggestion of nature rising refreshed from its
+over-night bath to bask in sunlight. The grass was nowhere scorched, and
+in shadowed spots still sparkled with rain-drops. The air was still,
+steamy, and heady with fragrance of vegetation. Upon this artificial,
+rectangular oasis a sky of robin's-egg blue smiled benignly. A sense of
+peace and friendly fortunes impregnated the girl's being. Somehow she
+felt serenely sure that nothing untoward could happen to her. The world
+was all too beautiful and kindly....
+
+She discovered a remote bench and there unfolded her newspaper and ran
+hastily through its advertising columns, finding one reason or another
+for rejecting every opening that seemed to promise anything in the
+nature of such employment as she had theretofore known. There were no
+cards from theatrical firms in need of chorus-girls, and nothing else
+interested her. She was now obsessed by two fixed ideas, as they might
+have been the poles of her world: she was going on the stage; she was
+not going back behind a counter.
+
+Yet she must find a way to live until the stage should open its jealous
+doors to her....
+
+The morning hours ebbed slowly, with increasing heat. From time to time
+Joan, for one reason or another, would drift idly on to another bench.
+
+Once, as she sat dreaming with vacant eyes, she was roused by the quick
+beating of muffled hoofs, and looked up in time to see a woman on
+horseback pass swiftly along a bridle-path, closely pursued by a man,
+likewise mounted. The face of the horsewoman burned bright with pleasure
+and excitement and her eyes shone like stars as she glanced
+over-shoulder at her distanced escort. She rode well and looked very
+trim and well turned out in her habit of light-coloured linen. Joan
+thought her charming--and unspeakably blessed.
+
+Later they returned; but now their horses walked sedately side by side;
+and the woman was smiling softly, with her eyes downcast, as she
+listened to her companion, who bent eagerly close to her and spoke in a
+low and intimate voice.
+
+For hours afterwards Joan was haunted by the memory, and rent with
+envious longing. A hundred times she pictured herself in the place of
+the horsewoman; and the man at her side wore always the manner and the
+aspect of John Matthias....
+
+About two o'clock in the afternoon she lunched meagrely on
+crackers-and-milk at another dairy establishment on Columbus
+Avenue--reducing her capital to sixty-one cents. Then, recrossing the
+park, she made her way back through the sweltering side-streets toward
+her late home. She arrived in time to see her father's burly figure
+lumbering heavily up the street. His gaze was to the sidewalk, his mind
+upon the poolrooms, his thick, pendulous lower lip quivered with
+incessant, inaudible repetition of race-track names and records. He
+would not have recognized Joan had he looked directly at her. And he
+didn't look.
+
+She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be
+counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the
+street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway....
+
+Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the
+residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than
+ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she
+entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise
+not untouched by alarm.
+
+"Joan!"
+
+The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very
+suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of
+questions that was about to break.
+
+"Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?"
+
+"Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a
+frightened breath.
+
+"Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly.
+"Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was
+gone?"
+
+Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to
+her mother.
+
+"No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He
+won't hear of your coming back--"
+
+"A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's
+my things. I've done enough for this family.... Now I'm going to look
+out for Number One."
+
+The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose
+bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal
+grievance.
+
+"I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously.
+
+Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without
+you--"
+
+"Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all
+day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and
+try it: _I_'m sick and tired of it!"
+
+She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed
+but inquisitive.
+
+Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the
+accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting,
+in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in
+embittered silence, ignoring her sister.
+
+"Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length.
+
+"With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely.
+
+"Who?" the other persisted.
+
+Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face.
+
+"Maizie Dean, if you _got_ to know."
+
+"Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her--"
+
+"Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at
+the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big
+money."
+
+"Is she going to get you a job?"
+
+"Of course--foolish!"
+
+"Where's she live?"
+
+"Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue."
+
+"What's the number of the house?"
+
+"What do you want to know for?"
+
+"Ain't you going back there?"
+
+Joan shut down the lid of the suit-case and began to strap it. "Yes,"
+she said with a trace of reluctance.
+
+"I might wanta write to you," insisted Edna. "Anything might happen and
+you not know--"
+
+"Oh, well, then," Joan admitted, with an air of extreme ennui, "the
+number's Two-eighty-nine. Catch that? Don't forget."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"Besides," Joan added, lifting her voice for the benefit of the listener
+in the dining-room, "you don't need to be so much in a rush to think I
+ain't ever coming back to see you. You got no right to think that of me,
+after the way I've turned in my pay week in and week out, right straight
+along. I don't know what makes you think I've turned mean. I'm going to
+come and see you and ma every week, and as soon's I begin to make money
+you'll get your share, all right, all right!"
+
+"Joan--" the younger girl whispered, drawing nearer.
+
+"What?"
+
+"They had a nawful row last night--ma and pa--after you went."
+
+"I bet he done all the rowing!"
+
+"He"--Edna's thin, pale cheeks coloured faintly with indignation--"he
+said rotten things to her--said it was because you took after her made
+you want to go on the stage."
+
+"That's like him, the brute!" Joan commented between her teeth. "What'd
+she say?"
+
+"Nothing. Then he lit into Butch, but Butch stood up to him and told him
+to shut his face or he'd knock his block off."
+
+"And he did shut his face, didn't he?"
+
+Edna nodded vigorously. "Yeh--but he rowed with ma for hours after
+they'd went to bed. I could hear him fussing and swearing. She never
+answered one word."
+
+Reminiscences of like experiences of her own, long white nights
+through which she had lain sleepless, listening to the endless,
+indistinguishable monologue of recrimination and abuse in the adjoining
+bedroom, softened Joan's mood.
+
+She returned to the dining-room.
+
+Her mother's head had fallen forward on arms folded amidst the odious
+disorder of unclean dishes. Through a long minute Joan regarded with
+sombre eyes that unlovely and pitiful head, with its scant covering of
+greyish hair stretched taut from nape to temple and brow and twisted
+into a ragged knot at the back, with its hollowed temples and sunken
+cheeks, its thin and stringy neck emerging from the collar of a cheap
+and soiled Mother Hubbard. With new intentness, as if seeing them for
+the first time, she studied the dejected curve of those toil-bent
+shoulders, and the lean red forearms with their gnarled and scalded
+hands.
+
+Dull emotions troubled the girl, pity and apprehension entering into her
+mood to war with selfishness and obstinacy.
+
+This drudge that was her mother had once been a woman like herself,
+straight and strong and fashioned in clean, firm contours of wholesome
+flesh. To what was due this dreadful metamorphosis? To the stage? Or to
+Man? Or to both?... Must she in the end become as her mother was, a
+battered derelict of womanhood, hopeless of salvage?
+
+Slipping to her knees, she passed an arm across the thin, sharp
+shoulders of the woman.
+
+"Ma ..." she said gently.
+
+The response was a whisper barely audible, her name breathed in a sigh:
+"Joan...."
+
+Beneath her warm, strong arm there was the faintest perceptible movement
+of the shoulders.
+
+"Listen to me, ma: I ain't going to forget you and Edna. I am going to
+work hard and take care of you."
+
+The mother moved her head slightly, turning her face away from her
+daughter. Otherwise she was wholly unresponsive. Joan might have been
+talking to the deaf.
+
+She divined suddenly something of the tragedy and despair of this
+inarticulate creature whose body had borne her, who had once been as her
+daughter was now. Before her mental vision unfolded a vast and sordid
+tapestry--a patchwork-thing made up of hints, innuendoes and snatches of
+half-remembered conversations, heretofore meaningless, of a
+thousand-and-one insignificant circumstances, individually valueless,
+assembling into an almost intelligible whole: picturing in dim,
+distorted perspective the history of her mother, drab, pitiful,
+appalling....
+
+Abruptly, bending forward, Joan touched her lips to the sallow cheek.
+
+"Good-bye," she said stiffly; "I got to go."
+
+She rose. Her mother did not move. Edna stared wonderingly, as though a
+bystander at a scene of whose meaning she was ignorant. Joan took up her
+suit-case and went to the door.
+
+"S'long, kid," she saluted her sister lightly. "Take good care of ma
+while I'm away. See you before long."
+
+She hesitated again in the open doorway, with her hand on the knob.
+
+"And tell Butch I said thanks."
+
+She was half-way down to the next landing before she became aware of
+Edna bending over the banisters.
+
+"Joan--"
+
+"What?"
+
+The girl paused.
+
+"I 'most forgot: Butch said if you was to come in to tell you to drop
+around to the store th'safternoon. Said he had something to tell you."
+
+"What?" demanded Joan, incredulous.
+
+"I dunno. He just said that this morning."
+
+"All right. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Joan."
+
+To eyes dazzled by ambition, the news-stand, shouldered on either side
+by a prosperous delicatessen shop and a more prosperous and ornate
+corner saloon, wore a look unusually hopeless and pitiful: it was so
+small, so narrow-chested, so shabby!
+
+Its plate-glass show-window, dim with the accumulated grime of years,
+bore in block letters of white enamel--with several letters missing--the
+legend:
+
+    A THUR BY
+
+    Newsd  ler & Stationer
+    igars & Con   tionery
+
+Before the door stood a wooden newspaper stand, painted red and black,
+advertising the one-cent evening sheet which furnished it gratis. A few
+dusty stacks of papers ornamented it. The door was wide open, disclosing
+an interior furnished with dirt-smeared show-cases which housed a stock
+of cheap cigars and tobacco, boxes of villainous candy to be retailed by
+the cent's-worth, writing-paper in gaudy, fly-specked packages,
+magazines, and a handful of brittle toys, perennially unsold. The floor
+was seldom swept and had never been scrubbed in all the nine years that
+Thursby had been a tenant of the place.
+
+The establishment was, as Joan had anticipated, in sole charge of Butch,
+who occupied a tilted chair, his lean nose exploring the sporting pages
+of _The Evening Journal_. Inevitably, a half-consumed Sweet Caporal
+cigarette ornamented his cynic mouth. He greeted Joan with a flicker of
+amusement.
+
+"'Lo, kid!" he said: and threw aside the paper. "What's doing?"
+
+"Edna said you wanted to see me."
+
+"Yeh: that's right." Butch yawned liberally and thrust his hat to the
+back of his head.
+
+"Well?" said the girl sharply. "What do you want?"
+
+Butch delayed his answer until he had inserted a fresh cigarette between
+his lips, lighted it from the old, and inhaled deeply. Interim he looked
+her over openly, with the eyes of one from whom humanity has no secrets.
+
+"Dja land that job?" he enquired at length, smoke trickling from his
+mouth and nostrils, a grim smile lurking about his lips.
+
+"Haven't tried yet."
+
+"But you're goin' to?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"What line? Chorus girl or supe in the legit?"
+
+"I'm going to try to do anything that turns up," Joan affirmed
+courageously.
+
+"Try anythin' once, eh?" murmured the boy with profound irony. "Well,
+where you goin' to hang out till you land?"
+
+The lie ran glibly off her tongue this time: "With Maizie
+Dean--Two-eighty-nine West Forty-fifth."
+
+"That where you stayed last night?"
+
+"Yes ..." she faltered, already beginning to repent and foresee unhappy
+complications in event Butch should try to find her at the address she
+had given.
+
+The boy got up suddenly and stood close to her, searching her face with
+his prematurely knowing eyes.
+
+"Look here, kid!" he said roughly. "Hand it to me straight now: on the
+level, there ain't no man mixed up in this?"
+
+She was able to meet his gaze without a tremor: "On the dead level,
+Butch."
+
+"That's all right then. Only...."
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"There'll be regular trouble for the guy, if I ever find out you've lied
+to me."
+
+"What business--"
+
+"Ah, cut that!" snarled Butch. "You're my sister--see? And you're a
+damn' little fool, and somebody's got to look out for you. And that
+means me. You go ahead and try this stage thing all you like--but duck
+the men, duck 'em every time!"
+
+He eyed her momentarily from a vast and aloof coign of vantage. She was
+dumb with resentment, oppressed by amazement and a little in awe of the
+boy, her junior though he was.
+
+"Now, lis'en: got any money?"
+
+"No--yes--fifty cents," she stammered.
+
+"That ain't goin' to carry you far over the bumps. Who's goin' to put up
+for you while you're lookin' for this job-thing? Your frien' Maizie?"
+
+"I don't know--I guess so--yes: I'm going to stay with her."
+
+"Well, you won't last long if you don't come through with some coin
+every little while."
+
+Without warning Butch produced a small packet of bills from his
+trouser-pocket.
+
+"Djever see them before?" he enquired, with his mocking smile.
+
+Joan gasped: "My money--!"
+
+"Uh-huh," Butch nodded. "Fell outa your bag when you side-stepped the
+Old Man and beat it, last night. He didn't see it, and I sneaked the
+bunch while he wasn't lookin'. G'wan--take it."
+
+He thrust the money into her fingers that closed convulsively upon it.
+For a moment she choked and gulped, on the verge of tears, so
+overpowering was the sense of relief.
+
+"O Butch--!"
+
+"Ah, cut that out. It's your money, all right--ain't it?"
+
+She began with trembling fingers to count the bills. Butch tilted his
+head to one side and regarded her with undisguised disgust.
+
+"Say, you must have a swell opinion of me, kid, to think I'd hold out on
+you!"
+
+She stared bewildered.
+
+"There's twenty-two dollars here, Butch!"
+
+Her hand moved out as if offering to return the money. With an angry
+movement he slapped it back and turned away.
+
+"That's right," he muttered sourly. "I slipped an extra ten in. I guess
+I gotta right to, ain't I? You're my sister, and you'll need it before
+you get through, all right."
+
+She lingered, stunned. "But, Butch ... I oughtn't to...."
+
+"Ah, can that guff--and beat it. The Old Man's liable to be back any
+minute."
+
+Seizing her suit-case, he urged her none too gently toward the door.
+
+"It's awful' good of you, Butch--awful' good--"
+
+"All right--all right. But can the gush-thing till next time."
+
+Overwhelmed, Joan permitted herself to be thrust out of the door; and
+then, recovering to some extent, masked her excitement as best she could
+and trudged away across-town, back toward Central Park.
+
+Blind instinct urged her to that refuge where she would have quiet and
+peace while she thought things out: a necessity which had not existed
+until within the last fifteen minutes.
+
+Before her interview with Butch she had been penniless and planless.
+But now she found herself in circumstances of comparative affluence and
+independence. Twenty-two dollars strictly economized surely ought to
+keep her fed and sheltered in decent lodgings for at least three weeks;
+within which time she would quite as surely find employment of some
+sort.
+
+It remained to decide how best to conserve her resources. On the face of
+the situation, she had nothing to do but seek the cheapest and meanest
+rooming-house in the city. But in her heart of hearts she had already
+determined to return to the establishment of Madame Duprat, beyond her
+means though it might be, ostensibly to await the return of the Dancing
+Deans, secretly that she might be under the same roof with John
+Matthias.
+
+And in the end it was to Number 289 that she turned. At half-past four
+she stood again on the brown-stone stoop, waiting an answer to her ring.
+
+And at the same moment, John Matthias, handsomely garbed in the best of
+his wardrobe but otherwise invested in a temper both indignant and
+rebellious, instituted a dash from room to train, handicapped by a
+time-limit ridiculously brief.
+
+As the front door slammed at his back, he pulled up smartly to escape
+collision with the girl on the stoop. He looked at and through her,
+barely conscious of her pretty, pallid face and the light of recognition
+in her eyes. Then, with a murmured apology, he dodged neatly round her,
+swung down the steps, and frantically hailed a passing taxicab.
+
+Joan, dashed and disappointed, saw the vehicle swing in to the curb and
+heard Matthias, as he clambered in, direct the driver to the
+Pennsylvania Station with all possible haste.
+
+She stared after the dwindling cab disconsolately. He hadn't even known
+her!
+
+In another minute she would have turned her back on the house and sought
+lodgings elsewhere, but the door abruptly opened a second time,
+revealing Madame Duprat, a forbidding but imperative figure, upon the
+threshold.
+
+Timidly in her confusion the girl made some semi-articulate enquiry as
+to the address of Miss Maizie Dean.
+
+To her astonishment and consternation, the landlady unbent and smiled.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed with unction. "Mademoiselle is the friend of
+Monsieur Matthias, is it not? Very good. Will you not be pleased to
+enter? It is but this afternoon that the Sisters Dean have returned so
+altogether unexpectedly."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Alone in the body of a touring-car, Helena Tankerville, a slender and
+fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot
+and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly,
+and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious
+stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track
+debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength
+of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train.
+
+She was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were
+evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her
+manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except
+possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her
+while to be aware. None the less, she was conscious that she was
+visible. . . .
+
+A faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines.
+Immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the
+west. A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged
+from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a
+pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where,
+panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in
+beside the platform.
+
+Incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men
+in apparently comfortable circumstances, well dressed to the standards
+of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon,
+heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought
+accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, 'buses, surreys,
+smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.
+
+Helena, bending forward, overlooked them all with imperceptible disdain.
+The face she sought was not among those that swam in review beneath her.
+And presently encountering an overbold glance, she drew back with a
+little frown of annoyance. Already the throng was thinning; conveyances
+laden to the guards were drawing out of the rank and rattling and
+rumbling off through stifling drifts of dust; no more passengers were
+issuing from the coaches; and already the parlour-car porters were
+picking up their stools and preparing to swing back aboard the train.
+The conductor waved his final signal. The bell tolled its warning. The
+locomotive belched black smoke and cinders and amid stentorian puffings
+began to move, the coaches following to their tune of clanking
+couplings. No sign of her refractory nephew. And still Helena hesitated
+to give the order to drive home; John had telephoned; it wasn't like him
+to be delinquent in his promises.
+
+The end of the last car was passing her when she saw him. He appeared
+suddenly on the rearmost platform, with the startled expression and air
+of a Jack-in-the-box; dropped his suit-case over the rear rail; ran down
+the steps; delayed an instant to gauge distance and speed: and with nice
+calculation dropped lightly to the ground.
+
+Pausing only to recover his luggage, he approached the motor-car with a
+sheepish smile for his handsome young aunt, who regarded him with an air
+of mingled bewilderment and despair.
+
+"Wel-l!" she exclaimed, as soon as he was near enough to hear--"of _all_
+things--!"
+
+"Right you are!" he affirmed gravely, tossing his handbag into the car
+and following it. "Kick along, Davy," he added, with a nod to the
+chauffeur; and gracefully sank back upon the seat beside Helena.
+
+Purring, the car began to grope its way through the dust-fog. Matthias
+turned twinkling eyes to his aunt. She compressed her lips and shook her
+head helplessly.
+
+"Words inadequate, aunty?"
+
+"Quite!" she said. "_What_ were you doing on that train, to come so near
+forgetting the station?"
+
+"Thinking," he explained: "wrapped in profound and exhaustive
+meditation. I say, how stunning you look!"
+
+She gave him up; or one inferred as much from her gesture.
+
+"You're impossible," she said in a tragic voice. "Thinking!... While _I_
+had to wait there and be ogled by all those odious men!"
+
+"You must've been ready to sink through the ground."
+
+She eyed him stonily. "You didn't care--!"
+
+"Even if I hadn't been preoccupied, it would never have entered my head
+that you seriously objected to being admired."
+
+She received this in injured silence. Matthias chuckled to himself and
+settled more comfortably into his seat. The motor-car turned off the
+main road from the station to the village of Port Madison, down which
+the greater number of its predecessors had clattered, and found
+unclouded air on a well-metalled lane bordered with aged oaks and
+maples. Through a funnel-like dip between hills, Matthias, looking past
+his aunt, caught a fleeting glimpse of the cluttered roofs of Port
+Madison, its shallow, land-locked harbour set with a little fleet of
+pleasure boats, and the ineffable, burning blue of the distant Sound....
+
+"I presume," Helena returned to the charge, disarmingly aggrieved, "you
+think I ought to be grateful for your condescending to return at all!"
+
+"Forgive me," he pleaded, not altogether insincerely; "I know it wasn't
+right of me to run away like that, but I couldn't help it."
+
+"You couldn't help it!" she murmured despairingly.
+
+"That's just the way of it. I got to thinking about a play I wanted to
+write, yesterday afternoon, and--well, along about ten o'clock it got
+too strong for me. I just had to get back to my typewriter. You know how
+that is."
+
+"I? What do I know about your silly playwriting?"
+
+Laughing, he bent nearer and patted the gloved hand on the cushions
+beside him. "You know perfectly well, Helena dear, what it is to want to
+do something so bad you simply can't help yourself. It's the Matthias
+blood in both of us. That's why you ran off and married Tankerville
+against everybody's advice. Of course, it did turn out beautifully; but
+you didn't stop to wonder whether it would or not when you took it into
+your head to marry him. The same with me: you decide that it's high time
+for your delightful sister-in-law to get married, and you look round and
+fix on your dutiful nephew for the bridegroom-elect--wholly because you
+want it to be that way."
+
+"Don't you?" she demanded sharply.
+
+He took a moment to think this over. "I suppose I do," he admitted
+almost reluctantly. "But--"
+
+"You're in love with her!" Helena declared with spirit.
+
+"Quite true, but--"
+
+"Then why," she begged in tones of moderate exasperation--"why do you
+object--hang fire--run away like a silly, frightened schoolboy as soon
+as I get everything arranged for you?"
+
+"But, you see, I'm not in a position to get married yet," he argued. "I
+haven't--"
+
+"How's that--'not in a position'?" she interrupted testily.
+
+"You keep forgetting I'm the family pauper, the poor relation, whereas
+Venetia has all the money there is, more or less."
+
+"There you are!" Helena turned her palms out expressively; folded them
+in resignation. "What more can you ask?"
+
+"Something more nearly approaching an equal footing, at least."
+
+"Jack!"--she turned to him with a fine air of innocence--"how much money
+_have_ you got, anyway?"
+
+"Thirty-six hundred per annum, as you know very well," he replied. "But,
+my dear, dear aunty (you're one of the most beautiful creatures alive
+and I'm awfully proud and fond of you) surely you must understand that
+no decent fellow wants to go to the girl he's in love with and make a
+proposition like this: 'I've got thirty-six hundred and you've got three
+hundred and sixty thousand; let's marry and divide.'"
+
+"How long have you been writing plays?"
+
+"Oh ... several years."
+
+"And how many have you written?"
+
+"Quite a few."
+
+"And how much have you made at it?"
+
+"Next to nothing, but--"
+
+"Then why do you persist?"
+
+"Because it's the thing I want to do."
+
+"But you can't make any money at it--"
+
+"I may make a lot before long. Meanwhile, I like it."
+
+"But if you'd only listen to reason and let Tankerville--"
+
+"With all the best intentions in the world, dear Helena, Tankerville
+couldn't make me a successful business man. It isn't in me. Permit me to
+muddle along in my own, 'special, wrong-headed way, and the chances are
+I'll make good in the end. But, once and for all, I refuse positively to
+give up my trade and try to make sense of Wall Street methods."
+
+Helena moved her shoulders impatiently. For an instant she was silenced.
+Then: "But marriage needn't necessarily put an end to your playwriting.
+A good marriage--as with Venetia--ought even to help, I should think."
+
+"But you persist in forgetting I'm not a fortune hunter."
+
+"But," she countered smartly, "Marbridge is."
+
+He said: "Oh--Marbridge!" as if dumbfounded.
+
+She smiled quietly, a very wise and superior smile.
+
+To this point the car had been steadily ascending; the noise of the
+motor, together with the frequent stutterings of the exhaust with the
+muffler cut-out, had been sufficient to disguise the substance of their
+communication from the ears of the operator. Now, however, they
+surmounted the highest point and began the more gradual descent to the
+Tankerville estate. And with less noise there was consequently very
+little talking on the part of the two on the rear seat. For which
+Matthias wasn't altogether sorry. He wanted time to think--to think
+about Venetia Tankerville in the new light cast upon her by his aunt's
+concluding remark: as affected by her friendship with Vincent Marbridge.
+
+In the natural swing of events, it would never have occurred to him to
+consider Marbridge's attentions seriously. Nobody ever took Marbridge
+seriously, he believed, aside from a few exceptionally foolish women....
+
+Noiselessly the car slipped down a mile-long avenue to the brow of a
+promontory. On either hand Tanglewood's long parked terraces fell away
+to the water: on the left the harbour of Port Madison, on the right,
+Long Island Sound.
+
+Matthias was barely conscious of these things; his mood was haunted by
+an extraordinarily clear vision of Vincent Marbridge: not tall, but by
+no means short; a trifle stout, but none the less a well-knit figure of
+a man, and tremendously alive; dark, with a broad, blunt, good-humoured
+face and seal-brown eyes that were exceedingly handsome and expressive;
+keen-witted and accomplished, knowing almost everybody and every place
+and thing worth knowing; hedonist and egoist, selfish, unscrupulous,
+magnetic, fascinating.
+
+Impressed, Matthias frowned. His aunt eyed him covertly, with a sly,
+semi-affectionate, semi-malicious smile shadowing her mouth.
+
+Slackening its pace, the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and
+slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. Matthias pulled
+himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. They turned
+toward the house.
+
+Tankerville's pretentious marble palace crowned the brow of the headland
+with an effect as exquisite as a dream of an ancient French château
+realized in snow. For this its owner had his wife to thank. Helena,
+unable to curb her husband's desire for the most expensive and
+ostentatious place obtainable, had at least guided his choice of design.
+It was too magnificent, it was overpowering, but it was beautiful; and
+it was more than ever beautiful at this hour, with its walls in part
+bathed in a rose-pink light of sunset, in part shadowed as with a wash
+of violet, and with all its admirable proportions stark against the
+dusky sapphire of the Sound.
+
+An unwonted stillness clung about the place. Matthias wondered.
+
+"It might be the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," he said. "Why this
+deadly and benumbing silence? What--"
+
+"Oh, simply that Tankerville decided this morning to take everybody down
+to Huntington for lunch. They got away quite early, in the Enchantress.
+Come out on the terrace; we'll look for them."
+
+They passed through a wide, cool, panelled hallway.
+
+"Why didn't you go?"
+
+"You know I hate the water. Besides, I had a headache--at least, I had
+one until the Enchantress got under way; and furthermore I meant to stay
+at home and meet you and talk it out."
+
+"Venetia went, of course?"
+
+"Of course--_and_ Marbridge--and everybody!"
+
+He grunted thoughtfully. They descended to a terrace which jutted airily
+out over the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty
+feet to the beach.
+
+Helena, dropping languidly into a wicker chair, motioned Matthias to the
+broad marble balustrade.
+
+"Any sign of the Enchantress, O perturbed nephew?"
+
+He lingered there for an instant, marvelling with an inexhaustible
+wonder at the magnificent sweep of the view, then remembering, raked the
+waters until he discovered Tankerville's power-cruiser standing in
+toward the dock from the bottle-neck mouth of Port Madison harbour.
+
+Returning, he reported, seated himself near his aunt, lighted a
+cigarette.
+
+"Why did you ask him here anyway?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+"Who?" she parried mischievously.
+
+"Marbridge, of course," he admitted, sulking in the face of her manifest
+amusement.
+
+"Jealous, Jackie?"
+
+"Oh--if you insist."
+
+She laughed. "The most encouraging symptom you've yet betrayed!... I
+didn't ask him. Tankerville did. He likes him. The man's amusing, after
+all."
+
+"But you like him?"
+
+"He amuses me."
+
+"He's not precisely a tame cat...."
+
+"Dear boy!" she laughed again, "I didn't fetch you out here to worry
+about me. I'm fire-proof. Venetia's quite another pair of shoes. Fret
+about her as much as you like."
+
+"When does he go--Marbridge, I mean?"
+
+"Monday, I think. At least, I believe Tankerville asked him for a week
+only."
+
+"And that's why you asked me, this particular week?"
+
+"I thought you'd be a good counter-irritant; and hoped you'd come to
+your senses and secure Venetia against all Marbridges for all time to
+come. You gave me to understand you would."
+
+"Pardon," he corrected a trifle stiffly: "I admitted to you in strict
+confidence that I was in love with Venetia. I never promised to ask her
+to marry me."
+
+"Well, that's what I understood you to mean. And anyway, you'd better.
+Neither Tankerville nor I can control the girl; she's her own mistress
+and headstrong enough to be a good match for any Matthias that ever
+lived. If Marbridge ever convinces her that she likes him...."
+
+She concluded with an eloquent ellipsis.
+
+"Probably," mused Matthias after prolonged deliberation, "I'd have lost
+my head before this if it hadn't been so full of that play."
+
+Helena smiled indulgently. "It's not too late ... I hope."
+
+Troubled, he rose, walked to the balustrade, jerked his cigarette into
+space, and returned.
+
+"As between one fortune-hunter and another," he said gloomily, "I'm
+conceited enough to think myself the safer bet."
+
+His aunt smiled more openly: "See what Venetia thinks."
+
+"I will!" said Matthias with a fine air of inalterable determination.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Since it was her whim and the winds indulged, Helena had ordered that
+the rite of the late dinner be celebrated by candlelight alone. Ten
+shaded candles graced the places. In the centre of the table an ancient
+candelabrum of gold added the mellow illumination of its seven alabaster
+arms, whose small flames yearned upward ardently, with scarce a
+perceptible flicker, though every window was wide to the whispering
+night.
+
+One of these that faced Matthias framed a shimmering sky of stars and
+the still black shield of the Sound, on which the fixed and undeviating
+glare of a remote light-house was reflected darkly, a long unwavering
+way of light; he thought of a tall wax candle burning amid the
+sanctified shadows of some vast and dark and still cathedral....
+
+They were ten at table: from Helena's right, Pat Atherton (Tankerville's
+partner), a Mrs. Majendie, Marbridge, a Mrs. Cardrow, Tankerville at the
+head; on his right, Mrs. Pat Atherton, Matthias, Venetia Tankerville,
+Majendie. The latter and his wife were almost strangers to Matthias,
+having arrived only the previous afternoon: but he thought them as
+pleasant and handsome people as any of those with whom the Tankervilles
+liked to fill their house. The Athertons were old friends; he had known
+them well, long before Helena dreamed of marrying Tankerville. Marbridge
+was an indifferently familiar figure in the ways of his life; they
+frequented the same clubs, and of late he had begun to encounter the
+older man more and more frequently in his theatrical divagations.
+Remained Mrs. Cardrow, a widow, the acquaintance of a week's standing.
+Cardrow had been in some way connected with the enterprises of Messrs.
+Tankerville & Atherton; how, Matthias didn't remember; a man of whom
+rumour said little that was good until it began to say _De mortuis_....
+He had killed himself for no accountable reason. His widow seemed to
+have survived bereavement with amazing grace.
+
+Matthias admired her greatly. Women, he knew--Helena in their
+number--mistrusted her for no cause perceptible to him. He liked her,
+thought her little less than absolutely charming. So, evidently, did
+Marbridge, whose attitude toward her this evening was a little more
+noticeably attentive than ever before. He seemed to exert himself to
+interest and divert. His black eyes snapped. As he talked his heavy body
+swayed slightly from the hips, lending an accent to his animation. His
+laugh was frequent and infectious.
+
+She was a woman who smiled more than she laughed. She smiled now,
+inscrutably, her beautiful, insolent eyes half veiled with demure
+lashes, her face turned to Marbridge, her chin a trifle high, bringing
+out the clear strong lines of her throat and shoulders, which had the
+texture, the pallor, and the firmness of fine ivory. Her eyes, when she
+chose to discover them, were brown, her eyebrows almost black, her hair
+dull gold, the gold of the candelabrum--the gold of artifice, on the
+word of Helena.
+
+Perhaps it was to this odd colouring--ivory and brown, black and
+gold--that Mrs. Cardrow owed most of her strange and provoking quality.
+But there was something else, something one could not define: at once
+stimulating and elusive; less charm than allure; nameless; that
+attracted and repelled....
+
+These were thoughts set stirring by a dozen semi-curious glances at the
+woman, in pauses in his conversation with Venetia. Matthias was in fact
+indifferent to Mrs. Cardrow. But he was tremendously interested in
+Venetia. It could hardly be otherwise--since his talk with Helena. He
+was to marry Venetia. Amazing thought!
+
+She was adorable. Of the other women, none compared with Mrs. Cardrow:
+even Helena's beauty paled in contrast. But Venetia was to Mrs. Cardrow
+as dawn to noon. One looked at Venetia and thought of a still sea at
+daybreak, mobile to the young and fitful airs, radiant with sunlight,
+breathless with apprehension of the long, golden hours to come. One
+looked at Mrs. Cardrow and thought--of Woman. Venetia was dark, and the
+other fair; Venetia was by no means a child, Mrs. Cardrow not yet
+thirty. The gulf that set them apart was not so much of years as of
+caste: they lived and thought on different levels, mental if not social.
+Matthias liked to think Venetia of the higher order.
+
+He was to marry her. Incredible!
+
+And tonight her eyes were warm and kind for him, and all for him. He
+could not see that there was anything of self-interest in the infrequent
+glances she cast at those who sat opposite, playing their time-old game
+with such engaging candour. If she had thought much of Marbridge, surely
+she must have betrayed some little pique or chagrin. She was not blind;
+neither was she patient and prone to self-effacement. Matthias had known
+her long enough to have garnered vivid memories of her resentment of
+slights, whether real or fancied. She was unique and wonderful in many
+ways, but (he told himself in a catch-phrase of the hour) she was
+essentially human. He could not have cared for a woman without temper:
+he cared intensely for this girl-woman whose rare loveliness seemed
+almost exotic in its singular scheme, whose skin, fine of texture and
+colourless as milk-white satin, was splashed with lips of burning
+scarlet, whose eyes of deepest violet were luminous in the shadow of
+hair of the richness and lustre of burnished bronze ... luminous and
+kind to him: he dared to hope greatly of their sympathy.
+
+Through dinner she had entertained him with a mirthful, inconsecutive
+narrative of the adventures of the day. Now, as ices were served, her
+interest swerved suddenly and found a new object in himself.
+
+"Why did you run away last night?"
+
+"You really noticed it?"
+
+Light malice trembled on her lips: "Not till this morning."
+
+"You were so busy"--an imperceptible nod indicated Marbridge--"I felt
+myself becoming ornamental. Whereas, utility's my proudest attribute. So
+I left you dancing, and skipped by the light of the moon."
+
+"Not really?"
+
+"I assure you--"
+
+"Put out with me, I mean?"
+
+He sought her eyes again and found them veiled and downcast. "Not the
+least in the world."
+
+"Then, again, why--?"
+
+"I wanted to get back to work. Besides, I had a little business with a
+manager."
+
+And so he had; but until this moment he had forgotten it.
+
+"Play business?"
+
+"I'm afraid I know no other."
+
+"Is something new to be produced?"
+
+Matthias nodded: "Goes into rehearsal in August. A melodrama I wrote
+some time ago--'The Jade God.'"
+
+"Who produces it?"
+
+"Rideout."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"A foolish actor: played a sketch of mine in vaudeville for a couple of
+years and, because that got over, thinks this piece must."
+
+"But it will, won't it?"
+
+"I hope so; but I'm glad it's not my money."
+
+"And where will you open?"
+
+"Heaven and the Shuberts only know. Rideout books through the Shuberts,
+you understand."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't."
+
+"The Shuberts are the Independents--the opposition to the Syndicate
+headed by Klaw and Erlanger. You see, the theatres of this country are
+practically all controlled by one or the other combination. If you want
+booking for your show, you've got to take sides--serve God or Mammon."
+
+"And which is which?"
+
+"The difference is imperceptible to the innocent bystander."
+
+"But you'll let us know--?"
+
+"If we open within motoring distance of Town--rather!"
+
+Tankerville, edging his plump little body forward on his chair,
+manoeuvred his round and sun-scorched face in vain attempts to catch
+his wife's eye past the intervening candelabrum. Helena, however,
+divined his desire.
+
+"Coffee in the card-room, George?"
+
+"Please!" Tankerville bleated plaintively.
+
+There was a concerted movement from the table.
+
+Venetia lingered with Matthias.
+
+"It's auction, tonight. Shall you play?"
+
+"'Fraid I'll have to. So will you. Helena--you know--"
+
+"Of course. We must. Only"--she sighed, petulant--"I'd rather not. I'd
+rather talk to you."
+
+"Heroic measures!" he laughed. "But--consolation note!--we're two over
+two full tables. Therefore we'll have to cut in and out. That'll give us
+some time to ourselves."
+
+"Yes," she agreed: "but it'll be just our luck to be disengaged at
+different times."
+
+He paused in amused incredulity. "Do you really want to talk to me as
+badly as all that?"
+
+She nodded, curtaining her eyes.
+
+"Very much," she said softly.
+
+They entered the card-room and were summoned to different tables.
+Matthias cut and edged Mrs. Cardrow out by a single pip. How Venetia
+fared he did not learn, more than that she was to play while Marbridge
+was to stay out the first rubber.
+
+He played even less intelligently than usual, with a mind distracted.
+Venetia's new attitude, pleasant as had been all their association, was
+a development of disconcerting suddenness; or else he had been witless
+and blind beyond relief. And yet--how could he say? He was so frequently
+misled by faculties befogged with dreaming, that overlooked when they
+did not flatly deny the obvious: it was possible that Helena had been
+more wise than he.
+
+A sense of strain handicapped his judgment; whether atmospheric or bred
+of his own emotion, he could not tell. And yet, plumbing the deeps of
+his humour, he discovered nothing there more exacting than bewilderment,
+more exciting than hope. On the other hand, he could fix upon nothing in
+the bearing of these amiable people to lead him to believe that the
+feeling of tensity to which he was susceptible was not the creation of
+his own fancy. They played with a certain abandon of enjoyment, absorbed
+in their diversion....
+
+Looking past Venetia, at the other table--Venetia slim and tall and
+worshipful in a wonderful black gown that rendered dazzling the
+whiteness of her flesh--he could see Mrs. Cardrow and Marbridge at the
+piano in the drawing-room. The woman sat all but motionless, white arms
+alone moving graciously in the half-light as her deft hands wandered
+over the key-board. Marbridge, his arms folded, lounged over the piano,
+his back to the card-room. The eloquent movements of his round, dark
+head, its emphatic nods and argumentative waggings, seemed to indicate
+that he was bearing the burden of their talk; but the music, hushed
+though it was, covered his accents. The woman was looking up into his
+face with an expression of quick, pleased interest, her lips,
+half-parted, smiling.
+
+It did not occur to Matthias to wonder about the substance of their
+conversation. But for a sure clue to the intrigue of Venetia's
+heart--and his own--he would have given worlds.
+
+Throwing down his cards, Tankerville announced with satisfaction:
+"Game--rubber. Jack, you go out--praise the Saints! You've cost Mrs. Pat
+close onto fifteen dollars, more shame to you!"
+
+"Sorry!" Matthias smiled cheerfully, rising. "You would have me play."
+
+"Hearkening and repentance!" retorted Tankerville. "Next time I marry,
+you can bet your sweet life I'm going to pick out a family of
+sure-'nough bridgers.... Call Mrs. Cardrow, will you now, like a good
+fellow."
+
+But Mrs. Cardrow had already left the piano. Matthias held a chair for
+her, and then, since the rubber at the other table was not yet decided,
+strolled to a window.
+
+The night tempted him. Almost unconsciously he stepped out upon the
+terrace and wandered to the parapet.
+
+Abstractedly he lighted a cigarette. When the tobacco was aglow he held
+the match from him at arm's-length over the abyss. Its flame burned as
+steadily as though protected, flickering out only when, released, it
+fell. No night ever more still than this: land and water alike
+spellbound in breathless calm; even on the brow of that high foreland
+where Tankerville had builded him his lordly pleasure home, no hint of
+movement in the air! And yet Matthias was conscious of nothing
+resembling oppression--exhilaration, rather. He smiled vaguely into the
+darkness.
+
+From far below, echoing up from the placid waters of Port Madison as
+from a sounding-board, came the tinkle-tinkle of a banjo and the
+complaint of a harmonica. When these were silent the wailing of violins
+was clearly audible, bridging a distance of over a mile across the
+harbour, from the ball-room of the country club. Far out upon the Sound
+the night boat for Boston trudged along like a slow-winging firefly; and
+presently its wash swept inshore to rouse the beach below to sibilant
+and murmurous protest. In the east the vault of night was pallid, azure
+and silver, with the promise of the reluctant moon.
+
+A hand fell gently upon his arm: Venetia's. He had not been aware of her
+approach, yet he was not startled. He turned his head slowly, smiling.
+She said softly: "Don't say anything--wait till it rises."
+
+They waited in silence. Her hand lingered upon his arm; and that last,
+he knew, was trembling. The nearness of her person, the intimacy of her
+touch, weighed heavily upon his senses.
+
+An edge of golden light appeared where the skies came down to the sea;
+hesitated; increased. That wan and spectral light, waxing, lent emphasis
+to the rare and delicious wonder of her loveliness, to the impregnable
+mystery of her womanhood. He regarded her with something near awe, with
+keen perception of his unworthiness: as a spirit from Heaven had stooped
+to commune with him. She lived; breathed; the hand upon his arm was warm
+and strong.... Incredible!
+
+The gibbous disk swung clear of the horizon and like some strange
+misshapen acrobat climbed a low-lying lattice-work of clouds. The girl
+turned away to a huge willow basket-chair. Matthias found its fellow and
+drew near to her. He struggled to speak; he fancied that she waited for
+him to speak; but his mind refused to frame, his tongue to utter, aught
+but the stalest of banalities.
+
+"No dew tonight," he hazarded at length, shame-faced.
+
+After an instant of silence she laughed clearly and gently. "O romantic
+man!" she said. "Now that you have, shattered the spell--if you please,
+a cigarette."
+
+He supplied this need; held a match; delayed holding it when it had
+served its purpose, enraptured with the refulgent wonder of that cameo
+of sweet flesh and blood set against the melting shadows, silver and
+purple and blue.
+
+With a second low, light laugh, she bent forward and daintily
+extinguished the flame with a single puff.
+
+"I don't wish to be stared at...."
+
+"Pardon," he said mechanically, startled. "But ... why?"
+
+
+"Perhaps I'm afraid you may see too much...."
+
+"Impossible!" he declared with conviction.
+
+"Odd as it may sound," she said in a mocking voice, "I have my secrets."
+
+Her back was to the moon, her face a pallid oval framed in ebony,
+illegible; but the moonlight was full upon his face, and she who would
+might read. His disadvantage was obvious. It wasn't fair....
+
+Lounging, she crossed her knees, puffed thrice and cast the cigarette
+into the gulf. Abruptly she sat forward, studying him intently. He was
+disturbed with a singular uneasiness.
+
+"Jack," said Venetia very quietly, "is it true that you love me?"
+
+"Good lord!" he cried, sitting up.
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+He blinked. His head was whirling. He said nothing; sank back; quite
+automatically puffed with such fury that in a trice he had reduced the
+cigarette to an inch of glowing coal; scorched his fingers and threw it
+from him.
+
+Then he gasped stupidly: "Venetia!"
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+She had not moved. The question had the force of stubborn purpose
+through its very monotony, a monotony of inflexion no less than of
+repetition. Her accents were both serious and sincere. She was in
+earnest; she meant to know.
+
+"But, Venetia--"
+
+"Or have you been just making believe, all this long time?"
+
+"It--I--why--of course it's true!" he stammered lamely.
+
+"Then why haven't you ever told me so?"
+
+There sounded reproach, not unkindly, but real. He shook his wits
+together.
+
+"How could I guess you'd care to know?"
+
+"Do you know me so little as to think I'd resent it, if I happened not
+to care?"
+
+"I--don't know--didn't think of it that way. In fact--you've knocked me
+silly!"
+
+"But why? Because I've been straightforward? Dear boy!"--she lifted a
+hand to him: he took it in trembling--"you're twenty-seven, I'm
+twenty-three. We know one another pretty well: we know ourselves--at
+least slightly. Why can't we face things--facts--as man and woman, not
+as children? What's the good of make-believe? If this thing lies between
+us, let's be frank about it!"
+
+He hesitated, doubting, searching her face. Her look was very sweet and
+kind. Of a sudden he cried "Venetia!" came to his knees beside her
+chair, snatched her hand and crushed it between his own, to his lips.
+
+"I love you--I've always loved you!..."
+
+He felt the velvet of her lips, her breath, upon his forehead; and made
+as if to clasp her to him. But she slipped back, straightening an arm to
+fend him off.
+
+"No," she whispered--"not now--not here. Dear boy, get up! Think--this
+moonlight--anybody might see--"
+
+"I love you!"
+
+"I know and, dear, I'm glad--so glad! But--you made me ask you!"
+
+"I couldn't help that, Venetia: I was--afraid; I hardly dared to
+dream--of this. You were--you are--above, beyond--"
+
+Gently her hand sealed his mouth.
+
+"Dear, silly boy! Get up. If you won't, I must."
+
+Releasing her hand, he rose. His emotion shook him violently. At
+discretion, he dropped back into his chair. He looked about him a little
+wildly, his glance embracing all the weird fantasy of the night: the
+cold, inaccessible, glittering vault of stars, the malformed and
+sardonic moon, the silken bosom of the Sound, the lace and purple velvet
+draperies of the land. Down on the harbour the banjo and harmonica were
+ragging to tatters a sentimental ballad of the day. From the house came
+a burst of laughter--Tankerville exultant in some successful stratagem
+at cards.
+
+His gaze returned to Venetia. She sat without moving, wrapped in the
+exquisite mystery of her enigmatic heart, bewitching, bewildering,
+steadfastly reading him with eyes veiled and inscrutable in liquid
+shadow.
+
+Muttering--"Preposterous!"--he dropped his head between his hands. "I'm
+mad--mad!" he groaned.
+
+Without stirring, she demanded: "Why?"
+
+He shook his head free. "To have--owned up--let this come to pass. I
+love you: but that's all I dare say to you."
+
+"Isn't it, maybe, enough for me?"
+
+"I mean--I'm mad to marry you. But how can I ask you to have me? What
+have I to offer you? The position of wife to a poverty-stricken,
+half-grown playwright! It's out of reason...."
+
+"But possibly--am I not the one to judge of that?"
+
+"No: I won't have you marry a man unable to provide for you in the way
+to which you've been educated. It's a point of honour--"
+
+"But I have--"
+
+"You must understand: I've got to be able--able!--to humour your every
+whim. With things that way--what of your own you choose to spend on
+yourself won't count. The issue is my ability to give you everything."
+
+"But that will come--"
+
+"When? I can't promise--I hardly dare hope--"
+
+"This new play isn't your only hope?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"Success or failure, you'll keep on?"
+
+"Certainly...."
+
+"Then it's only a question of time."
+
+"But you--how can I ask you to wait?"
+
+"There's no necessity--"
+
+"But it must be." He rose, unable to remain still. "Give me six months:
+I've got another piece of work under way--and others only waiting their
+turn. In six months I can--"
+
+"No!"
+
+The monosyllable brought him up sharply. He stared. Her white arms,
+radiant in that clear, unearthly light, lifted toward him.
+
+"If you want me, dear," she said in a voice tense with emotion--"it must
+be now--soon! To wait--six months--I--that's im--"
+
+The beautiful modulations of Helena Tankerville's voice interrupted.
+
+Standing in one of the windows to the card-room, she said simply: "An
+exquisite night."
+
+Then, coming out upon the terrace and seeing Venetia and Matthias, she
+moved toward them.
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jack. You're wanted indoors."
+
+Matthias, unable quickly to regain his poise, said nothing. Venetia
+answered for him, calmly:
+
+"He can't come."
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"I say, he can't come, Helena. He's engaged."
+
+"Engaged!"
+
+Recovering, Helena bore down upon them with a little call of delight.
+
+"Not really!... O my dears! I'm so glad!"
+
+She gathered Venetia into her arms.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Unremarked by any of these, Marbridge stepped out upon the terrace. He
+was light of foot like most men of his type; his voice, unctuous with
+the Southern drawl which he affected together with quaint Southern
+twists of speech, was the first warning they had of his approach.
+
+"This is surely one powerful' fine night. I don't wonder you-all like it
+better out here than--" He checked suddenly in both words and action:
+the women had started apart. "Why!" he added slowly, as though
+perplexed--"I hope I don't intrude...."
+
+His quick dark eyes shifted rapidly from Helena to Venetia, to Matthias,
+and again back to the women, during a momentary lull of embarrassment.
+Then Helena said quietly:
+
+"Not in the least. But this makes you the first to learn the news, Mr.
+Marbridge. Venetia and my nephew are engaged to be married."
+
+"Engaged--!" The man's chin slacked: his eyes widened; a cigarette fell
+unheeded from his fingers. He smiled a trace stupidly.
+
+"Why!"--he recollected himself almost instantaneously--"this certainly
+is some surprise, but I do congratulate you--both!"
+
+With a stride he seized the hand Venetia could not refuse him, and
+pressed it warmly. "You're the luckiest man I ever knew!" he declared,
+turning to clasp hands with Matthias.
+
+Instinctively the latter met his powerful grasp with one as forceful.
+"Thank you," he said, smiling gravely into the other's eyes. Under his
+firm but pleasant regard they wavered and fell, then steadied with a
+glint of temper. Their hands fell apart. Marbridge stepped back.
+
+"Perhaps I don't know you well enough, Mr. Matthias, to congratulate
+Miss Tankerville as heartily as I do you; but I'm persuaded she's not
+liable to make any serious mistake."
+
+Matthias nodded thoughtfully. "I understand: your intentions are
+excellent. I'm sure we both thank you. Venetia--?"
+
+"Mr. Marbridge is very amiable," said the girl, a hint of mirth
+modifying her composure. "But I'm afraid, Helena," she added
+quickly--"if you don't mind--I think I'll go to my room."
+
+To Marbridge she gave a quaint little bow that was half an old-fashioned
+courtesy, robbed of formality by her spirited smile: to Matthias her
+hand and a gentle "Good night!" Taking the arm of her sister-in-law, she
+drew her toward the house.
+
+Watching them until they disappeared, Marbridge chuckled quietly.
+
+"Took my breath away!" he declared. "Why, I never suspected for an
+instant!..." He dropped heavily but with characteristic grace into a
+chair. "It takes you quiet boys to get away with the girls like
+Venetia--all fire and dash!"
+
+"Yes," said Matthias reflectively: "it does--doesn't it? Have another
+cigarette?" He offered his case. "You dropped yours...."
+
+"Thanks.... She's a thoroughbred, all right. I reckon if I wasn't a mite
+too middle-aged, maybe I might've set you a pace that you'd've found
+lively going."
+
+"Well, let's be thankful nothing of that sort happened, at all events."
+
+Marbridge looked up over his match and lifted his brows; but if in
+reality a retort trembled on his lips, he thought better of it; and
+before either spoke again, Tankerville was on the terrace, brandishing
+pudgy arms.
+
+"Hey, you!" he called fretfully. "Don't you know you're holding us all
+up? Come on in...."
+
+But the game held less attraction for Matthias than ever, and after
+another and final failure to establish himself in Tankerville's good
+graces, he pocketed his losses, relinquished his place to Marbridge
+and--with even less inclination for bed than for cards--took himself
+again out into the open night. But now the terrace was all too small to
+contain his spirits. The need of action--movement, freedom, space--was
+strong upon him. Striding away down the drive that wound like a broad
+band of whitewash through its dark bordering lawns and darker coppices,
+he found even the grounds of Tanglewood too constricted for the
+extravagant energy that animated him; and took to the broad highways,
+with all Long Island free to his tireless spirit.
+
+For several hours or more he trudged valiantly hither and yon, with
+little or no notion of whither he went--with his head in the stars and
+his feet in the dust and kicking up a famous smother of it--and in that
+time was wittingly as near to happiness as he had ever been in all his
+days. The faculty of coherent thought had passed from him utterly, but
+it passed unmourned: Venetia was his! This thought alone sufficed him.
+He had neither time nor inclination to entertain those doubts, those
+questionings and apprehensions which had beset him in saner humour
+theretofore. It mattered nothing now that he was poor and she wealthy,
+nothing that all his efforts to make something of himself had thus far
+proved vain and fruitless. She loved him: it was enough....
+
+He came to his senses, eventually, long enough to recognize anew the
+grounds of Tanglewood. Of a sudden his impetuosity had run out; remained
+the pleasant languor of a healthy body thoroughly exercised, the peace
+of a mind vexed by no insatiable desire. And still he was not sleepy.
+Purposefully he retarded his footsteps, approaching the house with
+stealth, eager to escape observation and gain his room, unhindered.
+Tomorrow would be soon enough to submit to the ordeal of
+congratulations....
+
+It was with a shock of amazement that he saw the house all quiet and
+dark. He pulled out his watch and studied its face by moonlight, finding
+its evidence difficult to credit: twenty minutes past one in the
+morning!
+
+Gingerly, keeping to the grass in order that the gravel of the drive
+might not, by its crunching underfoot, betray him or alarm some wakeful
+member of the house-hold, he approached the front door, wondering if he
+were locked out, and--not without amusement at his self-contrived
+predicament--what to do if he were. To his relief one-half of the double
+door stood a foot or two ajar--thanks, he had no doubt, to the
+thoughtfulness of Helena or Tankerville. Blessing both on general
+principles, he entered, shut the door and softly shot the bolt; turned
+in deep obscurity to grope his way to the foot of the stairs; but paused
+with a hand on the newel-post and his breath catching in his throat.
+
+In the hallway above a night-light was burning dim and low but
+sufficiently diffused to show him the figure of a woman silently
+descending the stairway. When he first became aware of her she was
+indeed almost within arm's length: a shape of shadow scarce three shades
+lighter than the encompassing gloom.... Venetia, possibly, having waited
+and watched for him from her windows overlooking the drive, stealing
+down to bid him that good night they had perforce foregone in the
+presence of Helena and Marbridge....
+
+That wild and extravagant surmise had no more than entered his mind when
+he found the woman in his arms. She gave herself into them with a
+gesture of abandonment, with a little sigh that escaped in broken
+measure, murmurous and fond. An arm that, lifting, flashed naked to the
+shoulder as the sleeve of her negligee fell back, encircled his neck and
+drew down his head to hers. And her mouth fastened to his with clinging
+lips....
+
+Half stunned by receipt of that mad caress, one thought shot like light
+through the turmoil of his senses: this was never Venetia!
+
+With an effort he straightened his neck against the pressure of the
+woman's arm. She strove to overcome his resistance, wooing him in
+accents hushed, shaking with passion:
+
+"_Vincent ... sweetheart!..._"
+
+He interrupted hastily: "I beg pardon!" The inadequacy of that stilted
+form, disgusting him, he added: "I am John Matthias."
+
+Immediately the woman released him and, with a gasp, sank back against
+the newel-post. Her breath came gustily, with a sound like smothered
+sobbing. Pitifully he divined her shame and terror; and though he knew
+her very well, beyond mistake, he said evenly: "Don't worry--there isn't
+any light."
+
+In a stupefied voice she iterated: "No light--?"
+
+"It's so confounded' dark," he complained: "I couldn't tell you from
+Eve. So perhaps you'd better run back to your room now...."
+
+He turned away deliberately. Behind him, after a pause of an instant,
+there rose a sound of soft rustling draperies, a swift and hushed patter
+of footsteps on the stairs. A moment or two later a latch clicked very
+gently in the corridor above.
+
+Quietly Matthias switched on a single light, returned to the door,
+unbolted and quickly opened it.
+
+He was not disappointed that this manoeuvre surprised a shadow
+skulking in the penumbra of rose bushes that bordered the steps, the
+shadow of a man who drew back swiftly when he recognized Matthias. This
+last stepped out, turned in the direction of the fugitive shadow, and
+pursuing at leisure, hailed in a quiet and natural tone: "I
+say--Marbridge!--that you?"
+
+Immediately he came upon Marbridge at a standstill round the corner of
+the house, awaiting him in a curious posture of antagonism: his feet
+well apart, heavy body inclined a trifle forward, round dark head low
+between his shoulders, hands clenched, upon his face a cloud of anger.
+
+Matthias greeted him suavely: "I was afraid I'd locked you out."
+Ignoring his attitude even as he seemed to ignore the fact that
+Marbridge had changed from evening dress to a suit of dark flannels, he
+added: "Coming in now? It's a bit late."
+
+Marbridge pulled himself together. "Perhaps you're right," he assented
+surlily. But it was with patent effort that he mastered his resentment
+and accompanied Matthias back to the doors.
+
+"A fine night, what?" Matthias filled in the awkward silence.
+
+"Yes," agreed Marbridge brusquely. "Too fine," he amended--"too fine to
+waste in bed."
+
+"Sleepless, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Following him in, Matthias refastened the door. "Several of us seem
+troubled with the same indisposition," he observed coolly, swinging to
+face Marbridge. "That's why I bothered to call you in, you know."
+
+Marbridge scowled: "Perhaps I don't get you...."
+
+"She has gone back to bed," Matthias explained pleasantly. "I didn't
+like to think of you waiting out there, all alone."
+
+Marbridge choked on a retort, turned and began slowly to mount the
+stairs.
+
+"Oh--going? Half a minute."
+
+The man paused, and in silence looked down.
+
+"I just happened to think perhaps you haven't a time-table in your
+room," said Matthias amiably. "There are several early trains tomorrow,
+you know. I fancy the eight-seven would suit you as well as any."
+
+He got no answer other than a grunt. Marbridge resumed his deliberate
+ascent, gained the upper floor, and disappeared.
+
+"Good night!" Matthias called after him, softly; and turned out the
+light.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Monday afternoon found Mr. Matthias back at his desk and in a tolerably
+unhappy temper, tormented not only by that conscience-stricken sensation
+of secret guilt inseparable from a return to neglected work, but also by
+a less reasonable, in fact inexplicable (to him) feeling of discomfort;
+as though he were a trespasser upon the premises rather than their
+lawful tenant.
+
+Never before had he felt less at home, never more ill at ease in the
+homely solitude of his workshop and lodgings.
+
+As for his work.... He found page 6 of that promising young first act in
+the typewriter carriage, precisely as it had been left on his receipt of
+Helena's peremptory telegram. Removing the sheet, he turned back to the
+first page, and read what had been written with such high and eager
+hope; and looked his dashed bewilderment. Knitting portentous brows,
+sedulously he reconsidered the manuscript at length; then with a groan
+put it aside, ran fingers through his hair till it rose rampant, and sat
+scowling darkly at the wall, groping blindly and vainly for the lost
+ends of that snapped thread of enthusiasm.
+
+The first flush of confidence vanished, what he had written owned
+heart-rending incoherence in his understanding.
+
+However (he assured himself) it would come back to him in time. Indeed,
+it was bound to. It wasn't the first time this sort of thing had
+happened to him, nor yet the second: he was no raw novice to cry despair
+over such an everyday set-back.
+
+But what the devil _was_ the matter with him? All the way to Town he
+had been full of his theme, as keen-set for work as a schoolboy for a
+holiday, and hardly less for the well-worn comforts of his abode. And,
+lo! here sat he with his head as empty as his hands, and that misfit
+feeling badgering him to exasperation.
+
+Instinctively he consulted a pipe and, through its atmosphere, the view
+from his windows: the never-failing, tried and true, enheartening
+monotony of that sun-scorched area of back-yards, grim and unlovely in
+the happiest weather, cat-haunted and melancholy in all its phases....
+But today he essayed vainly to distil from contemplation of it any of
+the rare glamour of yesterday's zeal and faith. It was all gone, all!
+and the erratic mind of him would persist in trailing off after errant
+thoughts of Venetia Tankerville.
+
+Surpassing inconsistency of the human heart! Three hours ago, in her
+company, he had been able to control and to behave himself, to
+anticipate with pleasure the prospect of returning to his desk after
+escorting her from the Pennsylvania to the Grand Central Station and
+putting her aboard the train for Greenwich, whither she was bound for a
+fortnight's visit. But now--he could think of nothing but Venetia:
+Venetia's eyes, her scarlet lips, her exquisite hands, her hair of
+bronze; her moods and whims, her laughter and her pensiveness, alike
+adorable; Venetia in evening dress on the moon-drenched terrace of
+Tanglewood; Venetia on the tennis-courts, all in white, glorified by
+sunlight, an amazingly spirited, victorious figure; Venetia with her
+hair blown across her eyes, at the wheel of one of Tankerville's racing
+motor-craft; Venetia in the gloom of the Grand Central Station,
+lingering to say good-bye to her betrothed....
+
+It required several days for this stupid gentleman to awaken to the fact
+that the name of his trouble was merely love; that an acknowledged lover
+is a person vastly different from a diffident and distant worshipper;
+that, in short, the muse of the creative fancy is a jealous mistress,
+prone to sulk and deny the light of her countenance to a suitor who
+thinks to share his addresses with another.
+
+But this illuminating discovery did little to allay his discontent:
+progress with his work alone could accomplish that; and the work dragged
+dolefully; he scored only dismal failures in his efforts to produce
+something to satisfy himself. And he had only six months to prove his
+worth. The date of their marriage had been fixed for February; every
+detail of their plans had been worked out under the masterful guidance
+of Helena; even the steamer upon which they were to sail for Egypt had
+been selected and their suite reserved.
+
+In short he positively _had_ to win out within the allotted period of
+grace, who seemed able only to sit there, day in and out, beside his
+typewriter, with idle hands, or, with a vacant mind, to pace his trail
+of torment from door to window: getting nowhere, stripped of every
+vestige of his arduously acquired craftsmanship.... It was maddening.
+
+None the less, doggedly, savagely determined to overcome this
+sentimental handicap, he worked long hours: only to review the outcome
+of his labours with a sinking heart. For all his knowledge of the stage,
+for all that a long career of failures and half-hearted successes had
+taught him, the play that slowly took shape under his modelling lacked
+vitality--the living fire of drama. Technically he could find no
+disastrous fault with it; but in his soul he knew it to be as
+passionless as a proposition in Euclid.
+
+He was a dreamer, but not even the stuff of dreams could dull the clear
+perceptions of his critical intelligence....
+
+Meantime, the superficial routine of work-a-day life went on much as it
+had ever since he had set up shop in the establishment of Madame Duprat.
+His breakfasts were served him in his rooms; for his other meals he
+foraged in neighbouring restaurants. A definite amount of exercise was
+required to keep him in working trim. In short, he was in and out of the
+house several times each day. Inevitably, then, he encountered fellow
+lodgers, either on the stoop or in the hallway; among them, and perhaps
+more often and less adventitiously than in other instances, one wistful
+young woman, shabbily dressed, in whose brown eyes lurked a hesitant
+appeal for recognition. He grew acquainted with the sight of her, but he
+was generally in haste and preoccupied, looked over her head if not
+through her, stepped civilly out of her way and went absently his own,
+and never once dreamed of identifying her with that dreary and damp
+creature of the rain-swept night whose necessity had turned him out of
+his lodgings for a single night.
+
+One day--the second Thursday following his return to Town--he found
+himself waiting in the lobby of the Knickerbocker, a trifle early for a
+luncheon engagement with Rideout and his producing manager, Wilbrow: a
+meeting arranged for the purpose of discussing the forthcoming
+production of "The Jade God." The day was seasonably insufferable with
+heat, but there was here a grateful drift of air through open doors and
+windows. Lounging in an arm-chair, he lazily consumed a cigarette and
+reviewed the listless ebb and flow of guests with a desultory interest
+which was presently, suddenly, and rudely quickened.
+
+Marbridge, accompanied by a woman, was leaving the eastern dining-room.
+They passed so near to Matthias that by stretching forth his foot he
+could have touched the woman's skirt. But she did not see him; her face
+was averted as she looked up, faintly smiling, to the face of her
+companion. Marbridge, on his part, was attending her with that slightly
+exaggerated attitude of solicitude and devotion which was peculiarly his
+with all women. If he saw Matthias he made no sign. His dark and boyish
+eyes ogled his companion; his tone was pitched low to a key of
+intimacy; he rolled a trifle in his walk, with the insuppressible
+swagger of the amateur of gallantry.
+
+They passed on and out of the hotel; and Matthias saw the
+carriage-porter, at a sign from Marbridge, whistle in a taxicab.
+
+He turned away in disgust.
+
+A moment or so later he looked up to find Marbridge standing over him
+and grinning impudently as he offered a hand.
+
+"Why, _how_ do you do, Matthias, my boy?"
+
+His voice, by no means subdued, echoed through the lobby and attracted
+curious glances.
+
+Matthias, ignoring the hand, lifted one of his own in a gesture
+deprecatory.
+
+"Softly!" he begged. "Somebody might hear you."
+
+Unabashed, Marbridge dropped into the chair beside him. "How's that? Why
+shouldn't they?"
+
+"They might make the mistake of inferring that I liked you," returned
+Matthias.
+
+Marbridge, on the point of settling back, sat up with a start. A dull
+colour flushed his plump, dark cheeks. For an instant his hands twitched
+nervously and his full lips tightened on a retort which he presumably
+deemed inadvisable; for mastering his impulse, he sank back again, and
+put a period to the display with a brief but not uneasy chuckle.
+
+"You're all there with the acidulated repartee," he observed
+appreciatively. "Some class to your work, my boy!" To which, Matthias
+making no comment, he added with at least some effort toward an
+appearance of sincerity: "Sorry you feel that way about me."
+
+"Unfortunately, I do."
+
+"Because I wouldn't act on your suggestion about that time-table, eh?"
+
+"Because of the circumstances which moved me to drop that hint."
+
+A brief silence prefaced Marbridge's next remark:
+
+"But damn it! I couldn't. It would've made talk if I'd pulled out when
+you wanted me to."
+
+"There would have been no occasion for any talk whatever if you'd known
+how to comport yourself as the guest of decent people."
+
+And still Marbridge husbanded his resentment.
+
+"Oh well!" he said, aggrieved--"women!"
+
+Matthias threw away his cigarette and prepared to rise.
+
+"Hold on a bit," Marbridge checked him. "I want to ask a favour of
+you.... Of course, you're right; I am a bad actor, and all that. I'm
+sorry I forgot myself at Tanglewood--word of honour, I am!"
+
+"Well?" Matthias suggested with an unmoved face.
+
+"Look here...." Marbridge sat up eagerly. "I think you're a mighty good
+sort--"
+
+"Thanks!"
+
+"You didn't blow about that business down there--"
+
+"I couldn't very well--could I?--with a woman involved!"
+
+"Oh, you did the white thing: I'm not disputing that. But what I'm
+worried about now is whether you're as good a sport as you seem."
+
+"Meaning--?"
+
+Marbridge nodded significantly toward the sidewalk, where he had put his
+late companion into the cab. "About today: you won't find it necessary
+to--?"
+
+"By God!" Matthias's indignation brimmed over. "If you're so solicitous
+of the woman's good name, why the devil do you allow her to be seen in
+your company?"
+
+"It isn't that," Marbridge persisted, keeping himself well in hand.
+"After all, what's a lunch at the Knick?"
+
+"Well--?"
+
+"The trouble is, she's supposed to be at Newport. Majendie doesn't
+know--"
+
+"You just can't help being a blackguard, can you, Marbridge?" Matthias
+enquired curiously. "You ought to have bitten off your tongue before you
+named a name in a public place like this." He rose, meeting with steady
+eyes the vicious glare of the other. "One word more: if I hear of your
+accepting another invitation to Tanglewood, I'll forget to be what you
+call 'a good sport'."
+
+Marbridge jumped up hotly. "Look here!" he said in accents that, though
+guarded, trembled, "I've been mighty patient with your insolence, and
+I'm certainly not going to forget myself here. But if you want to make a
+book on it, I'll lay you any odds you like that I'll be received at
+Tanglewood within the year, and you won't say one single damn' word. Do
+you make me?"
+
+Matthias looked him up and down, smiled quietly, swung on his heel, and
+moved across the lobby to greet Rideout and Wilbrow.
+
+His instinctive inclination to dismiss altogether from his mind a
+subject so distasteful was helped out by a conference which outlasted
+luncheon, involved dinner with the two men of the theatre, and was only
+concluded in Matthias's rooms shortly after midnight.
+
+Wilbrow, considering the play from the point of view of him upon whom
+devolved all responsibility for the manner of its presentation (the
+scene painting alone excepted) and gifted with that intuitive sense _du
+théâtre_ singular to men of his vocation, who very nearly monopolize the
+intelligence concerned with the American stage today--Wilbrow had
+uncovered a slight, by no means damning, flaw in the construction of the
+third act, and had a remedy to suggest. This, adopted without opposition
+from the playwright, suggested further alterations which Matthias could
+not deny were calculated to strengthen the piece. In consequence, when
+at length they left him, he found himself committed to a virtual
+rewriting of the last two acts entire.
+
+Groaning in resignation, he resolved to accomplish the revision in one
+week of solid, uninterrupted labour, and went to bed, rising the next
+morning to deny himself his correspondence and the newspapers and to
+make arrangements with Madame Duprat to furnish all his meals until his
+task was finished. These matters settled, and his telephone temporarily
+silenced, he began work and, forgetful of the world, plodded faithfully
+on by day and night until late Thursday afternoon, when he drew the
+final page from his typewriter, thrust it with its forerunners into an
+envelope addressed to Rideout, entrusted this last to a messenger, and
+threw himself upon the couch to drop off instantly into profound
+slumbers of exhaustion.
+
+At ten o'clock that night he was awakened and sat up, dazed and blinking
+in a sudden glare of gas-light.
+
+Stupidly, bemused with the slowly settling dust of dreams, he stared,
+incredulous of the company in which he found himself.
+
+Madame Duprat, having shown his callers in and made a light for them,
+was discreetly departing. George Tankerville, whose vigorous methods had
+roused Matthias, stood over him, with a look of deep and sympathetic
+anxiety clouding his round, commonplace, friendly countenance. Wearing a
+dinner jacket together with linen motor-cap and duster, oil-stained
+gauntlets on his hands, with an implacable impatience betrayed in his
+very pose, he cut a figure sufficiently striking instantly to engage
+attention--the unexpectedness of his call aside. Furthermore, he was
+accompanied by his wife: Helena, in a costume as unconventional as her
+husband's, stood at a little distance, regarding Matthias with much the
+same look of consternation and care.
+
+"Great Scott!" Matthias exclaimed, pulling his wits together. "You are a
+sudden pair of people!" With a shrug and a sour smile he deprecated his
+clothing, which consisted solely of a shirt, linen trousers, and a pair
+of antiquated slippers. "If you'd only given me some warning, I'd've
+tried to dress up to your elegance," he went on.
+
+"Damn your clothes!" Tankerville exploded. He dropped a hand on
+Matthias's shoulder and swung him round to the light. "Tell us you're
+all right--that's all we want to know!"
+
+"All right?" Matthias looked from one to the other, deeply perplexed.
+"Why, of course I'm all right. Why not?"
+
+With a little gasp of relief, Helena dropped into a chair. Tankerville
+removed his hand and leaned against the table, smiling foolishly.
+
+"That's all right, then," he said. "We tried to get you on the telephone
+all afternoon, failed, were afraid you'd done something foolish, and
+took a run in to town to make sure."
+
+"What the dickens are you driving at?" Matthias demanded. "I had my
+telephone cut off the other day because I was working and didn't want to
+be interrupted. I do that frequently. Why not? What's got into you two,
+anyway? Have you gone dotty?"
+
+"No," Helena replied with a grim, pale smile; "We're sane enough--and
+thank Heaven you are! But Venetia--"
+
+"Venetia!" Matthias cried. "What about Venetia?"
+
+Tankerville avoiding his eye, it devolved upon Helena to respond to
+Matthias's frantic and imperative look.
+
+"Venetia," she said reluctantly--"Venetia eloped with Marbridge day
+before yesterday--Tuesday. She came in town in the morning to do some
+shopping, met him and was married to him at the City Hall. They sailed
+on the Mauretania yesterday. The papers didn't get hold of it--_we_ knew
+nothing!--till this afternoon. I was afraid she might have written you
+and you--in despair--"
+
+Her voice broke.
+
+After a little, Matthias turned to a heap of unopened correspondence on
+a side table and ran rapidly through it, examining only the addresses.
+
+"No," he said presently, in a level tone: "no--she didn't trouble to
+write me."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+For several days the girl had haunted the stairs, the hall, and
+door-step, alert to waylay Matthias, before suddenly she became aware
+that it was long since she had either caught a glimpse of him or heard
+the syncopated murmuring of the typewriter behind the closed door to his
+back-parlour.
+
+It required the lapse of another day or two before she found courage to
+question (with laboured indifference) the dilapidated chambermaid who
+sedulously neglected her room for lack of a tip. From this far from
+garrulous source she learned that Matthias had packed up and gone out of
+town very suddenly, without mentioning where he might be addressed
+during his absence.
+
+Alone at the window of her tiny cell, Joan stared down at the
+uninspiring vista of back-yards and disconsolately recapitulated her
+sorry fortunes.
+
+She was now close upon the end of the fortnight's residence in the hall
+bedroom; before long she would have to surrender another four dollars--a
+week's rent in advance. Of the twenty-two dollars she had received from
+Butch, eight remained in her purse. By dint of adhering to a diet
+largely vegetarian, she had managed without serious discomfort to keep
+within an expenditure of four dollars per week for food. And twice
+Maizie Dean had saved her the cost of an evening meal by inviting her to
+dine out--at the expense of friends in "the profession." But a
+continuance of such favours was not to be counted upon; and the problem
+of living a fourth week away from home was one serious and
+importunate--always assuming she should fail to secure work before her
+money ran out. She had no resources in any degree dependable: Butch,
+even if willing, would probably not be able to extend her another loan;
+she possessed nothing worth pawning; and Maizie Dean had taken prompt
+occasion to make it clear that, while she was willing to do anything
+inexpensive for a budding sister _artiste_, her tolerance would stop
+short of financial aid.
+
+"Take it from me, dear," she announced soon after their first meeting:
+"there ain't no people in the world quicker to slip you a live tip than
+folks in the business; but you gotta make up your mind to pay your own
+keep. They work too hard for their coin to give up any without a howl
+you could hear from here to Hollum; and anyway, everybody's always broke
+in the summer. If you don't land somewhere before your cash runs low,
+you might just's well make up your mind to slip back into the chain-gang
+behind the counter."
+
+She had developed--or changed--amazingly in the brief period of her
+public career. Joan experienced difficulty in recognizing in her the
+warm-hearted Irish girl who had initiated her into the duties of
+saleswoman in the stocking department. She had hardened more than
+superficially; she was now as artificial as her make-up, as the hue of
+her ashen hair. The world to her was a desert threaded by "circuits,"
+life an arid waste of "open time" punctuated with oases of "booking";
+and the fountainhead of temporal power was located in the innermost
+sanctum of the United Booking Offices.
+
+Sitting on the edge of the bed, she crossed her knees frankly, sucked
+thoughtfully at a cigarette, and waved an explanatory hand:
+
+"Here's me and Mame, thinking we was all fixed for the nex' six weeks,
+and then somethin' puts a crimp into our bookin' and we're out for Gawd
+knows how long--till next Fall, sure. That's unless we want to take a
+trip over the meal-ticket circuit--fillin' in between filums, yunno. And
+if we do that it's goin' to crab us with the Orpheum people, sure; we'd
+never get back into the real money class. So we gotta hold onto what
+little we got until we kin see more time headed our way...."
+
+On the other hand, she had been liberal with sage and trustworthy
+counsel as to the best way to go about "breaking into the game." It was
+thanks to her that Joan was now able to enter a theatrical employment
+agency without fear and trembling, and to back her application for
+chorus work with a glib and unblushing statement that she had had
+experience "in summer stock out on the Coast." And to the Sisters Dean,
+likewise, Joan owed her growing acquaintance with the intricate
+geography of the theatrical districts of New York, her ability to
+discriminate between players "resting" and the average run of Broadway
+loungers who cluttered the shady side of that thoroughfare, from
+Twenty-fifth Street north to Forty-seventh, those shimmering summer
+afternoons, and her slowly widening circle of nodding acquaintances
+among the lesser peoples of the vaudeville world.
+
+As a rule she was awake before anybody else in the establishment of
+Madame Duprat; not yet could she slough the habit of early rising. Her
+breakfast she was accustomed to get at the same dairy restaurant which
+had supplied her first meal away from home, and at the same moderate
+expense--ten cents. By ten o'clock she would be on Broadway, beginning
+her round of the agencies: a courageous, shabby figure in the withering
+sun-blast, patient and indomitable through long hours of waiting in
+crowded anterooms, undiscouraged by the brevity and fruitlessness of the
+interviews with which her persistence was sometimes rewarded, ignoring
+disappointment with the same studied calm with which she had long since
+learned to ignore the advances of loafers of the streets.
+
+Her lunches she would purchase wherever she might happen to be at the
+noon hour--or go without. By five o'clock at the latest--frequently much
+earlier--she would turn back to West Forty-fifth Street. For dinner she
+sought again the establishment that provided her breakfast. Her idle
+hours, both day and evening, she grew accustomed to waste in the double
+bedroom ("second floor front") occupied by the Dancing Deans.
+
+At such times the _soi-disant_ sisters were rarely without company. They
+were lively and agreeable creatures, by no means unattractive, and so
+thoroughly theatric in every effect of manner, speech, gesture, person,
+and thought, that the most case-hardened member of the profession could
+not but feel at home in their company. Consequently, they were popular
+with both sexes of their associates. Seldom did a day pass but they
+entertained several callers, with all of whom they seemed to be on terms
+of the most candid intimacy.
+
+So Joan grew accustomed to being hailed, whenever she opened the door of
+the sisters' room, with a formula that varied little with repetition:
+
+"Why, if it _ain't_ the kid! Hello, dearie--come right in and stop
+awhile. Say, lis'n: I want you to shake hands with my friend, Charlie
+Quard. I guess you know who Charlie is, all right; you must of seen him
+of'n--played leading juveniles with the Spangler Stock, I dunno how
+long. Charlie, this is my little friend, Miss Thursday."
+
+"In the business, I trust?"
+
+"Goin' to be before long. Just lookin' round."
+
+"Well, I wish you luck, Miss Thursday. This is the rottenest season _I_
+ever struck. There's eighty people for every job that blooms. Why,
+yunno, Maizie, I was talking only yesterday to Percy Williams, and Percy
+said--"
+
+At about this point Joan would ordinarily be forgotten, and the gossip
+would rattle on through a stifling cloud of cigarette smoke, while she
+sat and listened with grave, if not always comprehending, attention.
+
+And in this manner she met and grew familiar with the personalities of
+an astonishing crew of minor vaudeville folk, jugglers, dancers, patter
+comedians, balladists, coon shouters, performers on weird musical
+instruments, monologists, and an unclassified host of others, including
+a liberal sprinkling of plain actors and actresses, the pendulums of
+whose life alternated between small parts in popular-price stock
+companies and smaller parts in so-called dramatic sketches presented in
+vaudeville houses.
+
+To them all (if they remembered her at all) she was Joan Thursday. The
+translation from Thursby had been almost inevitable. Thursday was by far
+the easier word to remember; Joan soon grew tired of correcting the
+friends of the Dancing Deans; and accepted the change the more readily
+since it provided her with a real "stage name", and so, in some measure,
+identified her with the business to which her every aspiration was
+devoted.
+
+Of all the population of this new world, perhaps the most prominent in
+her eyes, aside from the saltatory sisters, was Mr. Quard; or, to give
+him the fullest benefit of the printed cards which (detaching them
+dexterously from the perforated edges by which they were held in an
+imitation-leather cover) he distributed regardless of expense:
+
+         _Mr. Chas. Harborough Quard_
+    Spangler Stock Co.      Variety Artists Club
+        Brooklyn                   New York
+
+He was a long, rangy animal, robustious, romantical; with a taste in the
+question of personal decoration that created compelling effects. His
+face was large, open, boldly featured, his smile genial, his laugh
+constant and unctuous. Something less than thirty, he had been on the
+stage since childhood; with the training of an actor of the old school,
+he combined immense vitality, an ample, dashing air, enviable
+self-sufficiency, the temperament of a tom-cat.
+
+Any competent stage-director could have made much of him; but in an age
+when managers cast their productions with types who "look" their parts
+in preference to players who can act them, he found few chances to
+demonstrate his ability outside the cheaper stock organizations; for
+the only character he was physically fitted to portray was that of an
+actor.
+
+An ill-starred impulse had led him to resign his latest stock connection
+in order to adventure in vaudeville with a one-act sketch written to his
+order by a hack manufacturer of such trash. Its "try-out week" in a
+provincial town had elicited no offers from other managers, and in the
+meantime his place in the stock company had been filled. At present he
+had a little money saved up, no immediate prospects of an engagement,
+good-humour, no illusions whatever.
+
+"It's no good," he informed Miss May Dean on the occasion of their first
+meeting: "I know where I get off, all right. I can play anything they
+slip me, but these Broadway guys can't see my kind of actor. Give me a
+part I can sink my teeth into, and I'll shake it until the house climbs
+on the seats and howls. But that ain't what they're after, these days."
+
+"The movies'll get you, if you don't watch out," May suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+"That's right; and I'd be a knock-out in a film gang, too; I'm just
+their kind. That's what's become of all the old boys who still think
+Fourteenth Street's the Rialto, yunno. But me, I'm too strong for the
+noise an audience makes when they like you, or don't: I'd just as
+lief be hissed as get every hand in the house. Don't believe I could
+stand acting for a one-eyed box that didn't say anything but
+'_clickety-click_.' I'd rather travel with the Uncle Tommers--honest'."
+
+He was publicly morose for a moment or two. Then he roused: "Cheer up!
+The worst is yet to come. Maybe I can stick out till next spring, when
+Grady makes his next all-star revival. Wonder what he'll exhume this
+time? If it's only something like 'The Silver King,' or 'East Lynne,' I
+may yet cop out a chance to play to a two-dollar house.... Now, lis'n:
+I'm going down on the stoop and smoke a cigarette while you girls
+colour your maps for artificial light. The eats are on me tonight."
+
+"Does that take in my little friend?" demanded Maizie, with a nod toward
+Joan.
+
+Quard threw Joan a kindly glance: "Sure. Now, get a hustle on."
+
+"But I can't," Joan protested. "I'm sorry--I'd love to--but I've got
+nothing fit to wear."
+
+"You look pretty good to me as you stand," returned Quard. "Forget it,
+kid, and kick in."
+
+"That's right," Maizie insisted. "Besides, I'll lend you a hat and a
+fresh fichu; you don't need any coat tonight, it's too rotten warm."
+
+"Anyway," Quard said over his shoulder as he left the room, "we ain't
+booked for Sherry's."
+
+In witness whereof, he introduced the girls to an obscure Italian
+boarding-house in Twenty-seventh Street, the proprietress of which
+admitted them only after examination through a grille in the front door.
+Quard explained to Joan that this precaution was necessary because the
+house served "red ink" with the meals and without benefit of a liquor
+license; hence, only friends could be admitted.
+
+They dined by gas-light in the back-yard, under an awning which served
+the double purpose of excluding observation from the neighbouring
+dwellings and compressing the heated air. Perhaps two dozen tables
+crowded the enclosure. The male guests by common consent removed their
+coats and hung them on nails in the fence. The ladies emulated by
+discarding hats and all conventionalities of a nature to impede free
+expression of their temperaments. Maizie Dean even did without her
+English accent.
+
+The meal was of a sort only to be consumed with impunity by optimists
+and Italians: a heavy soup, and all one could eat of it, spaghetti
+without end, a minute section of lukewarm blotting paper with a remote
+flavour of chicken, a salad, cheese and coffee, a half-bottle of
+atrocious red wine. Joan enjoyed it immensely; it has been said that her
+powers of digestion were exceptional.
+
+Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Conversation was free between
+tables. Personalities were bandied back and forth amid intense glee.
+Quard, consuming enormous quantities of wine, proved himself a general
+favourite, a leading spirit. After dinner he called for a virulent green
+cordial (which Joan tasted but could not drink) and later returned to
+the wine. Before the end of the evening he became semi-maudlin, and on
+leaving exploited a highly humorous inability to walk a straight line.
+On the corner of Broadway he halted suddenly, bade the three women a
+slurred good night, and without other ceremony swung himself aboard a
+Broadway car.
+
+His rudeness excited no comment from the Dancing Deans. They walked all
+the way home with Joan, unescorted. Joan was surprised to see by the
+clock in the _Herald_ building that it was almost eleven. She thought
+she had never known an evening to pass so quickly and so pleasantly.
+What little wine she had consumed seemed to have affected her not at
+all, beyond rendering her keenly appreciative of this novel experience.
+
+But she suffered the next morning from a slight and, to her,
+inexplicable headache.
+
+It was four or five days later before she saw Quard again. He called
+early in the evening--but after dinner--and sat chatting amiably with
+the women for upwards of an hour before the real purpose of his visit
+transpired.
+
+"I was talking to Reinhardt about an idea I got for a sketch, day before
+yesterday," he announced suddenly. "But he wanted fifty cash before he'd
+touch it, and seeing as it was him slipped me that other lemon, I told
+him merrily where he could go and went home and wrote it myself."
+
+"You didn't!" Maizie exclaimed admiringly.
+
+"You bet your life I did," the actor asseverated with conscious modesty.
+"Why not? It's no great stunt, writing; and besides it's all old junk
+I've done before, only hashed up a new way. All I had to do was to cop
+lines out of shows I've played in--sure-fire stuff, yunno--and write in
+names of characters. That's nothing."
+
+"Oh, no, nothin' at all!" commented May Dean from her perch on the
+window-sill. "What's an author, anyway? Eight to five, girls, he's got
+the 'script on him. Get ready to duck."
+
+"Wel-l!" Quard laughed--"you beat me to it, all right." He produced a
+sheaf of folded papers, smoothing them out upon his knee. "I just
+thought I'd see what you thought of it. If it's any good I'm going to
+read it to Schneider tomorrow and see what he'll offer me."
+
+"Who's Schneider?" Maizie asked blankly.
+
+"Agent for the film circuits," Quard replied.
+
+"You don't mean you're thinkin' of fallin' for the four-a-day!"
+
+"I'll try anything once; I'm not too proud to earn my bed and board in
+the dull season, anyhow. Besides, this thing would break into the
+Orpheum Circuit only over the dead body of Martin Beck. I'm no Georgie
+Cohan. But it oughta sandwich in between the pictures without anybody
+asking his ten cents back."
+
+"You've got your nerve with you," Maizie commented darkly.
+
+"Let him rave," May advised, exhaling cigarette smoke voluminously.
+"Shoot!"
+
+Taking this for consent, Quard rattled the sheets of paper, tilted back
+his chair, and began to read.
+
+His voice was flexible and sonorous; instinctively he declaimed the
+lines, extracting from each its full value. Now and again he lent
+emphasis to a phrase with an eloquent hand. But to Joan the composition
+was quite incoherent. She attended with wonder and a feeling of
+impatience because of her inability to understand what Quard seemed to
+relish with so much enthusiasm. It was, in fact, a worthless farrago of
+nonsense. None the less the two dancers laughed at encouraging
+intervals.
+
+Flattered, Quard rose, removed his coat and began to act the lines,
+striding up and down the narrow space between the foot of the double-bed
+and the marble mantelpiece. The night was hot; a single gas-jet
+illumined the centre of the room; Quard perspired freely. For all that,
+his stenographic acting gave the thing some slight accent of humanity.
+It became a trifle, a mere trifle, more intelligible.
+
+Seated on the window-sill, _en profile_ to the room, her slight, wiry
+body attired sketchily in a kimono and short skirt, May Dean swung her
+legs and stared out into the darkness, an ironic smile hovering round
+her thin lips. Maizie lounged on the bed, tracing a meaningless pattern
+on the counterpane with a thin and rouge-stained forefinger. Joan
+occupied the only chair other than that at the disposal of the actor.
+She was very tired, and her attention wandered, even though Quard
+managed to draw it back now and then by some vivid trick of elocution or
+gesture. Vaguely sensitive to the magnetism of the man, her thoughts
+were occupied more with indefinite speculations about his personality
+than with the semi-plagiaristic and wholly commonplace concoction of
+cheap sentiment and tried-and-true "gags" which he professed to have
+written.
+
+Physically he attracted her. Divested of his coat, his chest swelled
+impressively beneath a pink-striped silk shirt. When he lifted an arm,
+the clinging sleeve moulded itself to an admirable biceps. As he strode
+to and fro the stuff of his thin summer trousers shaped itself to legs
+that might have proved enviable to Sir Willoughby Patterne himself. His
+wide-lipped mouth disclosed an excellent outfit of large, white, strong
+teeth. His jet-black hair curled engagingly at his temples and over his
+generous pink ears. She liked his big, muscular, mobile hands....
+
+She started suddenly, to discover that he had concluded and was facing
+her with an expectant expression, and sat up and smiled faintly, with
+embarrassment, trying to remember what it had all been about.
+
+From the window, May Dean drawled languidly: "Is that the finish?"
+
+Quard waved an arm. "Curtain!" he said; and sat down.
+
+"My Gawd!" observed May thoughtfully.
+
+He laughed uncomfortably: "As bad as all that?"
+
+"It'd make a wonderful chaser," Maizie commented without lifting her
+eyes from the counterpane.
+
+Quard turned desperately back to Joan. "What do you think of it, Miss
+Thursday?"
+
+"I think so too," she said with all the animation she could muster. The
+other women laughed aloud. She flushed and added: "I mean, I think it's
+wonderful. I don't know what a chaser is."
+
+"A chaser, dearie," Maizie explained in tones of acute commiseration,
+"is an act put on in the continuous houses to chase out the
+chair-warmers and make room for more."
+
+"Well," said Quard, shuffling the manuscript, "I don't care if it is a
+chaser, so long as it stakes me to the eats till something else turns
+up."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+On that day when she discovered the disappearance of John Matthias, Joan
+left the house later than had been her wont, and returned earlier, after
+a faint-hearted and abortive attempt to interview the stage-manager of a
+new musical production then being assembled to rehearse against an early
+opening in the Autumn.
+
+The Deans were out. She had no place to go other than to her bare and
+lonely room, and she felt uncommonly hopeless and friendless.
+Subconsciously she had been holding in reserve, as a last hope, an
+appeal to the generosity of Matthias. He was a playwright, an intimate
+of managers: surely he would be able to suggest something, no matter how
+poorly paid or inconspicuous. Now, with the date of his return
+indefinite, she felt unjustly bereft of that last resource.
+
+She spent two weary, wretched hours on her bed, harassed by a singularly
+fresh and clear perception of her unfitness, for the first time made
+conscious that she had actually possessed no reasonable excuse for her
+determination to go on the stage. Her qualifications, which hitherto
+might have been expressed, according to her own estimate, by the
+algebraic X, now assumed a value only to be indicated by a cipher. She
+had a good strong voice, it's true, but no ear whatever for music; she
+didn't "know steps" (Maizie's term, denoting ability for eccentric
+dancing) and of the art of acting she was completely ignorant. In fact,
+her theatrical ambitions had been founded more upon need of money than
+upon any real or fancied passion for the stage. Other girls had done
+likewise and bettered themselves: Joan knew no reason why she should
+fall short of their enviable achievements; but she was innocent of
+dramatic feeling and even of any real yearning for applause. Only her
+looks, of which she was confident, were to be counted upon to carry her
+beyond the stage doors.
+
+She thought of her home, of her mother, her father, Edna and Butch, with
+a dull and temperate regret. Since that first afternoon she had never
+attempted to revisit them, and she felt now no inclination toward
+returning. Still, her thoughts yearned back to the miserable flat as to
+an assured shelter: there, at least, she had been safe from rude weather
+and positive hunger.
+
+As things were with her, another week would find her destitute, but
+there was still the chance that something would turn up within that
+week. She felt almost sure that something would turn up. In this
+incurable optimism resided almost her sole endowment for the career of
+an actress: this, and a certain dogged temper which wouldn't permit her
+to acknowledge defeat until every possible expedient had been
+explored....
+
+Toward evening she heard footsteps on the stairs. To her surprise they
+paused by her door, upon which fell a confident knock. Jumping up from
+her bed in a flurry, she answered to find Quard on the threshold.
+
+No one had been farther from her thoughts. She stared, agape and
+speechless.
+
+"Hello, Miss Thursday!" said the actor genially. "Can I come in?"
+
+He entered, cast a comprehensive glance round the poor little room,
+deposited his hat upon the bed and himself beside it. Leaving the door
+open, and murmuring some inarticulate response, Joan turned back to her
+one chair.
+
+"Hope I don't intrude," Quard rattled on cheerfully. "The girl told me
+the Deans was out and you in, so I took a chance and said I'd come right
+up."
+
+"I--I'm sorry Maizie isn't home," stammered the girl.
+
+"I ain't." Quard's eyes looked her over with open admiration. "I didn't
+want to see either of 'em, really. What I wanted was a little confab
+with you."
+
+"With _me_!"
+
+"Surest thing you know. I wanta talk business. I don't guess you've
+landed anything yet?"
+
+Joan shook her head blankly.
+
+"Well, I got a little proposition to make you. Yunno that sketch I wrote
+and you liked so much the other night?"
+
+"Yes...."
+
+"Well, I got hold of Schneider yesterday, and read it to him, and he
+says he can get me four or five weeks' booking at least, if I can put it
+over at the try-out. How does that strike you?"
+
+"Why--I'm glad," Joan faltered, still mystified. "It must be fine to get
+something to do."
+
+"Well, I haven't got it yet; and of course, maybe I won't get it. One of
+the first things you gotta learn in this business is, never spend your
+pay envelope till you got it in your mitt. And in this case, a lot
+depends on you."
+
+"I don't get you," Joan returned frankly. "What've I got to do with it?"
+
+Quard smiled indulgently, offered her a cigarette, which she refused,
+and lighted one for himself.
+
+"If I can't get you to play the woman's part," he said, spurting twin
+jets of smoke through his nostrils, "it's all up--unless I can hitch up
+with summonelse just like you."
+
+"You mean--you want _me_ to--to act--?"
+
+"Right, the very first time outa the box! Yunno, it's this way with
+these cheap houses: they can't afford to pay much for a turn, even a
+good one--and this one of ours is going to be about as bum as any act
+that ever broke through: take that from me. So it's up to me to find
+somebody who'll work with me for little enough money to leave something
+for myself, after I've squared up with the agent and stage-hands, and
+all that. You make me now?"
+
+"Yes; but I haven't any experience--"
+
+"That's just it: if you had, I couldn't afford you. But you gotta start
+sometime, and it won't do you no harm to get wise to what little I can
+teach you. Now the most I can count on dragging down for this act is
+sixty a week. I want twenty-five of that for myself. Fifteen, more will
+fix the agent and the rest. That leaves twenty for you. It ain't much,
+but it's a long sight better than nothing."
+
+"But--how do you know I can do it?"
+
+"That'll be all right. I know all about acting--anyway, I know enough to
+show you how to put across anything you'll have to do in this piece. Now
+how about it?"
+
+"Why, I'll be glad--"
+
+"Good enough. Now here: I've had this dope type-written, and here's your
+copy. Let's run through it now, and tonight you can start in learning.
+Tomorrow we'll have a rehearsal, and just as soon's we got our lines
+pat, we'll let Schneider have a pipe at it. Don't worry. It ain't going
+to be hard."
+
+Thus reassured, but still a trifle dubious, Joan accepted a duplicate of
+the manuscript, and composed herself to follow to the best of her
+ability Quard's second reading.
+
+This time he took less pains with his enunciation, scanned the lines
+more rapidly, and frequently interrupted himself in order to explain a
+trick of stage-craft or to detail with genuine gusto some bit of
+business which he counted upon to prove especially telling.
+
+In consequence of this exposition, Joan acquired a much clearer
+understanding of the nature of the sketch. It concerned two persons
+only: a remarkably successful stage dancer, to be played by Joan; her
+convict husband, fresh from the penitentiary, by Quard. _Scene_: the
+dressing-room of the dancer. _Time_: just after the dancer's "turn."
+Joan, discovered "on", informs the audience of her fortunate
+circumstances through the medium of a brief soliloquy. _Enter_ Quard
+(shambling gait, convict pallor, etc.) to inform her that she has been
+living in the lap of luxury during the eight years that he has been
+serving time: "I'm goin' to have my share now!" Comedy business:
+humorously brutal attitude toward wife; slangy description of prison
+life. ("They'll simply eat that up!"--_Quard._) More comedy business
+involving a gratuitous box of property cigars and a cuspidor. Suddenly
+and without shadow of excuse, husband accuses wife of infidelity.
+Indignant denials; wife exhibits portrait of child born after commitment
+of husband, and of whose existence he has heretofore been ignorant: "It
+was for him I fought my way to the top of the ladder: he has _your_
+eyes!" Incontinently husband experiences change of heart; kisses
+photograph; snuffles into cap crushed between hands; slavers over wife's
+hand; refuses her offer of assistance; announces he will go West to
+"make a _man_ of myself!" before returning to claim his wife and child.
+And the _Curtain_ falls upon him in the act of going out, all broken up.
+
+"Of course," Quard admitted, "it's bunk stuff, but we can put it across
+all right. I'm going to call it _The Convict's Return_ and bill it as by
+_Charles D'Arcy and Company_. You'll be the company. I don't want to use
+my name, because it ain't going to do me any good to have it known I've
+taken to this graft, and if I'm lucky no one's going to spot me through
+my make-up."
+
+Suddenly apprised by the failing light that the hour was growing late,
+he pocketed the manuscript and rose.
+
+"Come on out and eat--business dinner. We'll talk things over, and I'll
+fetch you home early, so's you can start getting up on your lines."
+
+They dined again at the Italian boarding-house. Quard drank but
+sparingly, considerably to the relief of Joan....
+
+She was home by half-past eight, her head buzzing with her efforts to
+remember all he had told her, and sat up till three in the morning,
+conning the inhuman speeches of her part until she had them by rote; no
+very wonderful accomplishment, considering that the sketch was to play
+less than fifteen minutes, and that two-thirds of its lines were to be
+delivered by Quard.
+
+But once with head on pillow, it was not her rôle that she remembered,
+but the man: his coarsely musical tones, his eloquent white hands, the
+overt admiration that shone in his eyes whenever he forgot his sketch
+and remembered momentarily Joan the woman. She felt sure he liked her.
+And she liked him well. Of the merits of his enterprise she knew
+nothing, but he had succeeded in inspiring her with confidence that he
+knew what he was about.
+
+She drifted off into sleep, comforted by the conviction that she had
+found a friend.
+
+By the time of her return from breakfast, the next morning, Quard was
+waiting for her at the lodging-house. He had already arranged with
+Madame Duprat for the use of the front parlour for rehearsals, pending
+its lease to some fortuitous tenant; and here he proceeded to work out
+the physical action of the sketch. His gratitude to Joan for knowing her
+part was almost affecting; he himself was by no means familiar with his
+own and her prompt response to cues he read from manuscript facilitated
+his task considerably. When they adjourned for luncheon he announced
+himself persuaded that they would be ready to "open" within a week.
+
+Within that period Joan learned many things. She was a tractable and
+docile student, keen-set to profit by the scraps of dramatic chicanery
+which formed the major part of Quard's stage intelligence. He himself
+had a very fair memory and had been drilled by more than one competent
+stage-director whose instructions had stuck in his mind, forming a
+valuable addition to his professional equipment. Joan soon learned to
+speak out clearly; to infuse some little semblance of human feeling into
+several of her turgid lines; to suffer herself to be dragged by one
+wrist round the room on her knees, by the romantical convict; to time
+her actions by mental counting; to "feed lines" to her partner in a
+rapid patter through the passages of putative comedy. She learned also
+to answer to "dearie" as to her given name, and to submit to being
+handled in a way she did not like but which, from all that she could
+observe, was considered neither familiar nor objectionable as between
+people of the stage. And she learned, furthermore, that May Dean's
+opinion of the venture was never to be drawn beyond a mildly derisive
+"My Gawd!" while Maizie's ran to the sense that it was all a chance and
+Joan a little fool if she didn't grab it--and anyway Joan was old enough
+to take care of herself with Charlie Quard or any man living!
+
+And it was Maizie who was responsible for insisting that Joan wheedle an
+advance of ten dollars from Quard, ostensibly toward the purchase of
+costume and make-up. But when this had been successfully negotiated, the
+dancers advised Joan to save it against an emergency, and between them
+provided her with an outfit composed of cast-offs: a black satin
+décolleté bodice, an accordion-pleated short skirt of the period of
+1890, wear-proof silk stockings, a pair of broken-down satin slippers
+with red heels, a japanned tin make-up box with a broken lock, and a
+generous supply of cheap grease-paint and cold cream.
+
+Joan's début occurred within the time-limit set by Quard and before an
+audience of two, not counting a few grinning stage-hands. The two were
+the agent Schneider, and the manager of a small moving-picture house in
+the Twenty-third Street shopping district; on the half-lighted stage of
+which their "try-out" took place at half-past ten of a rainy and
+disheartening morning. The judges sat in the darkened auditorium,
+staring apathetically and chewing large cigars. Joan, though a little
+self-conscious, was not at all nervous, and remembered her lines
+perfectly; better than this, she looked very fetching indeed in her
+makeshift costume. Quard forgot several of his speeches, floundered all
+over the stage, and in a frantic effort to redeem himself clowned his
+part outrageously. Nevertheless they were engaged.
+
+Convinced of their failure, Joan had only succeeded in removing her
+make-up and struggling into her shabby street clothing, when Quard
+knocked at the door of her dressing-room. He had played without make-up,
+and consequently had been able to catch the manager and agent before
+they could escape. Lounging in the doorway, he breathed a spirit of
+congratulation strongly tainted with fumes of whiskey.
+
+"We're on!" he declared exultantly. "What'd I _tell_ you? You needn't
+have changed, because we're going to stick here, and open today. One of
+the turns on this week's bill fell down at the last minute, and so we
+cop this chance to fill in. We go on after the first films--about a
+quarter of one; and then at four-thirty, seven-thirty, ten-forty-five.
+Now whadda yunno about that?"
+
+Joan gulped and shook her head, her eyes a little misty. For the first
+time she began to perceive that she had counted desperately on success.
+
+"I think--we're awful' lucky!" she said faintly.
+
+"Lucky nothing! I knew I could get away with it--always providing I had
+you to play up to."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"That's right. After we'd fixed things up I took Schneider down to the
+corner and bought him a drink. He said--I dunno as I ought to tell you
+this, but anyway--he said the sketch was punk (God knows it is) and
+never would've gone if it hadn't been for you. He said all the women
+would go crazy about you--you'd got the prettiest shape he'd seen in a
+month of Sundays. Yunno they get most of their afternoon houses from the
+women shoppers down here."
+
+He paused and after a moment added meditatively: "Of course, you can't
+_act_ for shucks."
+
+Joan, looking down, said nothing. Quard dropped a hand intimately across
+her shoulder and infused a caressing note into his voice.
+
+"I guess I'm a bad little guesser--eh, dearie?"
+
+Joan stood motionless for an instant. His hand seemed as if afire, as if
+burning through her shirtwaist the flesh of her shoulder. And she
+resented passionately the intimacy of his tone. Of a sudden she shook
+his hand off and moved a pace or two away.
+
+"Let me alone," she said sullenly.
+
+Quard started and jerked out a "What?"
+
+"I said, let me alone," she repeated in the same manner, looking him
+steadily in the face.
+
+He coloured darkly, mumbled something indistinguishable, and flashed
+into a short-lived fit of temper.
+
+"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded hotly.
+
+[Illustration: "What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded,
+hotly.]
+
+"Nothing," she replied quietly; "only I don't want to be pawed."
+
+"No?" he exclaimed with sarcasm. "Is that straight?"
+
+"Yes, that's straight--and so'm I!"
+
+Recollecting himself, Quard attempted to carry off his discomfiture with
+a shrug and a laugh: "Oh, all right. Don't get huffy. I didn't mean
+anything."
+
+"I know you didn't, but don't do it again."
+
+He turned out into the corridor; hesitated. "Well--let it go at that,
+can't you?"
+
+"All right," she said sulkily: "_you_ let it go at that."
+
+Quard tramped off without saying anything more, and, whatever his
+resentment and disappointment, schooled himself to control them, and met
+her half-way to a reconciliation when the approaching hour of their
+first public appearance brought them together in the wings.
+
+And by this time Joan had been sufficiently diverted by other
+experiences to have regained her normal poise. The dingy, stuffy, and
+evil-smelling dressing-room to which she had been assigned had suffered
+an invasion of three other women: two worn and haggard clog-dancers and
+a matronly ballad-singer who, having donned an excessively soiled but
+showy evening gown, had settled down calmly to her knitting: an
+occupation which had interfered not in the least with her flow of
+animated and not unkindly gossip. Joan gathered that her voice was the
+main support of a small family, consisting of a shiftless husband and
+three children, for the younger of whom the mother was knitting a pair
+of small, pink bootees. These last had immediately enlisted the
+sympathetic interest of the clog-dancers, one of whom boasted of the
+precocity of her only child, a boy of eight living with his grandmother
+in Omaha, while the other told simply of the death of two children, due
+to neglect on the part of those to whom she had been obliged to entrust
+them while on the road....
+
+Joan was the first to reach the entrance to the dingy "kitchen-set"
+which was to figure as a star dressing-room for the purposes of their
+sketch (and, for the purposes of subsequent offerings, as the
+drawing-room of a mansion on Fifth Avenue and the palm room of a
+fashionable hotel). About ten times the size of any dressing-room ever
+constructed, it was still atmospherically cheerless and depressing. She
+looked it over momentarily to make sure that the various simple
+properties were in place, and turned to find Quard approaching. Beneath
+the jaunty assurance which even his hang-dog make-up couldn't wholly
+disguise, she was able to detect traces of some uneasiness and anxiety.
+
+It was a fact that he had grown a trifle afraid of her.
+
+The discovery impressed her as so absurd that she smiled; and instantly
+the man was himself again. He thrust out a hand, to which with covert
+reluctance she entrusted her own.
+
+"All right now?" he asked cheerfully.
+
+She nodded: "All right."
+
+"Good enough. Let's see what kind of a house we've got."
+
+He found a peep-hole near the proscenium arch and peered intently
+through it for a moment or two; then beckoned Joan to take his place.
+But she could make but little of what seemed a dark well filled with
+flickering shadows. She turned away.
+
+"Only a handful out there," Quard assured her. "It's too early for much
+of a crowd. No good getting nervous about this bunch."
+
+"I'm not," she asserted quietly.
+
+And she wasn't; no less to her own surprise than to Quard's, she was
+conscious of no trace of the stage-fright she had heard so much about.
+Indeed a singular feeling of indifference and disappointment oppressed
+her; it was all so unlike what she had looked forward to as the setting
+for her first appearance in public. The dreary and tawdry atmosphere
+behind the scenes of the dilapidated little theatre; the weary and
+subdued accents in which her dressing-room associates had discussed
+their offspring; the _tinkle-tankle-tinkle-whang_ of a painfully
+automatic piano in the orchestra-pit; her own shabby second-hand
+costume; the brutal grotesqueness of Quard's painted countenance at
+close range--these owned little in common with those anticipations
+roused by the glitter and glamour of that fleshy show on the New York
+Theatre roof garden. She felt cheated; in perspective, even the
+stocking-counter seemed less uninviting....
+
+A muffled outbreak of laughter and brief murmur of applause filtered
+through the curtain. The piano stopped with a crash. Quard nodded and,
+touching her elbow, urged her toward the entrance.
+
+"Film's finished. Ready and steady, old girl."
+
+"I'm all right," she said sullenly. "Don't you worry about me."
+
+She heard the curtain rise with a rustling as of mighty wings penetrated
+by the shrill squeal of an ungreased block; held back a moment; and
+walked on, into a dazzling glare of footlights, conscious of no emotion
+whatever beyond desire to get finished with her part and return to the
+dressing-room. At the designated spot, near the centre of the stage, she
+paused, faced the audience with her trained smile and mouthed the
+opening lines with precisely the proper intonation....
+
+The curtain fell at length amid a few, scattering hand-claps that
+sounded much like faint-hearted firecrackers exploding at a distance.
+Joan rose from the chair in which she had been seated in a posture
+simulating abandonment to tears of joy, and walked soberly off the
+stage--barely anticipating a few stage-hands, who rushed on to make the
+changes necessary for the next act.
+
+Quard was waiting for her.
+
+"Well," he said, "it didn't go so bad, did it?"
+
+"No," she agreed listlessly.
+
+"Anyhow, they didn't throw things at us."
+
+"No." She endeavoured to smile, with indifferent success.
+
+"I got a lot more laughs with that spittoon business than I thought I
+would," he continued thoughtfully as they turned back toward the
+dressing-rooms.
+
+Joan made no reply, but when she stopped at the door of her
+dressing-room, Quard added tentatively:
+
+"Anyway, it beats clerking in a department store, doesn't it?"
+
+With some hesitation she replied: "I don't know...."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Immediately after her second public appearance in "The Convict's
+Return," Joan removed her make-up, changed to street dress and scurried
+through the rain to a Child's restaurant, not far from the theatre. In
+her excitement she had forgotten lunch and she was now thoroughly
+hungry. But she lingered purposely over the meal and even for some time
+after she had finished, preoccupied with self-dissection.
+
+She was--at last!--an actress; but she was none the less singularly
+discontented. In a very brief time she had travelled a great way from
+the Joan Thursby of East Seventy-sixth Street; a world of emotion and
+experience already dissociated them; but she seemed to have profited
+little by the journey. She felt sure that she had started the wrong way
+to prove her ability to act. And foreseeing nothing better than her
+present circumstances, she questioned gravely an inscrutable future.
+
+Instinctively she felt uneasy about this intimate, daily relationship
+with Quard. She wasn't afraid of him, but she was a little afraid of
+herself--because she liked him. Though still she dwelt in secret longing
+upon the image, half real, half fanciful, of a lover gentle and strong
+and fine--such an one as John Matthias might prove--for all that,
+Charlie Quard had the power to stir her pulses with a casual look of
+admiration, or with some careless note of tenderness in his accents.
+
+The shower slashed viciously at the restaurant windows. At that hour
+there were few other patrons in the establishment, no lights to relieve
+the dismal greyness of the afternoon, and no sounds other than an
+infrequent clash of crockery, the muffled shuffling of waitresses' feet,
+and their subdued voices, the melancholy and incessant crepitation of
+the downpour.
+
+Joan was sensible to the approach of an exquisite despondency; and in
+alarm, fearing to think too deeply, she arose, ran back to the theatre
+and on impulse paid her way in through the front, to watch the
+flickering phantasmagoria of the flying films and to sit in judgment on
+the antics of her fellows on the variety bill. She was in no hurry to
+return to the dressing-room, with its smells of grease-paint, scented
+powder, ordinary perfumes, sweat, stale cigarette-smoke, gin, and broken
+food. One of the clog-dancers claimed a tubercular tendency, for which
+she asserted gin to be a sovereign specific; but as the day ran on was
+even forgetting, at times, to cough by way of an overture to recourse to
+the bottle. The other, viewing this proceeding with public disfavour,
+had opened up an apparently inexhaustible and hopelessly monotonous
+store of reminiscence of the privations she had endured in consequence
+of "Fanny's weakness." Joan gathered that the two were forever being
+dropped from one bill after another because of Fanny's weakness.
+
+And of this she had five more days to anticipate and to endure....
+
+She crawled back to Forty-fifth Street at half-past eleven, that night,
+so dog-tired that she had neither the heart nor the strength to call on
+the Deans with her good news; this though there were sounds of discreet
+revelry audible through the door of the second-floor front....
+
+Somehow the week wore out without misadventure. Joan walked through her
+part with increasing confidence. Quard left her very much to herself
+when they were off the stage; indeed, he spent no more time in the
+theatre than was absolutely necessary. What he did out of it she did not
+know, but from the frequency with which he played his part with an
+alcoholic breath, she surmised that he was solacing himself in
+conventional manner for his degradation to "the four-a-day."
+
+On the third day the clog-dancers were dispensed with for the reason
+forecast, their place being taken by two female acrobats of a family
+troupe, who lolled about for eleven hours at a stretch in their grimy
+pink tights and had little to say either to Joan or to the matronly lady
+with the robust voice and the knitting. But the change was a wholesome
+one for the dressing-room.
+
+The following week _Charles D'Arcy & Company_ played at another house of
+equal unpretentiousness, on the East Side, and the week after that was
+divided between two other theatres. And on Wednesday of the fourth
+week--they were then in Harlem--what Joan had vaguely foreseen and hoped
+against, happened.
+
+Quard turned up in the morning with red-rimmed eyes, a flushed face and
+a thick tongue blatantly advertising a night of sleepless drunkenness.
+By sheer force of an admirable physique and the instinct of a trained
+actor, he contrived to play the first turn without mishap, snatched a
+little sleep in his dressing-room, and seemed almost his everyday self
+at the next repetition. But after that he left the theatre to drug his
+jangling nerves with more whiskey; and appeared at the final repetition
+so stupefied that he would not have been permitted to go on the stage
+but for remissness on the part of the stage-manager. Before he had been
+five minutes on view he was hooted off and the curtain was rung down
+amid an uproar.
+
+Once back in her dressing-room (where she was alone, since their act was
+the last on the bill and the rest of the performers had already left the
+theatre) Joan gave way to a semi-hysterical tempest of tears. It was her
+first experience at close quarters with a man in hopeless intoxication,
+and while Quard's surrender was too abject to terrify, she was faint
+with disgust of him and incensed beyond measure with him for having
+subjected her to those terrible five minutes before a howling audience.
+With this, she was poignantly aware that henceforth their offering was
+"cold": by morning Quard's name would be upon the black-list and
+further booking impossible to secure. She might as well count herself
+once more out of work, and now in even less hopeful circumstances than
+when first she had struck out for herself; for then she had been buoyed
+up by the fatuous confidence of complete inexperience, and then she had
+been comparatively affluent in the possession of twenty-two dollars. Now
+she knew how desperately hard was the way she must climb, and she had
+less than five dollars. What little she had been able to set aside out
+of her weekly wage had gone to purchase some sorely needed supplements
+to her meagre wardrobe.
+
+It was some time before she could collect herself enough to dabble her
+swollen eyes with cold water, scrub off her make-up, and change for the
+street.
+
+She stole away presently across an empty and desolate stage and
+through the blind, black alley leading from the stage-door to
+One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street. She felt somewhat relieved and
+comforted by the clean night air and the multitude of lights--the sense
+of normal life fluent in its accustomed, orderly channels. It seemed, in
+her excited fancy, like escaping from the foul, choking atmosphere of a
+madhouse....
+
+The theatre was near Third Avenue, toward which Joan hurried, meaning to
+board a southbound car and transfer to Forty-second Street. But as she
+neared the corner she checked sharply, and (simple curiosity proving
+stronger than her impulse to fly across the street) went more
+slowly--only a few yards behind a figure that she knew too well--a
+swaying figure with weaving feet.
+
+Vastly different from the carefully overdressed, dandified person he had
+been at their first meeting, Quard stumbled on, his hands deep in
+pockets, head low between his shoulders, a straw hat jammed down over
+his eyes. Obviously he was without definite notion of either his
+where-abouts or his destination. Passers-by gave him a wide berth.
+
+He seemed so broken and helpless that pity replaced horror and
+indignation in the heart of the girl. After all, he hadn't been unkind
+to her; but for him she would long since have gone to the wall; and ever
+since their clash on the day of the try-out, he had treated her with a
+studied respect which had pleased her, apprehensive though she had
+remained of a renewal of his advances.
+
+Suddenly, and quite without premeditation, she darted forward and
+plucked Quard by the sleeve just as he was on the point of staggering
+through the swinging doors of a corner saloon. If her impulse had been
+at all articulate, she would have said that this was, in such extremity,
+the least she could do--to try to save him from himself.
+
+"Charlie!" she cried. "No, Charlie--don't be a fool!"
+
+The man halted and, turning, reeled against the door-post. "Wasmasr?" he
+asked thickly. Then recognition stirred in his bemused brain. "Why, it's
+lil Joan Thursh'y...."
+
+"Come away," she insisted nervously. "Don't be a fool. Don't go in
+there. Go home."
+
+He moved his head waggishly. "Thash where 'm goin'--home--soon's I brace
+up a bit."
+
+"Come away!" Joan repeated sharply, dragging at his cuff. "Do you hear?
+Come away. A walk'll straighten you out better'n anything else."
+
+"Walk, eh?" Quard lifted his chin and lurched away from the door-post.
+"Y' wanna take walk with me? All right"--indulgently--"_I_'ll walk with
+you, lil one, 's far's y' like."
+
+"Come, then!" she persisted. "Hurry--it's late."
+
+He yielded peaceably, with a sodden chuckle; but as he turned the lights
+of the saloon illumined his face vividly for an instant, and provided
+Joan with a fresh and appalling problem. The man had forgotten to remove
+his make-up; his mouth and jaws were plastered with a coat of
+bluish-grey paint, to suggest a week's growth of beard when viewed
+across footlights; there were wide blue rings round his eyes, and
+splashes of some silvery mixture on his dark hair. His face was a
+burlesque mask, so extravagant that it could not well escape observation
+in any steady light. It was impossible for Joan to be seen publicly with
+him--in a street-car, for instance. But now that she had taken charge of
+him, she couldn't gain her own consent to abandon the man to the
+potentially fatal whims of his condition. For a moment aghast and
+hesitant, in another she recognized how unavoidable was the necessity of
+adopting the suggestion his stupefied wits had twisted out of her
+pleadings: she would have to walk with him a little way, at least until
+he could recover to some slight extent.
+
+Indeed, even had she desired to, she would probably have found it
+difficult to get rid of him just then; for in an attempt to steady
+himself, Quard grasped her arm just above the elbow; and this grip he
+maintained firmly without Joan's daring to resent it openly. She was to
+that extent afraid of his drunkenness, afraid of his uncertain temper.
+
+Submissively, then, she piloted him to the south side of the street,
+where with fewer lighted shop-windows there was consequently less
+publicity, and to Lexington Avenue, turning south and then west through
+the comparative obscurity of One-hundred-and-twenty-fourth Street.
+Neither spoke until they had traversed a considerable distance and
+turned south again on Lenox Avenue. The streets were quiet, peopled with
+few wayfarers; and these few hurried past them with brief, incurious
+glances if not with that blind indifference which is largely
+characteristic of the people of New York. Quard suffered himself to be
+led with a docility as grateful as it had been unexpected. It was
+apparent to the girl that he was making, subconsciously at least, a
+strong effort to control his erratic feet. He retained her arm, however,
+until they were near One-hundred-and-sixteenth Street: when, noticing
+the lights of a corner drug-store, the girl held back.
+
+A swift glance roundabout discovered nobody near.
+
+"Where's your handkerchief, Charlie?" she demanded.
+
+"Where's whash? Whashmasser?"
+
+"I say," she repeated impatiently, "where's your handkerchief? Get it
+out and scrub some of that paint off your face. Do you hear? You look
+like a fool."
+
+"'M a fool," Quard admitted gravely, fumbling through his pockets.
+
+"Well, I won't be seen with you looking like that. Hurry up!"
+
+Her peremptory accents roused him a little. He found his handkerchief
+and began laboriously and ineffectually to smear his face with it, with
+the sole result of spreading the colour instead of removing it. In this
+occupation, he released her arm. With a testy exclamation, Joan snatched
+the handkerchief from him and began to scour his cheeks and jaws,
+heedless whether he liked it or not. To this treatment he resigned
+himself without protest--with, in fact, almost ludicrous complaisance,
+lowering his head and thrusting it forward as if eager for the
+scrubbing.
+
+For all her willingness she could accomplish little without cold cream.
+When at length she gave it up, his jowls were only a few shades lighter.
+She shrugged with despair, and threw away the greasy handkerchief.
+
+"It's no use," she said. "It just _won't_ come off! You'll have to go as
+you are."
+
+"Whash that? Go where?"
+
+"Now listen, Charlie," she said imperatively: "see that drug-store on
+the corner? You go in there and ask the man to give you something to
+straighten you out."
+
+Quard nodded solemnly, fixed the lighted show-window with a steadfast
+glare, and repeated: "So'thin' to straighten m' out."
+
+"That's it. Go on, now. I'll wait here."
+
+He wagged a playful forefinger at her. "Min' y' do," he mumbled, and
+wandered off.
+
+"And--Charlie!--get him to let you wash your face," she called after the
+man.
+
+Waiting in the friendly shadow of a tree, she watched him anxiously
+through the window; saw him turn to the soda-fountain and make his wants
+known to the clerk, who with a nod of comprehension and a smile of
+contempt began at once to juggle bottles and a glass.
+
+Singularly enough, it never occurred to the girl to seize this chance to
+escape. She was now accepting the situation without question or
+resentment. Quard seemed to her little better than an overgrown,
+irresponsible child, requiring no less care. Somebody had to serve him
+instead of his aberrant wits. To leave him to himself would be sheer
+inhumanity.... But she reasoned about his case far less than she felt,
+and for the most part acted in obedience to simple instinct.
+
+She saw him drain a long draught of some whitish, foaming mixture, pay
+and reel out of the store. He had, of course, forgotten (if he had
+heard) her plea to remove the remainder of his make-up. She was angry
+with him on that account, as angry as she might have been with a
+heedless youngster. But she did not let this appear. She moved quickly
+to his side.
+
+"Come on," she said quietly, turning southward; "you've got to walk a
+lot more."
+
+He checked, mumbled inarticulately, staring at her with glazed eyes, but
+in the end yielded passively. In silence they continued to
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street, Joan watching him furtively but narrowly.
+The drug worked more slowly than she had hoped. Primarily, in fact, it
+seemed only to thicken the cloud that befogged his wits. But by the time
+they had gained the last-named street, she noticed that he was beginning
+to walk with some little more confidence.
+
+He now seemed quite ignorant of her company--strode on without a word
+or glance aside. They crossed to Central Park and, entering, began to
+thread a winding path up the wooded rises of its northwestern face.
+Momentarily, now, there was an increasing assurance apparent in the
+movements of the man. He trudged along steadily, but with evident
+effort, like one embarrassed by a heavy weariness. His breathing was
+quick and stertorous.
+
+The park seemed very quiet. Joan wondered at this, until she remembered
+that it must have been nearly midnight when they stopped at the
+drug-store. She had noticed idly that the clerk had interrupted
+preparations to close in order to wait on Quard.
+
+They met nobody afoot, not even a policeman; but here and there, upon
+benches protected by umbrageous foliage, figures were vaguely
+discernible; men and women, a pair to a bench, sitting very near to one
+another when not locked in bold embraces. Joan heard their voices,
+gentle, murmurous, fond. These sights and sounds, the intimations they
+distilled, would at a previous time have moved the girl either to
+derision or to envy; now she felt only a profoundly sympathetic
+compassion, new and strange to her, quite inexplicable.
+
+Near the top of the hill they found a bench set in the stark glare of an
+arc-light, and therefore unoccupied. Upon this Quard threw himself as if
+exhausted. He said nothing, seemed wholly oblivious of his companion.
+Immediately he was seated his chin dropped forward on his chest, his hat
+fell off, his arms and legs dangled inertly. He appeared to sink at once
+into impregnable slumber; yet Joan was somehow intuitively aware that he
+wasn't asleep.
+
+She herself was very weary, but she couldn't leave him now, at the mercy
+of any prowling vagabond of the park. Picking up his hat, she sat down
+beside him with it in her lap, glad of the chance to rest. She was at
+once and incongruously not sleepy and thoughtless. Convinced that Quard
+was coming to himself, she was no longer troubled by solicitude; her
+wits wandered in a vast vacuity, sensitive only to dull impressions. She
+felt the immense hush that brooded over the park, a hush that was
+rendered emphatic by the muffled but audible and fast drumming of the
+man's over-stimulated heart, straining its utmost to pump and cleanse
+away the toxic stuff in his blood; the infrequent rumble and grinding of
+a surface-car on Central Park West seemed a little noise in comparison.
+Now and again a long thin line of glimmering car-windows would wind
+snakily round the lofty curve of the Elevated structure at
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street. Beyond, the great bulk of the unfinished
+cathedral on Morningside Heights loomed black against a broken sky of
+clouds.
+
+At one time a policeman passed them, strolling lazily, helmet in hand
+while he mopped his brow. His stare was curious for the two silent and
+ill-assorted figures on the bench. Joan returned it with insolent and
+aggressive interest, as if to demand what business it was of his. He
+grinned indulgently, and passed on.
+
+She had lost track of time entirely when Quard stirred, sighed, lifted
+his head and sat up with a gesture of deep despondency. The movement
+roused her from a dull, lethargic, waking dream.
+
+"Feeling better, Charlie?" she asked with assumed lightness.
+
+He nodded and groaned, without looking at her.
+
+"Able to go home yet?"
+
+"In a minute," he said drearily.
+
+"Where do you live?" she persisted.
+
+He waved a hand indifferently westward. "Over there--Ninety-sixth
+Street."
+
+"Think you'll be able to walk it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right now." He groaned again, and leaned forward, elbow on
+knee, forehead in his hand. "I feel like hell," he muttered.
+
+"The best thing for you is to get to bed and get some sleep," said the
+girl, stirring restlessly.
+
+He snapped crossly: "Wait a minute, can't you?"
+
+She subsided.
+
+"I guess you know I've gummed this thing all up, don't you?" he asked at
+length.
+
+"Yes, I guess you have," she replied, listless.
+
+"And, of course"--bitterly--"it's all _my_ fault...."
+
+To this she answered nothing.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry," he pursued in a sullen voice. "I guess I can't say
+any more'n that."
+
+She sighed: "I guess it can't be helped."
+
+He leaned back again, explored a pocket, brought to light a roll of
+money, with shaking hands stripped off four bills. "Well, anyway,
+there's your bit."
+
+Taking the bills, she examined them carefully. "That's a whole week,"
+she said, surprised.
+
+"All right; it's coming to you."
+
+With neither thanks nor further protest, she put the money away in her
+pocket-book.
+
+"You've acted like a brick to me," he continued.
+
+"Don't let's talk about that now--"
+
+"I don't want you should think I don't appreciate it. If it hadn't been
+for you, I don't know when I'd've got home--chances are, not till
+tomorrow night, anyway. The old woman'd've been half crazy."
+
+Joan kept silence.
+
+"My mother," he amended, with a sidelong glance. "There's only the two
+of us."
+
+"Well," said the girl rising, "if that's so, you'd better get home to
+her; she won't be any too happy until she sees you--and not then."
+
+Reluctantly he got to his feet. "She thinks I'm a great actor," he
+observed bitterly; "and I'm nothing but a damn' drunken--"
+
+Joan interrupted roughly: "Ah, can that bunk: it'll keep till
+tomorrow--and maybe you'll mean it then."
+
+He subsided into silence, whether offended or penitent she neither knew
+nor cared. She gave him his hat, avoiding his look, and without further
+speech they found their way out to the gate at One-hundred-and-third
+Street. Here Joan paused to await an Eighth Avenue car.
+
+"You'd better walk all the way home, even if you don't feel like it,"
+she advised Quard brusquely. "It won't do you any harm, and that mop of
+yours is a sight."
+
+"All right," he assented. He moved tentatively a foot or so away,
+checked, turned back. "I suppose this is good-bye--?" he said, offering
+his hand.
+
+"I guess it is," she agreed without emotion. Barely touching his clammy
+and tremulous fingers, she hastily withdrew her own.
+
+A southbound car was swinging down to them, not a block distant. Quard
+eyed it with morose disfavour.
+
+"At that," he said suddenly, "maybe this wouldn't've happened if you
+hadn't been so stand-offish. I only wanted to be friends--"
+
+In her exasperation Joan gave an excellent imitation of Miss May Dean's
+favourite ejaculation. "My Gawd!" she said scornfully--"if you can't
+think of any better excuse for being a souse than to blame it on me....
+Good _night_!"
+
+The car pulled up for her. She climbed aboard--left him staring.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't,
+as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had
+no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this
+knowledge with a thrilling heart.
+
+Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone,
+as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She
+paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a
+typewriter.
+
+Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been
+anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He
+might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of
+him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the
+formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie
+Quard.
+
+But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure
+that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late,
+behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than
+ever before.
+
+It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so
+easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to
+let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of
+her memory.
+
+By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in
+her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness
+of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without
+approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she
+was very anxious to make him realize her again.
+
+But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as
+different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying
+that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The
+Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an
+engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed
+up and departed, all in an afternoon.
+
+So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The
+bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and
+lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of
+social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met
+there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained,
+kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once
+again removed from her reach.
+
+She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully
+through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant
+which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the
+dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls
+and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of
+inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women
+than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and
+predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women....
+
+Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes
+than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience.
+Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the
+broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would
+never go far without influence.
+
+The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe
+to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed,
+did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from
+dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had
+taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and
+a fresh shirtwaist--both recent purchases.
+
+In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the
+stoop.
+
+Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes
+were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the
+moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away,
+she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing
+consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran
+lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the
+words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative
+movement to rise was barely perceptible--a start, a sinking back. So
+that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression
+that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever _she_ might be) and
+lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed
+past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily
+closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then
+promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before
+she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.
+
+He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar
+unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring
+blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging
+manner.
+
+"Mr. Matthias--" Joan began with a slight, determined nod.
+
+"Oh--good evening," he stammered.
+
+Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in
+some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a
+cool smile.
+
+He shook his head slowly: "So sorry--I've got a shocking memory. It'll
+come back to me in a minute. Won't you--ah--come in?"
+
+Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday,"
+she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday--of course! Won't you sit down?"
+
+Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she
+accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue
+to the identity of Joan Thursday.
+
+"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said,
+choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious
+taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to
+go, and you let me stay here--"
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now.
+Joan Thursday--to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've
+often wondered what became of you."
+
+"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."
+
+"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before
+this, if that's the case."
+
+"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at
+ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him
+through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full
+justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."
+
+"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that
+could have happened--!"
+
+"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor
+me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of
+the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women
+friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."
+
+"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the
+same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted
+something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could
+be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously
+interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did
+you? At least, I seem to remember you--ah--weren't in very good form,
+financially, that night we met."
+
+"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the
+next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know
+where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs--the Deans,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You
+did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."
+
+"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any--the
+Deans didn't--at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a
+fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."
+
+"Why, that's splendid!" said Matthias, affecting an enthusiasm which he
+hardly felt. "And--you made good--eh?"
+
+"Well"--she laughed a little consciously--"I guess I did make good. But
+he didn't. He was a boozer, and they threw us out of the bill last
+Wednesday."
+
+"That's too bad," said Matthias sympathetically. "I see."
+
+And truly he did begin to see: she was out of a job and wanted
+assistance to another. It wasn't the first time--nor yet merely the
+hundredth--that he had been approached on a similar errand. People
+seemed to think that--simply because he wrote plays which, if produced
+at all, scored nothing more than indifferent successes at best!--he
+could wheedle managers into providing berths for every sorry incompetent
+who caught the footlight fever. It was very annoying. Not that he
+wouldn't be glad to place them all, given time and influence; but he
+had neither.
+
+Joan, watching him closely, saw his face darken, guessed cunningly the
+cause. And suddenly the buoyant assurance which had been hers up to this
+stage in their interview deserted her utterly. No longer enheartened by
+faith in the potency of her good looks and the appeal of her necessity,
+she became again the constrained and timid girl of unreasonable and
+inarticulate demands.
+
+After a brief silence, Matthias looked up with a smile.
+
+"I don't suppose you have anything else in sight?"
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"And you need a job pretty hard--eh?"
+
+"Oh, I do!" she cried. "I haven't hardly any money, and the Deans have
+gone away, and the agencies won't pay any attention to me--"
+
+"I understand," he interrupted. "Half a minute: I'll try to think of
+something."
+
+Unconsciously he began to pace the way his feet had worn from door to
+window.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.
+
+She started and instinctively lied: "Twenty...."
+
+His surprise was unconcealed: "Really?"
+
+She faltered unconvincing amendment: "Nearly."
+
+"No matter," he said briskly. "It comes to the same thing: you're under
+twenty. The stage is no place for girls of your age. Don't you think
+you'd better chuck it--go home?"
+
+Not trusting herself to speak, she shook her head, her eyes misty with
+disappointment.
+
+"Besides, you're too good looking...."
+
+Struck by her unresponsiveness, he paused to glance at her, and noted
+with consternation the glimmer of tears in her lashes.
+
+"Oh, I say! Don't cry--we'll find something for you, never fear!"
+
+"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I--I didn't mean to.... Only, I can't go home,
+and I must find something to do, and you'd been so kind to me, once, I
+thought--"
+
+"And I will!" he asserted heartily. "I'm only trying to advise you.... I
+don't want to preach about the immorality of the theatre. A sensible
+girl is as safe on the legitimate stage as she would be in a business
+office--safer! But theatrical work has other effects on one's moral
+fibre, just as disastrous, in a way. It's lazy work; barring rehearsals,
+you won't find yourself driven very hard--unless ambition drives you,
+and you've got uncommon ability and mean to get to the top. Otherwise,
+you won't have much to do, even if constantly engaged. You'll get
+average small parts; you may be on in one act out of three or four. But
+even if you appear in every act, you'll only be in the theatre three
+hours or so a day. The rest of it you'll waste, nine chances out of ten.
+You'll lie abed late, and once up it won't seem worth while starting
+anything before it's time to show up at the theatre. That's the real
+evil of stage life: to every hard-working actor it turns out a
+hundred--five hundred--too lazy even to act their best, of no real use
+either to themselves or to the world."
+
+He checked and laughed in a deprecatory manner. "I didn't mean to
+speechify like this, but I do know what I'm talking about."
+
+Joan had listened, admiring Matthias intensely, but thoroughly sceptical
+of his counsel, to the tenor of which she paid just sufficient heed to
+perceive that doubts admitted would condemn her cause.
+
+"I mean to succeed," she said in an earnest voice: "I mean to work hard,
+and I do believe I'll make good, if I ever get a chance."
+
+"Then that's settled!" assented Matthias promptly. "The thing to do now
+is to find out what you can do with a chance."
+
+He pawed the litter of papers on the table, and presently brought to
+light a typed manuscript in blue paper covers.
+
+"This," he said, rustling the leaves, "is the first act of a play we're
+going to put on early in September. It goes into rehearsal in a week or
+ten days. There's a small part in the first act--a stenographer in a law
+office--a slangy, self-sufficient girl--you might be able to play. As I
+say, it's small; but it's quite important. It's the fashion nowadays,
+you know, to write pieces with small casts and no parts that aren't
+vital to the action. If you should bungle, it would ruin the first act
+and might kill the play. But I'm willing to try you out at
+rehearsals--with the distinct understanding that if you don't fit
+precisely you'll be released and somebody else engaged who we're sure
+can play it."
+
+"That's all I ask," said the girl. "You--you're awful' kind--"
+
+"Nonsense: I'd rather have you than anyone else I can think of just now,
+because you're pretty, and pretty women help a play a lot; and the man
+who's putting this piece on would rather have you because he'll get you
+for less money than he'd have to pay an actress of experience. So, if
+you make good, all hands will be pleased."
+
+"Shall I begin to study now?" Joan asked, offering to take the
+manuscript.
+
+"Not necessary. Your part will be given you when the first rehearsal is
+called. I merely want to refresh my memory, to see how much you'll have
+to do."
+
+He ran hastily through the pages.
+
+"As I thought: you are on at the opening for about ten minutes, and near
+the end of the act for a two-minute scene. Twelve minutes' work a day
+for, say, twenty-five dollars a week: that isn't bad. You'll be out of
+the theatre by half-past nine every night.... You see the point I've
+been trying to make?"
+
+"Yes," Joan assented. "It seems very easy. I hope I can do it."
+
+"I'm sure you can," said Matthias. "But--how are you going to live
+between now and the opening?"
+
+Joan's eyes were blank.
+
+"Have you any money?" he insisted.
+
+"A very little," she faltered--"eighteen dollars--"
+
+"You won't get pay for rehearsals; and they'll last three weeks; after
+we open it will be another week before the ghost walks. That's--say--six
+weeks you've got to scrape through somehow. Eighteen dollars won't cover
+that. Perhaps you'd better go back to your old job until we start."
+
+"I was fired from the last, and it would take more than two weeks for me
+to find anything like it, I know."
+
+"And there you are!"
+
+Matthias tossed the manuscript back to the table, waved his hands
+eloquently and threw himself into a chair, regarding her with his
+whimsical, semi-apologetic smile.
+
+"I'm afraid," he added after a minute, "I've reached the end of my
+string. Further suggestions will have to come from you."
+
+"I don't know," said the girl doubtfully. "Maybe I can think of
+something--maybe something will turn up."
+
+"I hope so. Perhaps even I may invent something. If I do, I'll let you
+know, Miss Thursday."
+
+He arose, his manner an invitation to go, to which she couldn't be
+blind.
+
+She got up, moved slowly toward the door.
+
+"I hope I haven't bothered you much--put you out of your writing--"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted insincerely.
+
+"And you have been awful' good to me."
+
+"Please don't think of it that way."
+
+He was holding the door for her, but on the threshold she hesitated.
+
+"Unless," she ventured half-heartedly--"unless I could help you some way
+with your work."
+
+"Help me?" he exclaimed, at once amazed and amused.
+
+"I mean, copying--if you ever have any."
+
+"Type-writing?"
+
+She nodded, with a flush of hope. "When I was a kid--I mean, before I
+left school--I studied a while at a business college--nights, you know.
+They taught me type-writing by the touch system, but I couldn't seem to
+get the hang of shorthand, and so had to give it up and go to work in a
+store."
+
+"Now that _is_ a helpful thought!" he cried, turning back into the room.
+"Wait a minute. There may be something in this. Let me think."
+
+But his deliberation was very brief.
+
+"It can be done!" he announced in another moment. "I have got a lot of
+stuff to be copied. You see, about a month ago I...."
+
+He checked, his eyes clouding without cause apparent to the girl.
+
+"Well!" he went on with a nervous laugh--"I didn't feel much like work.
+Guess I must've done too much of it, for a while. Anyway, I found I had
+to quit, and went out of town for a while. Of course I couldn't stop
+work really--a man can't, if he likes his job--and so I took some
+manuscripts along and revised them in long-hand. Now they ought to be
+copied--I'd been thinking of sending them out to some public
+stenographer--but if you want the work, it's yours."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Never had any of her difficulties been adjusted in a manner more
+satisfactory to Joan. She rose at once from an abyss of discouragement
+to sunlit peaks of happiness. Installing a rented type-writing machine
+in the room adjoining her own (temporarily without a tenant and
+willingly loaned by Madame Duprat) she tapped away industriously from
+early morning till late at night, sedulously transcribing into clean
+type-script the mangled manuscripts given her by Matthias. By no means a
+rapid worker, after renewing acquaintance with the machine she made up
+for slowness by diligence and long hours. And the work interested her:
+she thought the plays magnificent; and a novel which Matthias gave her
+when his stock of old plays ran low she considered superb. It was his
+first and only book, and had not as yet been submitted to the mercies of
+a publisher. But to Joan it was something more than a book; it was a
+revelation, her primal introduction to the world of the intellect. From
+poring over its pages, she grew hungry for more, thrilled by the
+discovery that she could find interest and pleasure in reading.
+
+She began to borrow extensively from the circulation branch of the
+Public Library in Forty-second Street, and to read late into the night,
+defying the prejudices of Madame Duprat on the question of gas
+consumption....
+
+Refusing an offer of public stenographer rates, she had asked for ten
+dollars a week. This Matthias paid her, under protest that the work was
+worth more to him. The arrangement was, however, a fortunate one; for
+though at first Joan earned more than she received, after rehearsals of
+"The Jade God" had started she was seldom able to give more than two or
+three hours a day to the copying.
+
+These rehearsals furnished her with impressions vastly different from
+those garnered through her experience with "The Convict's Return."
+
+The company assembled for the first time on a mid-August morning, in the
+author's study. There were present eight men, aside from Matthias and
+the manager, his producing director and his press agent, and four women,
+including Joan. After brief introductions, the gathering disposed itself
+to attention, and Matthias, rocking nervously in his revolving
+desk-chair, read the play aloud. To most of those present the work was
+new and unfamiliar; they listened with intense interest, keenly alive to
+the possibilities of the various parts for which they had been cast.
+
+But Joan was not of these; she had typed all the parts and knew not only
+the story but her own slight though significant rôle (as she would have
+said) "backwards." Sitting in a shadowed corner, she devoted herself to
+studying those with whom her lines were to be cast.
+
+The leading lady was an actress who, after several attempts to star at
+the head of her own company, was reduced to playing second to the young
+and handsome matinée hero of several seasons ago, planning to return in
+triumph to the stage after an unsuccessful effort to retire from it into
+the contented estate of well-financed matrimony. Through their widely
+published photographs Joan was familiar with the features of both.
+
+She thought the star charming; good-humoured, good-looking,
+well-mannered, slight and graceful, he had all the assurance of a
+Charlie Quard and none of his vain swagger.
+
+But Joan decided on sight to detest the leading woman. She was a pale,
+ashen blonde, with a skin as colourless as snow, level dark brows,
+sharp blue eyes set close to the bridge of her pointed nose, and a
+thin-lipped, violent mouth. The first impression she conveyed was one of
+dangerous temper; the second, that she had been happy in her choice of
+photographers. Throughout the reading, she sat negligently on the arm of
+a chair, swinging a foot and staring out of the window with an air of
+immitigable disdain.
+
+Of the other women, one was a grey-haired, sweet-faced lady of perhaps
+fifty years, whose eyes softened winningly whenever they encountered
+Joan's, the other an unlovely creature of middle-age and long stage
+experience, who seemed to have no interest in life aside from her
+unfolding part. The remainder of the company, of a caste hall-marked by
+the theatre, offered nothing novel to Joan's eyes--aside from a fat,
+red-faced lump of a youth who was to act a thick-witted, sentimental
+office-boy, in love with the stenographer (Joan). This one she decided
+to tolerate on suspicion; he resembled a type which she had found
+difficult, apt to impertinence and annoying attentions.
+
+Rideout, the man financially responsible for the production, was an
+English actor of reputation and considerable ability. Carrying his
+stoutish body with an ease that almost suggested slenderness: with his
+plump, blowsy face, twinkling eyes and fat nose of a comedian: the
+insuppressible staginess of his gesture would have betrayed his calling
+anywhere. Now and again Joan surprised an anxious expression lurking
+beneath his humorous smile; she had inferred from some casual remark
+made by Matthias that Rideout was staking all he possessed on the
+success of this play.
+
+The producing manager, Wilbrow, was a short, lean-bodied American, with
+lantern jaws, large intent eyes, and a nervous frown. Joan was impressed
+with the aloof pleasantness of his manner: she was to know him better.
+
+The reading over, the company was dismissed with instructions to report
+at ten the next morning at an obscure dance-hall masquerading under the
+name of an opera house, situate in the immediate neighbourhood, between
+Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several lingered to affix signatures to
+contracts--Joan of their number; and when these were gone, there
+remained in conference the star, the leading woman, Matthias, Rideout,
+and Wilbrow.
+
+Going out to dinner that night, Joan passed Matthias bidding good-bye to
+the leading woman in the hallway. He seemed tired and wore a harassed
+look; and later, when the girl delivered the outcome of her day's
+copying, he had a manner new to her, of weary brusqueness.
+
+The first rehearsal proper was held in a stuffy and ill-ventilated room,
+so dark that it was necessary to use the electric lights even at high
+noon. The day was fortunately cool, otherwise the place had been
+insufferable. There was little attempt at acting; the company devoted
+itself, under Wilbrow's patient direction, to blocking in the action.
+They had no stage--simply that bare, four-square room. Half a dozen
+chairs and a few long benches were dragged about to indicate entrances
+and properties. Nobody pretended to know his part--not even Joan, who
+knew hers perfectly. The example of the others, who merely mumbled from
+the manuscripts in their hands, made the girl fear to betray
+amateurishness by discovering too great an initial familiarity with her
+lines. So she, too, carried her "'script," and read from it. When not
+thus engaged, she sat watching and noting down what was going on with
+eager attention.
+
+But she took away with her a depressing sense of having engaged in
+something formless and incoherent.
+
+But succeeding rehearsals--beginning with the second--corrected this
+misapprehension. That afternoon developed Wilbrow suddenly into a
+mild-mannered, semi-apologetic, and humorous tyrant. He discovered an
+individual comprehension of what was required for the right development
+of the play, and an invincible determination to get it. He never lost
+either temper or patience, neither swore nor lifted his voice; but
+having indicated his desire, wrought patiently with its subject,
+sometimes for as long as an hour, until he had succeeded in satisfying
+it. He worked coatless, with his long black hair straggling down over
+his forehead and across his glasses: an incredibly thin, energetic, and
+efficient figure, dominated by a penetrating and masterful intelligence.
+Not infrequently, taking the typed part from the hands of one of his
+puppets, he would himself give a vivid sketch of its requirements
+through the medium of intonation, gesture, and action. And to Joan,
+at least, the effects he created by these means were as striking
+in the feminine rôles as in the masculine. Utterly devoid of
+self-consciousness, he had the faculty of seeming for the moment
+actually to be what he sought to suggest: one forgot the man, saw only
+what he had in mind.
+
+Another thing that surprised the girl more than a little was the
+docility with which her associates submitted to his dictation and even
+invited it. She had heard of actors "creating" rôles; but in this
+company no one but the producer seemed to be creating anything. The
+others came to rehearsals with minds so open that they seemed vacuous;
+not one, whether the star, his leading woman, or any of their supporting
+players, indicated the least comprehension of what they were required to
+portray or the slightest symptom of original conception. What Wilbrow
+told them and then showed them how to do, they performed with varying
+degrees of success. So that Joan at last came to believe the best actors
+those most susceptible to domination, least capable of independent
+thought. As he gradually became acquainted with his lines and the
+business Wilbrow mapped out for him, the star began to give more
+compelling impersonations at each rehearsal; but to the girl he never
+seemed more than a carbon filament of a man, burning bright with
+incandescence only when impregnated with the fluid genius of a superior
+mentality. So, likewise, with the leading woman....
+
+As for herself, Joan was hardly happy in her endeavour to please. Having
+unwisely formed her own premature conception of her part, and lacking
+totally the technical ability to express it, she ran constantly afoul of
+Wilbrow's notions. She was called upon first to erase her own
+personality, next to forget the personality which she had meant to
+delineate, and finally to substitute for both these one which Wilbrow
+alone seemed able to see and understand. She strove patiently and
+without complaint, but in a stupefying welter of confusion. While on the
+pretended stage she was constantly terrified by Wilbrow's mild but
+predominant regard, which rendered her only awkward, witless, and
+ill-at-ease. Then, too, her attempts to imitate his brilliant and
+colourful acting were received with amusement, not always wholly silent,
+by the rest of the company. She seemed quite unable to follow his lead;
+and toward the end of the first week, throughout the whole of which (she
+was aware from the calm resignation of Wilbrow's attitude) she had
+improved not one whit, she began to despair.
+
+Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily
+excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this
+extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of
+earning her weekly stipend.
+
+On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed,
+there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow,
+Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a
+change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the
+release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now
+from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought
+and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the
+balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she
+was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals
+would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the
+stage of a Broadway theatre.
+
+She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair.
+Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout
+was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could
+purchase--and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably
+protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal
+now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in
+a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she
+earned as typist--and she had been engaged with the understanding,
+implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to
+occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of
+"The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.
+
+There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The
+admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself
+out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of
+propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And
+from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow
+upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached
+interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as
+a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His
+thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she
+could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very
+refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested
+him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of
+a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She
+worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content
+with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through
+his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would
+seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work
+and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress
+of recognized ability!...
+
+It was a truism in her conception of life that the estate of actress was
+a loadstone for the hearts of men.
+
+If success were to be denied her!...
+
+In her bedroom, behind a locked door, she hurried to her pillow and to
+tears. She had known many an hour darkened by the fugitive despairs of
+youth; but never until this day had she been so despondently sorry for
+herself.
+
+Later, the banal ticking of her tin alarm-clock penetrated her
+consciousness, and she remembered that she had work to do--to be
+finished before evening, if her promise to Matthias were to be kept. She
+rose, splashed face and eyes with cold water, and went to her typewriter
+in the adjoining room.
+
+She had really very little to do in order to complete her task--only a
+few pages of scored and interlined manuscript to reduce to clean copy;
+but her mind was not with her work. Time and again she found herself
+sitting with idle hands, thoughts far errant; and now and then she had
+to dry her eyes before she could proceed: so stubbornly did she cling to
+the sorry indulgence of self-pity! Once, even, she was so overcome by
+contemplation of her sufferings that she bowed her head upon the table
+where the manuscript lay, and wept without restraint for several
+minutes--without restraint and, toward the last, with kindling interest
+in the discovery that her tears were bedewing a freshly typed page.
+
+If Matthias were to notice, would he understand? And, understanding,
+what would he think?...
+
+With shame-faced reluctance she destroyed the blotched page and typed it
+anew.
+
+It was dark before she finished; and she was glad of this when she
+gathered up the manuscript to take to her employer. With no light in his
+room other than that of the reading-lamp with the green shade, her
+stained and flushed cheeks and swollen eyes would escape detection. It
+was not that she wouldn't have welcomed sympathetic interest, but a
+glance in the mirror showed her she had wept too unrestrainedly not to
+have depreciated the chiefest asset of her charm--her prettiness.
+
+However, she could not well avoid the meeting: the work must be
+delivered; but if she were lucky she would find him in one of his
+frequent moods of abstraction, and their interview need only be of the
+briefest. Nevertheless, she would have sent the work to him by the
+chambermaid if her week's wage had not been due that night.
+
+She waited a moment, listening at the door to the back-parlour; but
+there was no sound of voices within; and reassured, she knocked.
+
+His response--"Come in!"--followed with unexpected promptness. She
+obeyed, though with misgivings amply justified as soon as she found
+herself in the room, which was for once well-lighted, two gas-jets on
+the chandelier supplementing the green-shaded lamp.
+
+Matthias was bending over a kit-bag on the couch, hastily packing enough
+clothing to tide him over Sunday. He threw her an indifferent glance and
+greeting over his shoulder.
+
+"Hello, Miss Thursday! I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten
+me. I'm going to run down to Port Madison until Monday morning--last
+chance I'll have for a day in the country for some time, probably.
+Chances are, Wilbrow will keep us at work next Sunday. Got that 'script
+all ready?"
+
+Joan, depositing it on the table, murmured an affirmative in a voice
+uncontrollably unsteady. Before entering she had been quite sure of her
+ability to carry off the short interview without betraying her harrowed
+emotions. But to find the man about whom they centred packing to leave
+town--to leave her!--added the final touch of misery to her mood. And
+the inflection of her response could not have failed to strike oddly on
+his hearing.
+
+Uttering a wondering "_Hello!_" he straightened up and swung round to
+look at her. And a glance sufficed: his smile faded, was replaced by a
+pucker of sympathy between his brows.
+
+"Why, what's the trouble?"
+
+Joan averted her face. "N-nothing," she faltered. Her lip trembled, her
+eyes filled anew. She dabbed at them with a wadded handkerchief.
+
+Matthias hesitated. He drew down the corners of his mouth, elevated his
+brows, and scratched a temple slowly with a meditative forefinger. Then
+he nodded sharply and, crossing to the door, closed it.
+
+"Tell me about it," he said, coming back to the girl. "Things not going
+to suit you, eh?"
+
+She shook her head, looking away. "I--I--!" she stammered--"_I_ can't
+act!"
+
+"O nonsense!" he interrupted with kindly impatience. "You mustn't get
+discouraged so easily. Naturally it comes hard at first, but you'll
+catch on. Everything of this sort takes time. I was saying the same
+thing to Wilbrow today."
+
+"Yes," she mumbled, gulping--"I--I know. I was watching you. H-he and
+Mr. Rideout wanted to fire me, didn't they?"
+
+"What? Oh, no, no!" Matthias lied unconvincingly. "They--they were just
+wondering.... I assured them--"
+
+"But you hadn't any right to!" the girl broke in passionately. "I can't
+act and--and I know it, and you know it, as well as they do. I can't--I
+just can't! It's no use.... I'm no good...."
+
+Of a sudden she flopped into a chair, rested her head on arms folded on
+the table, and sobbed aloud.
+
+Matthias shook his head and (since she could not see him) permitted
+himself a gesture of impotent exasperation. This was really the devil of
+a note! Women were incomprehensible: you couldn't bank on 'em, ever.
+Here was he preparing to catch a train, and not too much time at
+that....
+
+But a glance at the clock reassured him slightly; he had still a little
+leeway. All the same, he didn't much relish the prospect of being
+compelled to invest his spare minutes in attempting to comfort a silly,
+emotional girl. And, besides, somebody in the hallway might hear her
+sobbing....
+
+This last consideration took him somewhat reluctantly to her side.
+"There, there!" he pleaded, intensely irritated by that feeling of
+helplessness which always afflicts man in the presence of a weeping
+woman, whether or not he has the right to comfort her. "There--don't
+cry, please, Miss--ah--Thursday. You're all right--really, you are.
+You--you're--ah--doing all this quite needlessly, I give you my word."
+
+He might as well have attempted to stem a mountain torrent.
+
+"I wish I could make you understand this is all quite unnecessary," he
+groaned.
+
+"I--I'm so mis'able!" came a wail from the huddled figure.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably--"awfully sorry, truly. But you--I'm
+not afraid you won't make good, and I don't intend to let you go until
+you've had every chance in the world. That's a promise."
+
+He ventured to give her quaking shoulder a light, encouraging pat or
+two, and rested his hand upon the corner of the table.
+
+"Come, now--brace up--please. I--"
+
+With a strangled sob Joan sat up, caught his hand and carried it to her
+lips. Before he could recover from his astonishment it was damp with her
+tears and kisses.
+
+Instantly he snatched it away.
+
+"You--you're so good to me!" she cried.
+
+Matthias, horrified, stepped back a pace or two, as if to insure himself
+against a repetition of her offence, and quite mechanically dried his
+hand with a handkerchief. And then, in a flash, he lost his temper.
+
+"What the devil do you mean by doing that to me?" he demanded harshly.
+"Look here--you stop this nonsense. I won't have it. I--why--it's
+outrageous! What right have you got to--to do anything like that?"
+
+The shock of his anger brought the girl to her senses. Her tears ceased
+in an instant, as if automatically. She rose, mopping her face with her
+handkerchief, swallowed one last sob, and moved sullenly toward the
+door.
+
+"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I--you've been very kind to me--I forgot
+myself. I'm sorry."
+
+"Well ..." he said grudgingly, in his irritation. "But don't let it
+happen again."
+
+"There's no chance of that," the girl retorted with a brief-lived flash
+of spirit. "Good night."
+
+"Good night," he returned.
+
+She was gone before he recovered; and then compunction smote him, and he
+followed her as far as the hallway.
+
+In the half-light of the flickering gas-jet, he saw her only as a shadow
+slowly mounting the staircase. And a glance toward the front door
+discovered indistinct shapes of lodgers on the stoop.
+
+"Miss Thursday!" he called in a guarded voice.
+
+She heard, hesitated a single instant, then with quickened steps resumed
+the ascent.
+
+He called once again, but she refused to listen, and he returned to his
+study in a state of insensate rage; which, however, had this time
+himself for its sole object--Joan's transgression quite lost sight of in
+remorse for his brutality. He could not remember ever having spoken to
+any woman in such wise: no man had any right to speak to any woman in
+such a manner, for any cause, however exasperating.
+
+Tremendously disgusted with himself, and ashamed, he tramped the floor
+so long, trying to quiet his conscience, and made so many futile
+attempts to apologize to the girl by word of hand--one and all either
+too abject or too constrained--that he had lost his train before he
+produced the lame and halting effort with which he was at length fain to
+be content.
+
+A later train was bearing him under the East River to Long Island when
+Joan read his message.
+
+A servant had taken it to the girl's room and, knocking without
+receiving an answer, concluded that Joan was out and slipped it under
+the door.
+
+When the descending footsteps were no longer audible, Joan rose from the
+bed, lighted the gas, and with blurred vision deciphered the lines:
+
+     "DEAR MISS THURSDAY:--Please forgive me for my unmannerly
+     exhibition of temper. I regret exceedingly my inability to make
+     you understand how sorry I am to have hurt your feelings.
+
+     "And do please understand that there is no grave
+     dissatisfaction with your work at rehearsals. Remember that you
+     have two weeks more in which to show what you can do.
+
+     "I shall hope that you are not too deeply offended to overlook
+     my loss of temper and to continue typing my book; if possible
+     I'd like to have another chapter by Monday night.
+
+     "Sincerely yours,
+
+     "JOHN MATTHIAS."
+
+     "P. S.--I enclose--what I'd completely forgotten--the regular
+     weekly amount--$10."
+
+She fell asleep, at length, with this note crushed between her pillow
+and her cheek.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Her work proved invaluable distraction for the greater part of that long
+and lonely Sunday. When not at her typewriter she was tormented by
+alternate fits of burning chagrin and of equally ardent gratitude toward
+Matthias. Had this last been in town and chanced to meet her, she must
+either have quitted him definitely or have betrayed her passion
+unmistakably even to the purblind eyes of a dreaming dramatist. As it
+was, the girl had time to calm down, to recognize at once his
+disinterestedness and her own folly. If her infatuation did but deepen
+in contemplation of his generosity, she none the less regained poise
+before bedtime and with it her determination to succeed in spite of her
+stupidity, if only to justify his kindness.
+
+But the morning that took her back to rehearsals found her in a mood of
+dire misgivings. She would have forfeited much--anything other than
+their further association--to have been spared the impending encounter
+with Matthias. And although the author was not present when she reached
+the theatre, her embarrassment hampered her to a degree that rendered
+her attempts to act more than ever farcical.
+
+Wilbrow, seated in a chair on the "apron" of the stage, his back to the
+lifeless footlights, did not interrupt her once; but despair was patent
+in his attitude, and despair informed his eyes, and not long after her
+scene was finished the producer for the first time betrayed indications
+of temper.
+
+"Blaine!" he said abruptly in a chilling voice to one of the minor
+actors--"don't you _know_ there's a window over there--up left centre?"
+
+The player thus addressed, who had been idling purposelessly near the
+centre of the stage, looked up with a face of blank surprise.
+
+"Sure," he said--"sure I know it."
+
+"That's something, at least!" Wilbrow commented acidly. "I'm glad you
+remember it. If I'm not mistaken, I've reminded you of that window twice
+every day since Monday."
+
+"Yes," agreed the other with a look of painful concentration; "I guess
+that's right, too."
+
+"And yet you can't remember what I've told you just as often--that I
+want you to be up there, looking out of the window, when _Sylvia_
+enters!"
+
+The actor turned out expostulatory palms. "But, Mr. Wilbrow, what for? I
+don't see--"
+
+"Because," the producer interrupted incisively, "the stage directions
+indicate it; because the significance of this scene requires you
+to be there, looking out, unaware of _Sylvia's_ entrance; because
+you look better there; because it dresses the stage; because you're
+in the way anywhere else; because I--God help me!--because
+_I--want--you--to--be--there_!"
+
+A smothered giggle broke from a group of players technically off-stage.
+Wilbrow glared icily toward that quarter.
+
+"Yes, I know," Blaine agreed intelligently. "But how do I _get_ there?"
+
+The front legs of Wilbrow's chair rapped the boards smartly as he jumped
+up. In silence, he grasped Blaine's arm and with a slightly exaggerated
+melodramatic stride propelled him to the indicated spot, released him,
+and stood back.
+
+"Walk!" he announced with an inimitable gesture of tolerant contempt;
+and went back to his chair. Not a line of his face had changed. He sat
+down, nodded to the leading woman.
+
+"All right, Mary," he said; and to another actor: "Now, the cue for
+_Sylvia_, please!"
+
+Joan shivered a little.
+
+Matthias did not come in until after the girl had finished her part in
+the afternoon rehearsal. She caught sight of him in the darkened
+auditorium just as she went off; and hurried from the house in tremulous
+dread.
+
+But a meeting was inevitable; and that evening, just before the dinner
+hour, found her reluctantly knuckling the door of the back-parlour. The
+voice of Matthias bade her enter, and she drew upon all her scant store
+of courage as she turned the knob. To her immense relief he was not
+alone. Rideout and Moran, the scene painter, were in consultation with
+Matthias over two small model stages set with painted pasteboard
+scenery.
+
+Matthias greeted her with a preoccupied smile and nod.
+
+"Oh, good evening, Miss Thursday. More 'script, eh? Thank you."
+
+Silently Joan gave him the manuscript and left the room. But the door
+had no sooner closed than it was re-opened and again closed. She turned
+to face this dreaded crisis.
+
+His smile was friendly and pleasant if a trace uncertain. He made as if
+to offer his hand, and thought better of it.
+
+"Oh, Miss Thursday.... I sent you a note...."
+
+She nodded, timid eyes avoiding his.
+
+"Am I forgiven?"
+
+"I--I--if you'll forgive me--" she faltered.
+
+"Then that's all right!" he cried heartily. "I'm glad," he added with
+unquestionable sincerity--"and sorry I was such a brute. I ought to have
+understood what a strain you'd been under. Shall we say no more about
+it?"
+
+She nodded again: "Please...."
+
+"Good!" He offered his hand frankly, subjected hers to a firm, cool
+pressure, and moved back to his study door. "Good night."
+
+She whispered her response, and ran upstairs to her room, almost beside
+herself with delight.
+
+It was all right!
+
+Best of all, the advances had come from him; he it was who had sued for
+pardon where the fault was hers--clear proof that he thought enough of
+her to wish to retain her friendship!
+
+With a glad and comforted heart she settled down to attack anew the
+vexatious problem of her rôle in "The Jade God."
+
+But for all her worry and good will, the next morning's rehearsal of her
+scenes passed off in the same terrible silence as had marked Monday's.
+And in the same afternoon the storm broke.
+
+After plodding through her first scene, Joan was about to go off when
+Wilbrow called her.
+
+"Miss Thursday," he said quietly, "one of three things has got to
+happen--_now_: either you'll follow my instructions, or you'll quit, or
+I will. I've told you what I want so many times that I'm tired repeating
+myself. Now we're going to go over that scene again and again, if it
+takes all afternoon to get what I'm after. _But_, before we start, I
+will ask you to bear one thing in mind: this isn't an ingénue part;
+there's no excuse for acting it like a petulant school-girl. Even pretty
+stenographers are business-like in real life--sometimes--and we're
+trying to secure some semblance of real life in this production. In
+other words, I want you to forget Billie Burke and try to act like a
+human being who's a little sore on her job and her employer, but not
+sore enough to chuck it just yet. Now, if you please--begin right at the
+beginning."
+
+For an instant Joan stood hesitant, on the verge of refusing. There
+seemed to be no satisfying this man: he either didn't or wouldn't
+understand; she tried desperately to please him--and her sole reward was
+to be held up to the derision of the entire company! It was
+intolerable! And of a sudden she hated Wilbrow with every atom of her
+being. But ... if she were to talk back or refuse to go on, Matthias
+would be forfeited from her life.
+
+She choked down her chagrin, resisted the temptation to wither Wilbrow
+with a glare, and sulkily resumed her place in the chair beside another
+chair that was politely presumed to be her typewriter desk.
+
+At once the fat boy whom she detested crossed the indefinite line
+dividing the scene from "off-stage," and leering insolently, spoke the
+opening line of the play. Seething with indignation, the girl looked up
+and in cutting accents shot her reply at him. She was pleased to
+surprise a look of dumb amazement in his eyes. At all events, she had
+succeeded in letting _him_ know just how she felt toward him! And this
+success inspired her to further efforts. She rattled through the
+remainder of the scene with the manner of a youthful termagant.
+
+When she had finished, Wilbrow said nothing beyond: "Again, please."
+
+The demand served only to deepen her resentment, and the second
+repetition differed not materially from the first.
+
+Ceasing to speak, she flounced away, but Wilbrow's voice brought her
+back.
+
+"Very good, Miss Thursday," he said mildly--"very good indeed. But
+why--in the name of Mike!--if you _could_ do it--why wouldn't you until
+now?"
+
+"Because," Joan stammered--"because--!"
+
+But she didn't dare say what she wished to, and checked her tongue in a
+fit of sulks more eloquent than any words she could have found.
+
+Wilbrow waited an instant, then laughed quite cheerfully.
+
+"The usual reason, eh? I might have guessed you had a sure-'nough one
+concealed about you.... That's all for today. Tomorrow morning at nine."
+
+Privately pondering this experience, Joan surprised its secret, and
+drew from it a conclusion that was to have an important influence upon
+her professional future: in order to act convincingly, she must herself
+feel the emotions accredited to her part. As applied to her individual
+temperament, at that stage of its development, this rule had all the
+inflexibility of an axiom. Others might--as others do--act in obedience
+to the admonitions of their intelligence: Joan could at that stage act
+only according to the promptings of her emotional self.
+
+So she encouraged herself to hate Wilbrow with all her heart, to despise
+him without ceasing night or day; no charitable thought of the manager
+was suffered to gain access to her humour at any hour. And so admirably
+did she succeed in impregnating her mind with virulent dislike of the
+man, that she afforded him no end of amusement. She made a point of
+coming to the rehearsals early enough to infuriate herself with
+contemplation of him in the flesh; and of walking up and down, before
+and between her scenes, thinking evil of him. The twinkle with which his
+eyes followed her, in place of their erstwhile calm indifference or
+resignation, worked only to intensify her rancour. Curiously enough, a
+clear comprehension of the illogical absurdity of it all made her temper
+even more bitter.
+
+One day just before the final rehearsals, Wilbrow, meeting her at the
+stage-door, planted his slender body squarely in her way.
+
+"Good morning!" he said cheerfully, with a semi-malicious smile. "My
+congratulations, Miss Thursday! You're doing nobly."
+
+"Thanks," Joan said curtly, pausing perforce.
+
+"You ought to be very grateful to me. Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder what you'd do under the direction of a man you happened to
+like?"
+
+"I don't know." Joan gave him a sullen look. "Will you please let me
+pass."
+
+"Delighted." He moved aside with mocking courtesy. "I ask only one thing
+of you: don't fall in love with me before our first night. I haven't got
+time to sour another sweet young thing's amiable disposition.... Keep on
+hating me as hard as you like--and we'll make at least a half-portion
+actress of you yet...."
+
+Toward the end of the second week, Joan began to notice that Rideout was
+growing less assiduous in attendance. At first inclined to lay this to
+his satisfaction with the progress--to her the production seemed to be
+taking on form and colour in a way to wonder at--she later overheard a
+chance remark of one of her associates, to the effect that Rideout was
+himself rehearsing with another company.
+
+"Well," someone commented, "if it was my coin back of this show, I'd
+stick by it if I had to play the office-boy."
+
+"I guess," was the reply, "Rideout ain't got any too much outside what
+he's sunk in this production. Shouldn't wonder if he needs what he's to
+get with Minnie Aspen."
+
+"Mebbe. He's a good trouper. What does he drag down, anyway?"
+
+"Four hundred a week."
+
+"Nix with those Lambs' Club figures. I mean regular money."
+
+"Oh, two hundred and fifty, sure."
+
+"Now you've said something...."
+
+During the third week it was announced that "The Jade God" would open in
+Altoona on the following Monday. And at the same time Joan discovered
+that she was expected to provide her own costume, a simple affair but
+unhappily beyond the resources of either her wardrobe or her
+pocket-book. In despair she took the advice of Mrs. Arnold (the
+sweet-faced lady of fifty, whom Joan counted her only friend on the
+company) and approached Rideout's personal representative, Druggett,
+with a demand for an advance. With considerable reluctance Druggett
+surrendered fifteen dollars, and promised her as much more on Monday,
+toward expenses on the road. And again on the advice and introduction of
+Mrs. Arnold, the girl succeeded in satisfying her needs at an
+instalment-plan clothing-house: paying eight dollars down on a bill of
+about forty and agreeing to remit the balance at the rate of four
+dollars each week.
+
+The final dress-rehearsal was called for Saturday morning. They were to
+leave New York Sunday night. But on Friday afternoon a sense of
+uneasiness and uncertainty invaded the temper of the organization.
+Wilbrow neglected the players to engage in protracted conferences with
+Matthias, Rideout, Moran, and Druggett, out of earshot, at the back of
+the auditorium. One or two weather-wise "troupers" hazarded gloomy
+surmises as to the nature of the "snag": that most favoured involved a
+"shake-up with the Shuberts" over some change in their route. With a
+singular unanimity the prophets of disaster either avoided or overlooked
+the actual cause of the trouble.
+
+At ten o'clock the next morning--a little late--Joan, with her costume
+in the dilapidated wicker suit-case, hurried into the theatre to find
+the company scattered about the stage in poses variously suggestive of
+restless dejection. Neither the star nor the leading woman was present,
+and there was no scenery in sight, other than that belonging to the
+production which occupied the same stage nightly. Rideout was nowhere to
+be seen, but the author, the producer, and Druggett were engaged in
+earnest but inaudible argument "out front." From their manner Joan
+inferred that Druggett was advocating some course actively opposed by
+Wilbrow and passively by Matthias. The group broke up before she found
+opportunity to question her associates. Druggett, in manifest dudgeon,
+turned sharply and marched out of the house, while Wilbrow strode
+purposefully back to the stage by way of the passage behind the boxes,
+Matthias following with an air of profound disgust and despondency.
+
+From the centre of the stage the producer addressed the little
+gathering.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said sharply; and waited until he had all
+their attention. "There'll be no rehearsal today, and--and unless
+something quite unexpected happens, we won't open Monday. The truth is,
+there isn't money enough behind this show to finance it beyond Altoona.
+Moran can't collect on his scenery, and won't deliver. Mr. Matthias has
+offered to fix Moran up if we agree to go out, but I can't see it that
+way. Mr. Rideout's proposition is that we go on the road and run our
+chances of making expenses--but I don't have to tell you people what a
+swell show we'd have of breaking even on a tank route at this season of
+the year--hot weather still with us, and all that. We _might_--but
+that's about all you can say. And I don't think any of us want to count
+ties from Altoona....
+
+"Mr. Druggett thinks that Mr. Rideout will be able to make a deal with
+the Shuberts, but I doubt it. Just now they're all tied up with their
+own productions and have no time to waste on a gambling risk like this.
+Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll all be notified. But I wouldn't, if I
+were you, pass up another engagement on the off-chance of this thing
+panning out after all.
+
+"I'm sorry about this--we're all sorry, naturally. We all lose. Mr.
+Matthias here loses as much as any of us--the rights in a valuable
+property for several months, at the inside. I'm out fifteen hundred
+dollars I was to get for putting the show on. And Rideout's out the two
+thousand real coin he's invested in expectation of backing which failed
+to materialize. Personally I refused to shoulder the responsibility of
+letting you go out in ignorance of the real state of affairs. That's
+all."
+
+He hesitated an instant, as if not satisfied that he had dealt fully
+with the situation, and glanced a little ruefully from face to face of
+the company. But for the moment none made any comment. And with an
+uncertain nod to the author, Wilbrow turned and disappeared through the
+stage-door.
+
+Matthias waited a trifle longer, as though anticipating trouble with the
+disappointed players; but there was no feeling manifest in their
+attitude toward him other than sympathy for a fellow-sufferer. And
+presently he consulted his watch and followed the stage-director.
+
+Those left in the theatre discussed the contretemps in subdued and
+regretful accents, betraying surprisingly little rancour toward anyone
+connected with it. Even Rideout escaped with slight censure. He was, in
+the final analysis, one of them--an incurable optimist who had erred
+only in banking too heavily on hope and promises.
+
+By twos and threes they gathered up their belongings and straggled off
+upon their various ways, a sorry, philosophic crew. Within ten minutes
+their dissociation was final and absolute.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Late in the evening, Matthias gave it up, and shaking off Rideout (whose
+only hope had resided in the author's anxiety to save his play) betook
+himself to an out-of-the-way restaurant to idle with a tasteless meal.
+
+He was at once dog-weary and heart-sick.
+
+The net outcome of some ten hours of runnings to and from, of meetings
+and schemings, of conferences by telephone and of communications by
+telegraph with those who had promised financial support to Rideout's
+project, was an empty assurance, indifferently given by the Shuberts, to
+the effect that, if nothing happened to make them think otherwise, they
+might possibly be prepared to consider the advisability of producing
+"The Jade God" about the first of January.
+
+The truth of the situation was that neither the Shuberts nor any other
+managerial concern was likely (as Wilbrow put it) "to look cross-eyed at
+the piece" until they could get full control of it; which would be in
+some three months, when Rideout's contract to produce would expire by
+limitation. And since Rideout might be counted upon to hold on to his
+contract rights till the last minute and leave nothing else undone in
+the effort to recoup his already substantial losses, it was useless to
+consider the play as anything but a property of potential value
+relegated indefinitely to abeyance.
+
+Matthias believed in the play with all his heart. During the last three
+weeks he had watched it come to life and assume the form he had dreamed
+for it, coloured with the rich hues of his imagination and quick with
+the breath of living drama. And because he possessed in some measure
+that rare faculty of being able to weigh justly the work of his own
+hand, and had looked upon this and seen that it was good, he had counted
+on it to win him that recognition which, more than money, his pride
+craved--partly by way of some compensation for what it had suffered at
+the hands of Venetia Tankerville.
+
+He was still sore with the hurt of that experience. Privately he doubted
+whether he would ever wholly recover from it; but the doubt was a very
+private one, never discovered even to his most sympathetic friends, not
+even to Helena, whose scorn of her sister-in-law remained immeasurable.
+Fortunate in having been able to afford those several weeks in the
+wooded hills of Maine, in their fragrant and passionless silences
+Matthias had found peace and regained confidence in his old, well-tried,
+wholesome code of philosophy; which held that though here and there a
+man ill-used by chance or woman might be found, the world was none the
+less sound and kind at heart, and good to live in.
+
+For all that, he could not easily endure the thought of Venetia's
+lowering herself to use him to further her love affair with Marbridge;
+of Venetia going from his arms and lips to the lips and arms of that
+insolent animal, Marbridge: the one amused by her successful cunning,
+the other contemptuous in his conquest. And he often wondered with what
+justice he judged the woman. It comforted him a little, at times, to
+believe that she had not acted so cruelly altogether as a free agent, to
+think her meeting with Marbridge in New York a freak of chance and fate,
+her elopement an unpremeditated and spontaneous surrender to the
+indisputable magnetism of the man. Marbridge commanded the reluctant
+admiration of men who did not like him--who knew him too well to like
+him. How much more easily, then, might he not have overcome the scruples
+of a girl untutored in the knowledge of her own heart....
+
+Or had it all been due merely to the fact that John Matthias was not a
+man to hold the love of women? Such men exist, antipathetic to the
+Marbridges of the world. Was he of their unhappy order, incapable of
+inspiring enduring love?
+
+He could review a modest cycle of flirtations with women variously
+charming and willing to be amused, light-hearted attachments and
+short-lived, one and all, those that might have proved more lasting
+broken off without ill-will on either side--though always by the woman.
+Venetia alone had named Love to him as if it stood to her for something
+higher and more significant than the diversion of an empty hour--Venetia
+who was now in Italy, the bride of Marbridge!
+
+And yet, oddly enough, it wasn't his memories of Venetia and his regrets
+and wounded self-esteem that rendered insipid his belated dinner and
+made him presently abandon it in favour of the distracting throngs of
+Broadway. They were thoughts of another woman altogether that urged him
+forth and homeward--a poignant sympathy for Joan Thursday, the
+friendless and forlorn, whose high anticipations had with his own that
+day gone crashing to disaster. He couldn't remember what had made him
+think of her, but now that he did, it was with disturbing interest.
+
+He found himself suddenly very sorry for the girl--much more sorry for
+her than for himself. What to him was at worst a staggering reverse, to
+her must seem calamitous beyond repair.
+
+It wasn't hard to conjure up a picture of the child, pitifully huddled
+upon her bed, in tears, heart-broken, desolate, perhaps (since he had
+not been home to pay her) supperless and hungry!
+
+Matthias quickened his stride. His suddenly awakened and deep solicitude
+tormented him. He had received evidence that Joan's was a nature
+tempestuous and prone to extremes: he didn't like to contemplate the
+lengths to which despair might drive her.
+
+Through the texture of this new-found care ran a thread of irritation
+that it should have proved a care to him. He realized that he must of
+late have been giving a deal of thought to the girl. Formerly he had
+been aware of her much as he was of Madame Duprat; such kindness as he
+had shown her had been no greater than, and of much the same order as,
+he would have shown a stray puppy. Tonight he found himself unable to
+contemplate her as other than a vital figure in his life--a creature of
+fire and blood, of spirit and flesh, at once enigmatic and absolute,
+owning claims upon his consideration no less actual because passive. He
+who had pledged his ability and willingness to find her a foothold on
+the stage, was responsible for her present distress and disappointment.
+And if his good offices had been sought rather than voluntary, still was
+he responsible; for she wouldn't have dreamed of seeking them if he
+hadn't in the first place insisted on putting her under obligation to
+him. He had in a measure bidden her to look to him; now it was his part
+to look out for her.
+
+Hardly a pleasant predicament: Matthias resented it bitterly, with
+impatience conceding the weight of that doctrine which teaches the fatal
+responsibility of man for his hand's each and every idle turn. He had
+paused to pity a stray child of the town; and because of that, he now
+found himself saddled with her welfare. A situation exasperating to a
+degree! And, he argued, it was merely this subconscious sense of duty
+which had of late held the girl so prominently in his mind--ever since,
+in fact, that night when she had broken down and impulsively kissed his
+hand. Just that one hot-headed, frantic, foolish act had primarily
+brought home to Matthias his obligations as the object of her unsought,
+unwelcome gratitude....
+
+He found Joan waiting on the stoop: a silent and vigilant figure, aloof
+from the other lodgers--a woman and two or three men lounging on the
+steps. And as these moved aside to give Matthias way, Joan rose and
+slipped quietly indoors, where in the hall she turned back with a
+gesture that too clearly betrayed the strain and tensity of her
+emotions; but, to his gratification, she was dry of eye and outwardly
+composed.
+
+"You were waiting for me?" he asked; and taking assent for granted
+rattled on with a show of cheerful contrition: "Sorry I'm late. There
+were ten dozen stones we had to turn, you know."
+
+Her eyes questioned.
+
+He smiled, apologetic: "No use; Rideout simply can't swing it."
+
+"I've finished type-writing that book," she announced obliquely.
+
+"Have you? That's splendid! Will you bring it to me? And then we can
+have a little talk."
+
+She nodded--"I'll go fetch it right away"--and scurried hastily up the
+stairs as he went on to his room.
+
+Leaving the door ajar and lighting his reading-lamp, Matthias closed the
+shutters at the long windows, adjusting their slats for ventilation.
+Then for some minutes he was left to himself. Resting against the edge
+of his work-table, he studied ruefully a cigarette which he was too
+indifferent or too distracted to continue smoking. Smouldering between
+his fingers, its slender stalk of pearly vapour ascended with hardly a
+waver in the still air, to mushroom widely above his head. It held his
+eyes and his thoughts in dreaming.
+
+He was thinking, simply and unconsciously, of the Joan he had just
+realized in the half-light of the hallway: a straight, slim creature
+with eyes like troubled stars, her round little chin held high as if in
+mute defiance of outrageous circumstance; vividly alive; giving a
+strange impression, as of some half-wild thing, at once timid and
+spirited, odd and--beautiful.
+
+To the sound of a light tap on the open door, the girl herself entered,
+a mute incarnation of that disturbing memory. She put down the
+manuscript before acknowledging his silent and intent regard. But
+becoming aware of this, her eyes wavered and fell, then again steadied
+to his. He was vastly concerned with the surprising length of her dark
+silken lashes and the delicate shadows on her warm, rich flesh. And he
+was sensitive to the virginal sweetness and fluent grace of her round
+and slender body. Vaguely he divined that the calm courage of her
+bearing was merely a naïve mask for a nature racked by intense
+feeling....
+
+"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the manuscript. "I
+finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any
+evidence of consciousness.
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found
+money, and paid her for the week.
+
+"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want
+any more type-writing done for a while?"
+
+"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over.
+Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door:
+people all the time passing through the hall...."
+
+She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with
+his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having
+closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her
+circumstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its
+customary efficiency of grasp.
+
+He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable
+embarrassment.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the manuscript she had just
+delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long
+fingers--"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I--"
+
+She interrupted him sharply: "O no, you're not!"
+
+He looked up quickly, amazed and disconcerted by the hint of anger in
+her tone. A little tremor ran through her body and she lifted her chin a
+trace higher while she met his stare with eyes hot and shining. Red
+spots like signals blazed in her either cheek.
+
+Confused, he stammered: "I beg your pardon--!"
+
+"I say you're not sorry. You're glad. You're glad, just like anybody
+else might be. _I_ don't blame you."
+
+She shot these words at him like bullets, with a disturbing display of
+passionate resentment. He opened his lips to speak, and thinking better
+of it, or else not thinking at all in his astonishment, gaped witlessly,
+wholly incapable of conceiving what had got into the girl.
+
+With a flush of scornful satisfaction her eyes remarked these evidences,
+so easily to be misinterpreted; then quickly she lowered her head and
+turned away, leaning against the table, her back to the light and face
+in shadow.
+
+"_I_ don't blame you," she repeated in a sullen murmur.
+
+He demanded blankly: "My dear girl, what _do_ you mean?"
+
+"I mean.... Why, just that you're glad to get rid of me!" she returned,
+looking away. He noticed the nervous strength with which her hands
+closed over the edge of the table, the whitening of their small
+knuckles.... "It's perfectly natural, I guess. I've been a nuisance so
+long, you've got every right to be tired of having me hang around--"
+
+"But, my dear young woman--!"
+
+She interrupted impatiently: "Oh, don't call me that. It don't mean
+anything. I guess I know when I'm not wanted. I'll go now and never
+bother you any more."
+
+Moving a pace or two away, she resumed before Matthias could muster
+faculties to cope with this emergency:
+
+"All the same, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate
+how good you've been to me--and patient, and all that. I am
+grateful--honest'--but I'm not as dumb as you think: I know when I'm in
+the way, all right!"
+
+"But you entirely misunderstand me--"
+
+"O no, I don't! You've made yourself plain enough, if you didn't think I
+had sense enough to see. It don't take _brains_ to see through a man
+who's only trying to be polite and kind--all the time bored--"
+
+"But, Miss Thursday--"
+
+She turned toward the door.
+
+He made a gesture of open exasperation. This was all so unfair! He had
+only meant to be kind and considerate and--and everything like that! And
+now she had drawn against him one of those unique and damnable
+indictments which seem to be peculiarly the product of a certain type of
+feminine mentality, and against which man is constitutionally incapable
+of setting up any effective defence, reason and logic alike being
+arbitrarily ruled out of court by the essential injustice of the charge.
+She chose to accuse him of having adopted toward her a mental attitude
+of which he was wholly guiltless; and there was no way by which he might
+persuade her of his innocence!
+
+And it was so confoundedly clear that she considered herself,
+temporarily at least, abused and altogether justified of her complaint!
+
+"Please," he begged, "don't go yet. Give _me_ a chance!"
+
+Her hand was on the knob. She hesitated, with an air of expectant and
+generous concession.
+
+"You're really quite unfair," he began; but paused to regain control of
+himself and to wonder a little, blindly, why it was that he tolerated
+her impudence--for it couldn't be called anything less. It would be much
+more sensible and quite just to bow to her construction of their
+indefinite relations and let her go her ways without more argument.
+
+In spite of everything, he could not refrain from one last attempt to
+set himself right.
+
+"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you
+insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've
+really wanted to help you--"
+
+"Why?"
+
+The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly
+know...."
+
+"Didn't you know better?"
+
+"I don't understand you--"
+
+Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded
+from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted
+quietly, "that a man like you can't be just _kind_ to a girl like me
+without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the
+show had gone out--and everything--but now, with that hope gone--and
+nothing more to do for you--with no prospects but to lose you--the only
+friend I've got in the world--!"
+
+Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to
+stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling
+violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and
+bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's,
+saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"
+
+"Oh, can't you see!"
+
+With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a
+face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been
+numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp
+upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.
+
+In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms.
+She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite
+wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a
+breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with
+all her strength, in an ecstasy of impassioned tenderness.
+
+Bending his head, Matthias found her lips.
+
+"My dear, dear girl!" he murmured.
+
+"Oh," she breathed, "I have loved you always--always!"
+
+"If I had only known, if I had only guessed--!"
+
+"How could you? _I_ didn't know ... not till a little while ago....
+And even then, I couldn't have told you ... only the thought of losing
+you ... my dear, my dear!"
+
+"I never guessed...."
+
+"You're not sorry? You're not angry with me--?"
+
+"Angry? I adore you!"
+
+"You will love me always?"
+
+"Always and forever."
+
+"And never send me away from you?"
+
+"You shall never leave me but of your own will."
+
+"I think I was going mad with the thought of losing you!"
+
+"My beloved girl!..."
+
+The dusky stillness of the room was murmurous with whispers, sighs,
+terms of endearment half smothered and all but inaudible.
+
+To these a foreign and alarming sound: a rapping at the door.
+
+Matthias lifted his head, wincing from the interruption. The girl in his
+arms moved feebly, as if to disengage. He held her for a moment still
+more close. Her heart sounded sonorously against his bosom. "Hush!" he
+said in a low and warning voice. And then the rapping was repeated. At
+once he released her. She moved away, blushing and dishevelled, the
+fragrant freshness of her starched linen waist a crumpled disorder, her
+hair in disarray; her crimson face one of many evidences of the tumult
+of her senses.
+
+In the hallway a man's voice said: "He must be in. There's a light--"
+
+A woman answered impatiently: "Of course he's in; but the chances are
+he's asleep." She called in a louder tone: "Jack--Jack Matthias!"
+
+Recognizing the voice of his aunt, that person groaned aloud--"O
+Lord!"--stole a glance at Joan, hesitated, shrugged, as if to say:
+There's no help for it! Then he answered the door.
+
+Helena swept in with a swirl of impatient skirts. "Good heavens!" she
+cried. "What ails you, Jackie? We knocked half a dozen times. Were
+you--?"
+
+Her glance encountering Joan, the words dried on her lips.
+
+Tankerville, at her heels, jerked a motor gauntlet from his fat hand in
+order to grasp that of Matthias. "Surprised you--eh?" he
+chuckled--"getting in so late. Well, it's all accidental. We were bound
+home--been visiting the Hastings for a week, you know--but the car broke
+down just this side of Poughkeepsie and delayed us and...."
+
+He became distressfully aware of his wife's silence, simultaneously
+ascertained the cause of it, and cut his speech short in full stride.
+
+Matthias laughed a little, quietly: no good trying to carry off this
+situation; by many a clue aside from Joan's confusion, they were
+betrayed.
+
+"You've caught us," he said cheerfully. "We may as well own up. Helena,
+this is Joan--Miss Thursday--my fiancée. And Joan, this is my aunt, Mrs.
+Tankerville--and her husband."
+
+And immediately he was conscious of the necessity of bridging the pause
+that would inevitably hold these three confounded, pending adjustment to
+his amazing announcement.
+
+"We had intended to keep it quiet for a while," he pursued evenly,
+shutting the door.... "Helena, let me help you with that cloak.... But
+since you've declared yourselves in, we can only ask you to hold your
+peace until we're ready. I'm sure we can count on you both."
+
+Tankerville puffed an explosive: "Oh--certainly!"
+
+Helena glanced shrewdly from Joan to Matthias. He smiled his confidence
+in her, knowing that he might count upon her doing the right thing to
+put the girl at ease--just shoulders of the girl as positively as he
+might count upon her violent opposition to the match as soon as she
+discovered that he had engaged himself to her pet abomination, a woman
+of the stage.
+
+With a bright nod to him, she turned back to Joan; drew slowly near to
+her; dropped kindly hands upon the shoulders of the girl.
+
+"But, my dear!" she exclaimed in a tone of expostulation--"you are
+beautiful!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Escorting his aunt to the car, Matthias helped her in, closed the door,
+and then, with a grin of amused resignation masking that trepidation to
+which he was actually a prey, folded his arms on the top of the door and
+invited the storm with one word of whimsical accent: "Well?"
+
+"Is it true?" she demanded, as if downright incredulous.
+
+"Most true," he insisted with convincing simplicity.
+
+The tip of one gloved finger to her chin, Helena considered remotely.
+
+"She's very beautiful," she conceded, "and sweet and fetching and
+hopelessly plebeian. She'd be wonderful to have around, to look at; but
+to listen to.... Oh my dear! what _are_ you thinking of?"
+
+"Cut it," Tankerville advised from his corner. "None of your funeral,
+old lady."
+
+"That consideration never yet hindered a Matthias," his wife
+retorted--"or a Tankerville, either, as far as I've been gifted to
+observe. However"--she turned again to her nephew--"you are presumably
+in love, and I hope you'll be happy, if ever you marry her. I shan't
+interfere--don't be afraid--but ... I could murder Venetia for this!"
+
+"Good night," said Matthias, offering his hand.
+
+But instead of taking it, his aunt leaned forward, caught his cheeks
+between both hands, and kissed him publicly.
+
+"Good night," she murmured in a tragical voice. "And Heaven help you!...
+When is it going to be?"
+
+"We haven't settled that yet," he laughed; "but you may be sure I shan't
+marry until I'm able to support my wife in a manner to which she's
+unaccustomed."
+
+He returned to Joan with--until he recrossed the threshold of his
+study--a thought ironic concerning the inconsistency of Helena's
+veneration of caste with her union to fat, good-natured, pretentiously
+commonplace George Tankerville. For that matter, the Matthias dynasty
+itself was descended from a needy, out-at-elbows English adventurer who
+had one day founded the family fortunes by taking title to Manhattan
+real estate in settlement of a gambling debt and on the next had died in
+a duel--the only act of thoughtful provision against improvidence
+registered in his biography. So Matthias wasn't much disposed to
+reverence his pedigree: social position, at least as a claim upon his
+consideration, meant little to him: the only class distinctions he was
+inclined to acknowledge were those created by the intellect and of the
+heart. In his private world people were either intelligent or stupid,
+either kindly or (stupidly) egoistic. To the first order, with humility
+of soul he aspired; for the other he was, without condescension,
+heartily sorry....
+
+But there was nothing half so analytical as this in his temper when he
+rejoined Joan: only wonder and rejoicing and delight in her.
+
+He found her near the door, tense and hesitant, as though poised on the
+point of imminent flight. There was in her wide eyes a look almost of
+consternation; they seemed to glow, shot with the fire of her lambent
+thoughts. A doubting thumb and forefinger clipped her chin; a thin line
+of exquisite whiteness shone between her scarlet lips.
+
+Closing the door, he opened his arms. She came to them swiftly and
+confidently. Doubts and fears vanished in the joy of his embrace; she
+was no longer lonely in a world unfriendly.
+
+From the eloquent deeps of their submerged and blended senses, words now
+and again floated up like bubbles to the surface of consciousness:
+
+"You still love me?"
+
+"I love you."
+
+"It wasn't pity--impulse--Jack--?"
+
+"It was--love. It is love. It shall be love, dear heart, forever and
+always...."
+
+"You _told_ her--your aunt--we were engaged!"
+
+"Aren't we?"
+
+A convulsive tightening of her arms....
+
+A whisper barely articulate: "You really ... want me ... enough to marry
+me?"
+
+"I love you."
+
+"But...."
+
+"Isn't that enough?"
+
+"But I am--only me: nothing: a girl who dares to love you."
+
+"Could any man ask more?"
+
+"You.... What will your friends say?... You'll be ashamed of me."
+
+"Hush! That's treason."
+
+"But you will--you won't be able to help it--"
+
+A faint, half-hearted cry of protest: words indistinguishable, silenced
+by lips on lips; a space of quiet....
+
+"How shall I make myself worthy of you?"
+
+"Love me always."
+
+"How shall I dare to meet your family, your friends--?"
+
+"You will be my wife."
+
+"But that won't be for a long time...."
+
+"Yes, we must wait--be patient, Joan." She lifted her head, wondering.
+"But don't fear; love will sustain us."
+
+"I will be patient. You'll have to give me time to learn how not to
+disgrace you--"
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+"I mean it. I must be somebody. I'm nobody now."
+
+"You are my dearest love."
+
+"I must be more, to be your wife. Give me time to learn to act. When I
+am a success--"
+
+"No more of that!" There was definite resolution in the interruption.
+"You must give up all thought of the stage."
+
+"But I want to--"
+
+"It's not the place for you--for my wife that is to be."
+
+"But we're not to be married for a long time, you say."
+
+"I'm a poor man, dear--I have enough for one, not enough for two. It may
+be only weeks, it may be months or years before my work begins to pay."
+
+"But meantime I must live--support myself, somehow."
+
+"You will leave that to me?"
+
+"I must do something--be independent--"
+
+"Won't you leave it all to me? I will arrange everything--"
+
+"I'll do whatever you wish me to."
+
+"And forget the stage--?"
+
+"I don't know--I'll try, Jack."
+
+"You must, dear one."
+
+It was not a time for disagreements. Joan clung more closely to him. The
+issue languished in default, was forgotten for the time....
+
+Transports ebbed: the faintest premonitory symptoms of a return to
+something resembling sanity made their appearance; of a sudden Matthias
+remembered the hour.
+
+"Do you know," he said with tender gravity, having consulted his watch,
+"it's after eleven?"
+
+"It doesn't seem possible," she laughed happily.
+
+"And I'm hungry," he announced. "Aren't you?"
+
+She dared to be as frank as he: "Famished!"
+
+"Come along, then! Run, get your hat. It gives us an excuse for at least
+two hours more...."
+
+By the time she had repaired the damage this miracle had wrought with
+her appearance, Matthias had walked to the Astor and brought back a
+taxicab. The attention affected Joan with a poignant and exquisite
+sense of happiness.
+
+It was only her second ride in a motor vehicle. The top being down, they
+sat very circumspectly apart; but Matthias captured her hand and eye
+spoke to eye with secret laughter of delight, each reading the other's
+longing thought. The speed of the cab and its sudden slackening as it
+picked its path down Broadway, the flow of cool air against her face,
+the swimming maze of lights through which they sped, the sense of luxury
+and protection, added the last touch of delirious pleasure to Joan's
+mood.
+
+Matthias had chosen the café of "Old Martin's," at Twenty-sixth Street,
+the first place that suggested itself as one where they could sup
+without the girl being made to feel out of place in her modest
+work-a-day attire; but his thoughtfulness was misapplied: Joan was
+exalted beyond such annoyances; and those feminine glances which she
+detected, of pity, disdain, and jealousy, she took complacently as
+envious tributes to her prettiness and her conquest.
+
+From a seat against the wall, in a corner, she reviewed the other
+patrons of the smoke-wreathed room with a hauteur of spirit that would
+have seemed laughable had it been suspected. She thought of herself as
+the handsomest woman there, and the youngest, of Matthias as the most
+distinguished man and--the luckiest. The circumstances of the place and
+her partner enchanted her to distraction.
+
+The food Matthias ordered she devoured heedlessly; but there was a
+delicious novelty in the experience of sipping her first glass of
+champagne. It was, for that matter, the first time she had ever tasted
+good wine, or any kind of alcoholic drink other than an occasional glass
+of lukewarm beer, cheap and nasty to begin with and half-stale at best,
+and that poisonous red wine of the Italian boarding-house to which
+Charlie Quard had introduced her. She had never dreamed of anything so
+delicious as this dry and exhilarating draught with its exotic bouquet
+and aromatic bubbles.
+
+With a glowing face and dancing eyes she nodded to Matthias over the rim
+of her goblet.
+
+"When we are rich," she laughed softly, "I'm never going to drink
+anything else!"
+
+He smiled quietly, enjoying her enjoyment; but, when emptied, the
+half-bottle he had ordered was not renewed.
+
+There was without that enough intoxication in his fondness, in the
+simulacrum of gaiety manufactured by the lights, the life, the laughter,
+and in the muted, interweaving strains of music. Joan felt that she was
+living wonderfully and intensely, a creature of an existence
+transcendent and radiant.
+
+It was after one when another taxicab whisked them homeward through the
+quieting streets. She sat as close as could be to her lover and would
+not have objected on the grounds of "people looking" had he put an arm
+round her. Though he didn't, she was not disappointed, sharing something
+of his mood of sublimely sufficient contentment. But when he bade her
+good night at the foot of the stairs in the deserted and poorly lighted
+hallway, she gave herself to his caresses with a passion and abandon
+that startled and sobered Matthias, and sent him off to his room and bed
+in a thoughtful frame of mind.
+
+Lying awake in darkness until darkness was dimly tempered by the
+formless dusk that long foreruns the dawn, he communed gravely with his
+troubled heart.
+
+"Things can't go on this way--as they've started. There's _got_ to be
+sanity.... It's myself I've got to watch, of course," he said with
+stubborn loyalty to his ideal. "I mustn't forget I'm a man--nine years
+older--nearly ten.... Why, she's hardly more than a kiddie.... She
+doesn't _know_.... I've got to watch myself...."
+
+And in her room, four floors above, Joan sat as long before her bureau,
+chin cradled on her slim, laced fingers, eyeing intently the face shown
+her by gas-light in the one true patch of the common, tarnished mirror.
+
+When at length she rose, suddenly conscious of a heavy weariness, she
+lingered yet another long moment for one last fond look.
+
+"It's true," she told herself with a little nod of conviction; "I am
+beautiful. _She_ said I was ... he thinks I am ... I must be...."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into
+the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing
+this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view
+remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement
+and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from
+them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.
+
+Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: _I am
+beautiful_.
+
+Her second, not _I love him_, but _He loves me_.
+
+And her third grew out of the second: _I can make him do what pleases
+me_.
+
+Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very
+self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the
+level of humanity!
+
+A fit of petulance, beauty in tears, a whispered word of passion:
+strange and strangely simple incantation to have turned a world upside
+down! How easily was man suppled to the spell!
+
+The sense of power ran like wine through her being: she felt herself
+invincible, an adept of love's alchemy; she had surprised its secret,
+and now the world of man's heart lay open to the practices of her
+disastrous art. For a moment she experienced an almost terrifying
+intimation of empires ripe for conquest that lay beyond Matthias; but
+from this she withdrew her troubled gaze; nor would she look again; not
+yet....
+
+She considered his mad extravagance of last night--taxicabs, champagne,
+tips! Was he, then, able to afford such expenditures? In her
+understanding they went oddly with his pretensions to decent poverty. Or
+had he merely lost his head under the influence of her charms? This last
+theory pleased her; she adopted it with reservations: the question
+remained one to be cleared up.
+
+He disapproved of a career upon the stage for her?... Joan smiled
+indulgently: that matter would be arranged in good time. She meant to
+have her way....
+
+At a tap on her door she changed suddenly from the aloof egoist to a
+woman athrill before the veil of portentous mysteries. She sat up in
+bed, called out to know who was knocking, gave permission to the
+chambermaid to enter, and received a note in the hand of Matthias.
+
+"_Past twelve o'clock_," she read, "_and still no sign of you,
+sweetheart. I give you thirty minutes to dress and come to me. If you
+don't, I'll come for you. After breakfast, we'll run out of town for the
+day--our first day together!_ MATTHIAS."
+
+Half wild with delight, she hurried through her toilet and ran
+down-stairs to find her lover waiting in the hallway, watch in hand.
+
+He closed it with a snap, and made her a quaintly ceremonious bow. "In
+two minutes more--!" he observed in a tone of grave menace. "But before
+we go out, have the kindness to step into my humble study. I have
+somewhat to say to you."
+
+She appeared to hesitate, to be reluctant and preoccupied occupied.
+
+"What about?" she demanded distantly.
+
+But her dancing eyes betrayed her.
+
+"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant
+universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"
+
+Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by
+the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a
+charming diffidence.
+
+In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken;
+returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first
+submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded....
+
+She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and
+sweet and nameless longing....
+
+At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans
+for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long
+Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by
+the prospect--the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was
+comprised in a few trips to Coney Island--consented with a strange
+mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a
+conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.
+
+"I didn't know you had an automobile."
+
+"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."
+
+"But ... but ... won't it be awf'ly expensive?"
+
+"Don't worry, dear."
+
+"But, you know, you aren't--rich."
+
+"I'm a magnate of happiness, at all events: and today is _our_ day, the
+first of our love, sweetheart. For twelve long hours we're going to
+forget everything but our two selfish selves. Why fret about tomorrow?
+It always does manage to take care of itself, somehow. And frankly, I
+don't care to be reminded of its existence today; for tomorrow I
+work...."
+
+A day of quicksilver hours slipping ever from their jealous grasp; of
+hours volatile and glamorous: in Joan's half-dazed consciousness, a
+delectable pageant of scenes, sensations and emotions no sooner
+comprehended than displaced by others no less wonderful....
+
+Abed long after midnight, visions besieged her bewilderingly: a length
+of dusty golden highway walled by green forest, with a white bridge
+glaring in sunlight at the bottom of a hill; the affrighting onrush of
+great motor-cars meeting their own, and the din and dust of their
+passage; the bright harbour of Huntington, blue and gold in a frame of
+gold and green, viewed from the marble balustrade of the Château des
+Beaux Arts; the wrinkled, kindly, comprehending face of a waiter who
+served them at dinner; the look in her lover's eyes as she repeated, on
+demand, guarded avowals under cover of the motor's rumble; the ardent
+face of a boy who had seemed unable to cease staring at her in the
+restaurant; silver and purple of the road by night; wheeling ranks of
+lights dotting the desolation of suburban Brooklyn; the high-flung span
+of Queensboro' Bridge, a web of steel and concrete strung with
+opalescent globes; the glare of the city's painted sky; the endless
+pulsing of the motor; their last caress on parting at the foot of the
+stairs....
+
+On the morrow she went back to her typewriter like Cinderella to her
+kitchen. But what work Matthias was able to invent for her was neither
+arduous nor urgent; she was able to take her time on it, and wasted many
+an hour in dreaming. Her mind was, indeed, more engaged with thoughts of
+new frocks than with the circumstances of her love or her services to
+her lover.
+
+She was to receive thenceforward twenty-five instead of ten dollars a
+week. Matthias had experienced little difficulty in over-ruling her
+faint protestations: they were to be together a great deal, he argued,
+and she must be able to dress at least neatly; moreover, by requiring
+her promise to marry him at some future time when his fortunes would
+permit, he had in a measure made her dependent upon him; she couldn't
+reasonably be asked to wait for long on a bare pittance.
+
+His arguments were reinforced by one he knew nothing of, a maxim culled
+from the wisdom of Miss Maizie Dean: _It was up to a girl to look out
+for herself first, last, and all the time_. The platitude had made an
+ineffaceable impression upon Joan's sense of self-preservation. And if
+Matthias were able to afford nightly dinners for two at good
+restaurants, in addition to theater tickets several times a week, he
+ought to be able to afford a decent compensation to his stenographer;
+especially when it was his wish that she refrain from attempting to earn
+more money on the stage.
+
+It was, however, true that no offer had come to Joan of other theatrical
+work, and that the issue of her ambition remained in abeyance, a subject
+which she didn't care to raise and which Matthias, since that first
+night, had considered settled.
+
+Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance
+from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the
+other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some
+favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not
+obligatory--the café of their first supper by preference, or else the
+Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few
+minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the
+approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work,
+they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up
+Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance
+upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his
+work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous
+drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have
+good but inconspicuous seats.
+
+In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and
+since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they
+witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of
+social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an
+amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the
+quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of
+the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays
+furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As
+plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools
+of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her
+gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress
+portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation
+whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their
+gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something
+of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion
+of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the
+girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified
+to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with
+varying discretion and success.
+
+She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his
+friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For
+long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact,
+distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was,
+summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very
+guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted
+the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone,
+dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its
+own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of
+the feminine toilet.
+
+Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of
+imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the
+improvement in his fiancée without realizing it objectively; what
+pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of
+innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was
+inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine:
+he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not
+possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the
+mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined
+efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.
+
+It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under
+the strain of it all....
+
+"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an
+evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God"
+company. "He's dickering with Algerson--thinks the thing may possibly
+come to a deal before long."
+
+"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.
+
+"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play--at a bargain to
+himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's
+hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few
+days."
+
+"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking
+her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that
+she had never heard it before.
+
+"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now
+he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."
+
+"And if he gets 'The Jade God'--when will he put it on?"
+
+"Can't say--haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested
+as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can
+be ratified."
+
+"But you'll consent?"
+
+"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it
+stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective
+bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."
+
+Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork;
+glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the
+tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.
+
+"I wonder ..." she murmured abstractedly.
+
+"You wonder what--?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her
+thought.
+
+She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if--if he gets the
+piece--Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"
+
+"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want
+you to stick at that game."
+
+"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.
+
+Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson
+will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes
+to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean,
+he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until
+he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his
+hands."
+
+"You think he will produce out West?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"And will you have to go?"
+
+"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses.
+Although ... I don't know ... perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the
+only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most
+certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production--and his
+expenses to the Coast and back, besides.... It would be a shame to let a
+valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."
+
+"Then you may go, after all?"
+
+"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it
+over."
+
+Joan sighed.
+
+A week elapsed before the subject came up again.
+
+Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had
+sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the
+back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its
+heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the
+people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan
+could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as
+wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable
+prejudice of her lover.
+
+And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her
+thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires,
+seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.
+
+Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized
+that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in
+his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance,
+or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of
+intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to
+join issue with his will.
+
+And yet ... she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she
+felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been
+better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of
+living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she
+might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and
+honest than that which he offered her.
+
+But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in
+her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion....
+
+Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before
+sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving
+vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.
+
+Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair,
+knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm
+tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience
+stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something
+of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood.
+He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at
+arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside
+quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect
+the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her
+sweet lips, and again drew her to him.
+
+"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude.
+"What is it? Tell me."
+
+"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing--only--I guess--I'm
+a little blue--lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be
+at work or--with you always."
+
+"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now--I
+believe in my very soul."
+
+"Till when--?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with
+eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till
+when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"
+
+"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to
+me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract
+this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!"
+
+"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to
+produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+There was an interval....
+
+"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness
+for you, dear--not more than a few weeks--"
+
+"Why?" she demanded sharply.
+
+"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I
+couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."
+
+"When do you leave?"
+
+"Monday--the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los
+Angeles."
+
+"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.
+
+"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may
+have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."
+
+"Then I'm to be left--here--alone--with nothing to do but wait--perhaps
+more than a month!"
+
+"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends--"
+
+"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me
+with you," she pleaded earnestly.
+
+"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one
+thing, it wouldn't--O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!'
+but--it wouldn't look right. We're not married."
+
+"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.
+
+He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I
+haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you
+here."
+
+For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders,
+exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of
+much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and
+releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.
+
+Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.
+
+"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks'
+separation, Joan!"
+
+She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a
+cigarette and lighted it.
+
+"Surely you can wait that long--"
+
+"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be,
+it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."
+
+"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he
+grumbled. "But I don't see...."
+
+She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments,
+then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little
+collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence.
+One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much
+attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him
+an exclamation: "Hello!"
+
+"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.
+
+"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"
+
+"Tanglewood?"
+
+"My Aunt Helena's home--down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She
+has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to
+go?"
+
+A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate,
+and temporarily to forego further petulance.
+
+"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.
+
+"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be
+anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned
+over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll
+be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes--sweetheart!"
+
+Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck.
+She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some
+of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced
+her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination
+stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant
+novel-reading and theater-going.
+
+On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena's invitation she
+went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks' savings with that
+delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman
+of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent
+days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the
+pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy hoarded
+dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her association with
+Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)
+
+Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple
+evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably
+faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much
+higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an
+end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had
+the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully
+becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of
+its kind that she had ever owned.
+
+As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch
+at Martin's, she told herself that she would never know greater
+happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the
+figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.
+
+But after luncheon--over which they lingered until they were quite alone
+in the eastern dining-room--with some hesitation, and having assured
+himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled
+in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case,
+and passed it across the table.
+
+"I'd meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward
+smile. "But I don't think I can wait...."
+
+Joan opened the box--and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart
+seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she
+grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!
+
+Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life;
+and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that
+night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....
+
+Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature
+calculated to dissipate that glamour--save, perhaps, in one untoward
+circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided
+against.
+
+A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as
+violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end
+visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But
+Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the
+man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis
+lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan's way was made
+smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the
+moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible
+suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The
+smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville's
+obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the
+stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at
+her ease) facilitated matters immensely.
+
+Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid--was, indeed, given no
+reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the
+establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them
+herself, she received at Helena's hands the indispensable service of
+"hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means
+overshadowed by Helena's or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the
+men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her
+ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New
+York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of
+their terrors.
+
+Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring
+friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville
+to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone
+with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of
+Tanglewood....
+
+But it wasn't until the first hours of a still and splendid September
+Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its
+foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its
+grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its
+location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her
+perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new
+world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave
+her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the
+South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a
+short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....
+
+Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least
+comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at
+the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the
+manoeuvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the
+breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather
+extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common
+ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the
+depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light
+banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her
+extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic
+environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own
+ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow,
+strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.
+
+The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun--the
+season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The
+Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies
+bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an
+exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame
+in the mortal passion of Indian summer.
+
+In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet
+ineluctable hint of melancholy....
+
+From landward, with unusual resonance in the deep quiet of that hour,
+sounded the long, dull, whining purr of a motor-car.
+
+Helena lowered the glasses, turned an ear to the sound, and came slowly
+back to the tea-table and Joan. Her faint smile, together with a slight
+elevation of her delicately darkened brows, indicated surprise.
+
+Engrossed in their argument, Matthias and Tankerville gave no heed to
+the threatened visitation.
+
+Resentfully, Joan detached her attention from the diamond Matthias had
+given her, and at discretion tossed aside a cigarette which she had been
+pretending to like because Helena smoked quite openly, and it was
+consequently the smart thing to do.
+
+Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces
+toward the house, paused, waited. A woman's laugh with an accent of
+cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed
+Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his
+chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a
+light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the
+time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even
+though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. She was
+unquestionably the loveliest creature Joan had ever seen. Without
+moving, but staring, the girl sat transfixed with distrust and poignant
+envy.
+
+With a cry of wonder--"Venetia!"--Helena ran to greet these unpresaged
+guests.
+
+Meeting, the two women indulged in an embrace almost theatrically
+perfunctory. The commonplaces of such situations were breathlessly
+exchanged. Then Helena, disengaging turned to the man and extended a
+hand.
+
+"Well, Mr. Marbridge!..." she cried with a light note of semi-reproof in
+her laughter.
+
+At this, with a brightening smile, Marbridge bent over her hand, saying
+something indistinguishable to Joan.
+
+She was watching the meeting between Matthias and Venetia Marbridge.
+
+He held both her hands, and she permitted him to retain them, for a
+longer moment of silent greeting than Joan thought necessary. But this
+circumstance alone betrayed whatever constraint was felt by either. A
+smile, vague and perhaps not lacking a thought of tender sadness,
+touched the lips and eyes of Venetia. Matthias returned his twisted and
+indefinitely apologetic grin.
+
+"More than ever charming, Venetia!"
+
+"Thank you, Jack."
+
+If there were any hint of challenge in her tone or her straightforward
+eyes, Joan didn't detect it.
+
+George Tankerville submitted with open resignation to the embrace of his
+sister.
+
+"I suppose I've got to stand for this," he observed with philosophy. "Do
+you mean me to infer that you're humble and contrite?"
+
+"Not in the least," Venetia retorted defiantly.
+
+"Oh, very well," said he. "That being the case, I extend to you my
+belated blessing. How did you leave things on the other side?"
+
+"Much as usual--and by steamer."
+
+"When'd you get back?"
+
+"Last Monday...."
+
+Venetia became openly aware of Joan. Matthias interposed.
+
+"Miss Thursday--my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge."
+
+[Illustration: "Miss Thursday--my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs.
+Marbridge."]
+
+"Truly?"
+
+The shock told; she had been playing off very deftly a painful
+contretemps, but this announcement dashed Venetia. Momentarily she
+hesitated, scarlet lips apart but inarticulate, widening eyes of violet
+a shade darker, with--if possible--a pallor deeper even than that most
+striking attribute of her beauty. But the check could have been apparent
+only to the initiate or to a strongly intuitive intelligence.
+
+"I _am_ so glad!" she cried with sincerity--"so glad for both of you!"
+Impulsively she caught Joan's hands, drew the girl to her--"May I, my
+dear? We're to be great friends, you know!"--kissed her; then swinging
+round--"Vincent!" she called gaily. "Such news! Do come here
+immediately!"
+
+Marbridge showed a face strongly marked with the enquiry of his heavy,
+lifting eyebrows. His glance comprehended Joan with kindling interest.
+With Helena he approached, his heavy body rolling a little in spite of
+the elasticity of his stride.
+
+"My husband, Vincent Marbridge. Vincent, this is Joan Thursday. She's
+engaged to Jack Matthias. Isn't it wonderful? And aren't they both
+fortunate? And _isn't_ she pretty?"
+
+Marbridge's unctuous and intimate smile accompanied his reply: "Yes to
+all--twice yes to your last question." His warm strong hand closed
+over Joan's diffident fingers. "My heartiest congratulations to you
+both.... Ah, Mr. Matthias, how are you? So we meet again--at
+Tanglewood!"
+
+The hands of the two men touched and fell apart. But this clue was
+wasted upon Joan, who stood silently abashed and sullen with
+consciousness of her own inept awkwardness as contrasted with the
+amiable aplomb of these people with whom good breeding was a cult, the
+practice of the art of self-possession its primary rite.
+
+To Marbridge she stammered: "Pleased to meet you." And immediately felt
+her face burning and as if she could faint for sheer mortification.
+
+It was Helena who, pitiful for the gaucherie of the girl, saved the
+situation by raising the issue of tea. Venetia demurred: they were, it
+seemed, visiting friends in Southampton; had driven over only for a call
+of a moment; would be late for dinner if they tarried. But Marbridge
+settled the question by dropping solidly into a chair and announcing
+that there he was and there would stay pending either tea or a highball.
+Venetia, unable to disguise a flush of resentment, showed her back to
+her husband and devoted herself to George Tankerville. As Helena
+summoned a servant, Marbridge hitched his chair closer and inaugurated a
+rather one-sided conversation with Joan.
+
+Again in her basket-chair, knees daintily crossed in imitation of a pose
+mentally photographed from the stage, Joan experienced renewed
+consciousness of her attractions, and with it regained a little ease. It
+could scarcely be otherwise under the wondering regard that Marbridge
+bent upon the girl. His admiration was unconcealed, and to Joan at first
+the sweeter since it was diverted from his wife.
+
+But insensibly the situation began to affect her less pleasantly. She
+grew sensitive to an effect of strain in the atmosphere, made up in
+equal parts of Venetia's indignation, Matthias's annoyance, Helena's
+suave but quite fruitless efforts to interpose and distract the interest
+of Marbridge to herself.
+
+And there was a confusing and disturbing element of familiar and
+personal significance in the man's undeviating and brazen stare. Truly,
+in the older sense of the word, impudent, it hinted an understanding so
+complete as to be almost shameful--worse, it educed a real if unspoken
+response from the girl; unwillingly she admitted the existence of a bond
+of sympathy between herself and this man whom she had never seen before,
+a feeling more true and intimate than that which her association with
+Matthias had inspired, than any she had ever known. For a time she
+fought against this impression, in a bewilderment that evoked from her
+only witless and hesitant responses. Then suddenly encountering his
+eyes--actually against her will--she was stricken dumb and breathless by
+comprehension of their intent; in effect, they stripped her: bodily and
+mentally they made her naked to this man.
+
+Nor was this the sum: for the merest fraction of a moment Joan felt
+herself answering: in her bosom a strange oppression, strangely
+troubling and sweet; in her own eyes a kindling light, sympathetic,
+shameless....
+
+Instantly quenched: distress and affronted modesty incarnadined her
+face, veiled her eyes. Almost unconsciously she turned away.
+Indistinctly she saw the white face of Venetia, set and hard, with a
+scornful lip for her husband. Shifting to view the object of his
+admiration, it showed no change of expression. Her voice cut incisively
+through his lazy, drawling accents.
+
+"This is quite impossible," she said coolly, consulting a jewelled watch
+on her slender, gloved wrist. "If we stay another instant we shall be
+unforgivably late. But"--to Helena--"thank you so much, dear, for
+wanting us to stop.... Vincent, I am going."
+
+She moved slowly toward the house. Marbridge kept his seat.
+
+"Nonsense!" he expostulated. "Plenty of time. Tea's just coming. And I'm
+dying the death of a dog with thirst."
+
+"I am going," Venetia repeated in an uninflected voice.
+
+His dark face darkening, Marbridge glanced to Helena, to Tankerville,
+ignored Matthias, looked back to Joan: gaining as little encouragement
+from her, as from his host and hostess, since she dared not again meet
+his gaze. With a movement of his heavy shoulders and a chuckle he heaved
+himself out of the chair.
+
+"Oh, _all_ right," he called indulgently to his wife: "coming!... All
+women are crazy, anyhow," he confided to the others. "You've got to let
+'em have their own way. So--good night. Hope I'll have the pleasure of
+seeing you-all soon again."
+
+He extended a hand to Helena--who gave him cool fingertips--and paused
+before Joan.
+
+"Au revoir, Miss Thursday...."
+
+The girl was unconscious of the proffered hand. Her eyes averted, she
+murmured a good night.
+
+His smile broadening, Marbridge turned to Matthias; received from him a
+look that was as good as a kick, gave back a grin of graceless
+effrontery; and swinging, linked arms with Tankerville.
+
+"Come along, George--take a look at our new car. She's a wonder!"
+
+Civilly playing his part, Tankerville submitted.
+
+They disappeared--Marbridge gabbling cheerfully--into the house. Joan
+uncurtained her eyes. Her lover, with a face of thunder, was looking
+toward his aunt; who made a slight negative motion of her head, with an
+admonitory flutter of one hand: a servant with a tray was drawing near.
+Matthias answered her with a gesture of controlled wrath; turned to the
+balustrade; stood there staring straight into the angry sunset glow.
+
+On the drive a motor snorted, snored, drew away with a whine
+diminuendo....
+
+Throughout the remainder of Joan's visit the incident was not once
+referred to. But it had had its curious and disturbing effect upon the
+girl. She remembered it all very vividly, reviewed it with insatiable
+inquisitiveness. From this she derived a feeling, which she resented, of
+having witnessed a scene fraught with significance indecipherable to
+her.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+A little after the hour of four on Monday afternoon, Joan emerged from
+that riotous meander of hideous wooden galleries, ramps, passages,
+sheds, and vast echoing caves of gloom, which in those days encumbered
+the site of the new Grand Central Station; and with a long breath of
+relief turned westward on Forty-second Street.
+
+She walked slowly and without definite aim; yet she had never felt so
+keenly the quickness and joy of being alive. Her idle fancy invested
+with a true if formless symbolism her escape from that amazing labyrinth
+of shadows to the clear, sweet sunlight of the clamorous, busy street:
+as if she had eluded and cast off convention and formality, the
+constraint of a settled future and the strain of aspirations to be other
+than as Nature had fashioned her; and was free again of the enchanting
+ease of being simply herself.
+
+She had within five minutes said good-bye to her betrothed; her lips
+were yet warm with their parting kiss, her eyes still moist--and so, the
+more bewitching--with the facile tears through which she had watched his
+train draw out of the station.
+
+He was not to be back within a month; more probably his return would not
+occur within five or six weeks....
+
+She was contrarily possessed by two opposed humours: one approximately
+saturated with an exquisite melancholy and a sense of heroic emotions
+adequately experienced; and the other, of freedom untrammelled by
+restrictions of any sort.
+
+Overruling her faint-hearted protests, Matthias had left her the sum of
+six weeks' wages (or allowance) in advance, by way of provision against
+emergencies and delays. Joan had this magnificent sum of one hundred and
+fifty dollars intact in her pocket-book: more money than she had
+ever--at least, seriously--dreamed of possessing at one time.
+Temporarily it represented to her imagination, level-headed as she
+ordinarily was in consideration of money matters, wealth almost
+incalculable. It thrilled her tremendously to contemplate this tangible
+proof of her lover's unquestioning trust and generosity--and at the same
+time it irked her with gnawing doubts of her worthiness. For continually
+the knowledge skulked in the dark backwards of her consciousness that
+only lack of opportunity restrained her from active disloyalty to his
+prejudices.
+
+Though she had disguised it from him, and even in some measure from
+herself, she knew that love had not quenched but had quickened her
+ambition for the stage. To be desired by one man only stimulated her
+longing to be desired inaccessibly--beyond the impregnable barrier of
+footlights--by all men.
+
+She wondered how far her strength and constancy would serve her to
+resist, were opportunity to come her way during the absence of Matthias,
+when distance should have sapped the strength of his influence and
+loneliness had lent an accent to her need for occupation and
+companionship.
+
+Furtively she closed her left hand, until she could feel the diamond in
+his ring, turned in toward the palm beneath her glove: as if it were a
+talisman....
+
+Turning north on Broadway, she breasted the full current of the late
+afternoon promenade. Where the subway kiosks encroach upon the sidewalk,
+in front of what had been Shanley's restaurant, there was a distinct
+congestion of footfarers: Joan was obliged to move more slowly, crowded
+from behind, close on the heels of those in front, elbowed by
+pedestrians bound the opposite way.
+
+Abruptly she caught sight of Wilbrow, approaching. Almost at the same
+instant he saw her. Momentarily his eyes clouded with an effort of
+memory; then he placed her, his lantern cheeks widened with an ironic
+grin, and he lifted his hat with elaborate ceremony. Joan flushed
+slightly, smiled brightly in response, and tossed her head with a
+spirited suggestion of good-humoured tolerance. In another moment,
+wondering why she had done this, she realized that it had been due
+simply to a subconscious valuation of the man's interest, in the event
+she should ever again decide to try her luck on the stage....
+
+Crossing at Forty-third Street, she turned again north on the sidewalk
+in front of a building given over almost entirely to the offices of
+theatrical businesses: a sidewalk darkened the year round with groups of
+actors sociably "resting."
+
+One of these groups, as Joan drew near, broke up on the urgent
+suggestion of a special policeman detailed for the purpose; and a member
+of it, swinging with a laugh to "move on," stopped short to escape
+collision with the girl. Then he laughed again in the friendliest
+fashion, and offered his hand. She looked up into the face of Charlie
+Quard.
+
+"Well!" he cried heartily, "I always was a lucky guy! I've been thinking
+about you all day--wondering what'd become of you."
+
+Joan smiled and shook hands. "I guess it wasn't worrying you much," she
+retorted. "If you'd wanted to, you knew where to find me."
+
+Quard needed no more encouragement. Promptly ranging alongside and
+falling into step: "That's just it," he argued; "I knew where to _start_
+looking for you, all right, but I was kinda afraid you might be in when
+I called, and didn't know whether you'd snap my head off or not."
+
+"That's likely," the girl countered amiably. There was a distinctly
+agreeable sensation to be derived from this association with one upon
+whom she could impose her private estimate of herself. "What made you
+want to see me all of a sudden?"
+
+"Then you ain't sore on me?"
+
+"What for?" she evaded transparently.
+
+"Oh, you know what for, all right. I'm sore enough on myself not to want
+to talk about it."
+
+"Well," said Joan indifferently, "I guess it's none of my business if
+you're such a rummy you can't hold onto a job. Only, of course, I don't
+have to stand for that sort of foolishness more than once."
+
+"You said something then, all right," Quard approved humbly. "I can't
+blame you for feeling that way about it. But le' me tell you an honest
+fact: I ain't touched a drop of anything stronger'n buttermilk since
+that night--so help me Klaw and Erlanger!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, I guess I must've took a tumble to myself. Anyhow, when I got
+over the katzenjammer thing, I thought it all out and made up my mind it
+was up to me to behave for the balance of my sentence."
+
+"Is that so?" Joan asked, pausing definitely on the corner at
+Forty-fifth Street.
+
+"I know I can," Quard asserted convincingly. "Believe me, Joan, I hate
+the stuff! I'd as lief stake myself to a slug of sulphuric. No, on the
+level: I'm booked for the water-tank route for the rest of my natural."
+
+"I'm awful glad," observed the girl maliciously. "It's so nice for your
+mother. Well ... g'dafternoon!"
+
+"Hold on!" Quard protested. "I'll walk down to the house with you."
+
+"No, you won't," she returned promptly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't want you to."
+
+"Oh, you don't!" he murmured blankly, pulling down the corners of his
+wide, expressive mouth.
+
+"_So_ sorry," she parroted. "G'dafternoon."
+
+She was several steps away before the man recovered from this rebuff.
+Then, with a face of set intent, he gave chase.
+
+"I say--Miss Thursday!"
+
+Joan accepted with a secret smile this sudden change from the off-hand
+manner of his first addresses. "Miss Thursday, eh?" she said to herself;
+but halted none the less.
+
+"Well?"--with self-evident surprise.
+
+"Look here--_lis'n_!" insisted Quard: "I got to have a talk with you."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Oh, this is no good place. When can I see you?"
+
+"Is it quite necessary, Mister Quard?"
+
+He wagged an earnest head at her: "That's right. What are you doing
+tonight?"
+
+"Oh, I got an engagement with some friends of mine," she said with
+spontaneous mendacity.
+
+"Well, then, when?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know; you might as well take your chances--call round
+sometime--in two or three days."
+
+"And I got to be satisfied with that?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Quard shook his head helplessly: "I'd like to know what's come over
+you...."
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" The temptation to lead him on was
+irresistible.
+
+"You've changed a lot since I seen you last. What you been doing to
+yourself?"
+
+She bridled.... "Maybe it's you that is changed. Maybe you're seeing
+things different, now you're sober."
+
+Quard hesitated an instant, his features drawn with anger. Then
+abruptly: "_Plenty!_" he ejaculated, and as if afraid to trust himself
+further, turned and marched back to Broadway.
+
+Smiling quietly, Joan made her way home. On the whole, the encounter had
+not been unenjoyable. She had not only held her own, she had
+condescended with striking success.
+
+Later, she repented a little of her harshness; she had been hardly kind,
+if Quard were sincere in his protestations of reform; and a little
+tolerance might have earned her an evening less lonely.
+
+It was spent, after a dinner which proved unexpectedly desolate, lacking
+the companionship to which of late she had grown accustomed, in the
+back-parlour (to which Matthias had left her the key) and in
+discontented efforts to fix her interest on a novel. Before ten o'clock
+she gave it up, and climbed to her room, to lie awake for hours in mute
+rebellion against her friendless estate. She might, it was true, have
+kept a promise made to her lover just before his departure, to look up
+and renew relations with her family. But the more she contemplated this
+step, the less it attracted her inclination. There'd be another row with
+the Old Man, most likely and ... anyway, there was plenty of time.
+Besides, they'd want money, if they found out she had any; and while a
+hundred and fifty was a lot, there was no telling when she'd get more.
+
+Eventually she fell asleep while reviewing her meeting with Quard and
+turning over her hazy impression that it wouldn't hurt her to be less
+stand-offish with him, next time.
+
+In the morning she settled herself at her typewriter in a fine spirit of
+determination to keep her mind occupied with the work in hand--and
+incidentally to rid her conscience of it--until the feeling of
+loneliness wore off or at least till its reality became a trifle less
+unpalatable through familiarity. But not two pages had been typed before
+the call of the sunlit September day proved seductive beyond her will to
+resist; a much-advertised "_Promenade des Toilettes_" at a department
+store claimed the rest of the morning; and after lunch she "took in" a
+moving-picture show.
+
+But again her evening was forlorn. Theatres allured, but she hardly
+liked to go alone. In desperation she cast back mentally to the friends
+of the old days, and after rejecting her erstwhile confidant and
+co-labourer at the stocking counter, Gussie Innes (who lived too near
+home, and would tell her father, who would pass it along to the Old Man)
+Joan settled upon one or two girls, resident in distant Harlem, to be
+hunted up, treated to a musical comedy, and regaled with a narrative of
+the rise and adventures of Joan Thursday until their lives were poisoned
+with corrosive envy.
+
+But the first mail of Wednesday furnished distractions so potent that
+this project was postponed indefinitely and passed out of Joan's mind,
+never to be revived. It brought her two letters: manufacturing an event
+of magnitude in the life of a young woman who had yet to write her first
+letter and who had thus far received only a few scrappy and incoherent
+notes from boyish admirers.
+
+There was one from Matthias, posted in Chicago the preceding morning.
+Her first love letter, it was scanned hurriedly, even impatiently, and
+put aside in favour of a fat manila envelope whose contents consisted of
+a type-written manuscript and a note in scrawling long-hand:
+
+     "Friend Joan--
+
+     "I hope you are not still mad with me and sorry I got hot under
+     the collar Monday only I thought you might of been a little
+     easy on me because, I am strictly on the Water Wagon and this
+     time mean it--
+
+     "What I wanted to talk to you about was a Sketch I got hold of
+     a while ago you know you picked the other one only that was
+     punk stuff compared with this I think--Please read this and
+     tell me what you think about it if you like it, I think I will
+     try it out soon, if it's any good it's a cinch to cop out
+     Orpheum time for a Classy Act like this--
+
+     "Your true friend--
+
+     "Chas. H. Quard.
+
+     "P.S. of course I mean I want you to act the Womans part if you
+     like the Sketch, what do you think!"
+
+It was afternoon before she realized the flight of time.
+
+She turned back to Quard's note, a trifle disappointed that he hadn't
+suggested an hour when he would call for her answer.
+
+Adjusting her hat before the mirror, preparatory to going out to lunch,
+she realized without a qualm that there was no longer any question of
+her intention as between Quard's offer and the wishes of Matthias.
+Whatever the consequences she meant to play that part--but on terms and
+conditions to be dictated by herself.
+
+But in the act of drawing on her gloves, she checked, and for a long
+time stood fascinated by the beauty and lustre of the diamond on her
+left hand. A stone of no impressive proportions, but one of the purest
+and most excellent water, of an exceptional brilliance, it meant a great
+deal to one whose ingrained passion for such adornments had, prior to
+her love affair, perforce been satisfied with the cheap, trashy, and
+perishable stuff designated in those days by the term "French novelty
+jewellery." Subconsciously she was sensitive to a feeling of kinship
+with the beautiful, unimpressionable, enigmatic stone: as though their
+natures were somehow complementary. Actively she knew that she would
+forfeit much rather than part with that perfect and entrancing jewel.
+With nothing else in nature, animate or inert, would it have been
+possible for her to spend long hours of silent, worshipful, sympathetic
+communion.
+
+If she were to persist in the pursuit of her romantic ambition, it might
+bring about a pass of cleavage between herself and her lover; it was
+more than likely, indeed; she knew the prejudices of Matthias to be as
+strong as his love, and this last no stronger than his sense of honour.
+Tacitly if not explicitly, she had given him to understand that she
+would respect his objections to a stage career. He would not forgive
+unfaith--least of all, such clandestine and stealthy disloyalty as she
+then contemplated.
+
+The breaking of their engagement would involve the return of the
+diamond.
+
+Intolerable thought!
+
+And yet....
+
+Staring wide-eyed into her mirror, she saw herself irresolute at
+crossroads: on the one hand Matthias, marriage, the diamond, a secure
+and honourable future; on the other, Quard, "The Lie," disloyalty, the
+loss of the diamond, uncertainty--a vista of grim, appalling hazards....
+
+And yet--she had four weeks, probably six, perhaps eight, in which to
+weigh the possibilities of this tremendous and seductive adventure. "The
+Lie" _might_ fail....
+
+In that case, Matthias need never know.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+As she drew near to Longacre Square, Joan saw Quard detach himself from
+an area-railing against which he had been lounging across the street,
+and move over to intercept her. Since she had anticipated that he might
+waylay her in some such manner, if he didn't call at the house, she was
+not surprised by this manoeuvre; but she was a little surprised and
+not a little amused (if quite privately) to see him throw away his cigar
+as they drew together, and lift his hat. Such attentions from him were
+distinctly novel--and gratifying.
+
+Complacent, and at the same time excited beneath a placid demeanour, she
+greeted him with a cool little nod.
+
+He grinned broadly but nervously.
+
+"I was wondering if you wouldn't happen along soon...."
+
+"Is that so?" Joan returned blandly.
+
+"Mind my walking with you?"
+
+"No-o," the girl drawled.
+
+"Of course, if I'm in the way--"
+
+"Oh, no--I'm just looking for some place to lunch."
+
+"Well, I'm hungry myself. Why not let me set up the eats?"
+
+"All right," she assented indifferently.
+
+"Fine! Where'll we go?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know...."
+
+"Anywheres you say."
+
+"Well, Rector's is right handy."
+
+"That suits me," Quard affirmed promptly.
+
+But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.
+
+"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to
+the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.
+
+"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.
+
+"Wha'd you think of the piece?"
+
+"Oh ... the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan
+added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time--just glanced
+through it, you know--"
+
+"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"
+
+"Oh, yes; I thought it _quite_ interesting," said the girl
+patronizingly.
+
+She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard
+withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.
+
+In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the
+restaurant.
+
+It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a
+table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of
+waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and
+bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl
+and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.
+
+"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but
+vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the
+menu--"please order something very simple. I hardly _ever_ have much
+appetite so soon after breakfast."
+
+"I--ah--how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his
+smoothened brow.
+
+"I thought you--"
+
+"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."
+
+"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."
+
+And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she
+removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the
+table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking
+about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means
+have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.
+
+Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in
+naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.
+
+The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into
+Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.
+
+"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded
+abruptly.
+
+"What_ever_ do you mean?" drawled Joan.
+
+"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."
+
+"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.
+
+"Meaning--mind my own business," he inferred morosely.
+
+"Well, now, what do you think?"
+
+"I--well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.
+
+Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I
+guess I can take care of myself."
+
+"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse _me_."
+
+"That's all right--and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have
+come into some money--not much." Her gaze was as clear and
+straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic
+well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."
+
+"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to
+brass tacks: how about that sketch?"
+
+"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"
+
+He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition
+strikes you. That's what I want to know."
+
+"You haven't made me any proposition."
+
+"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"
+
+"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."
+
+"Ain't that enough?"
+
+She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular
+business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better,
+and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"
+
+He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had
+had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars...."
+
+"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.
+
+"But look here: you're only a beginner--"
+
+"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"
+
+"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but--"
+
+"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"
+
+"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"
+
+"Fifty--and transportation on the road."
+
+He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner,
+bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do
+anything in the world for you--"
+
+"Fifty and transportation!"
+
+"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's
+option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five
+a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the
+cast, outsida you and me. _David_'ll want fifty at least, and the
+_Thief_ thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and
+thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all
+that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can
+hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission
+for booking us, leaving only seventy for _my_ bit--and I'm risking all I
+got salted away to try it out."
+
+He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.
+
+"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough
+actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good
+at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."
+
+This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily
+silenced.
+
+"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing
+mendacity--"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can
+get any figure I want to ask, in reason."
+
+Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.
+
+"He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess
+you heard about that."
+
+The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast....
+Look here: make it--"
+
+"Fifty or nothing."
+
+After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All
+right."
+
+At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than
+elegance the food before him.
+
+Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her
+tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect
+of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen
+rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to
+her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to
+her will....
+
+There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of
+gratulate reflection.
+
+From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had
+finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance.
+Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned,
+and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited
+suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy,
+ambitions achieved through adulation of men....
+
+"Why, Miss Thursday, how _do_ you do?"
+
+Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her
+chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr.
+Marbridge!"
+
+Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance
+measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's
+hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and
+hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday,
+and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome
+eyes ogled her effectively.
+
+"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist
+stopping to speak. How are you?"
+
+"I"--Joan stammered--"I'm very well, thanks."
+
+"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as
+happy--more charming than both! You are--eh--not lonesome?"
+
+His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard,
+exposed the innuendo.
+
+"Oh, no, I--"
+
+"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to
+call on you. Where do you put up in town?"
+
+Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address--knowing in her heart that
+the truth was not in this man.
+
+"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?"
+She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia.
+Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So
+glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...."
+
+Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her
+with odd intentness.
+
+"Friend of yours?" he demanded with a sneer and a backward jerk of his
+head.
+
+"Yes--the husband of a friend of mine," she replied quickly.
+
+The actor digested this information grimly. "Swell friends you've got,
+all right!" he commented, not without a touch of envy. "Now I begin to
+understand.... What's Marbridge going to do for you?"
+
+"Do for me? Mr. Marbridge? Why, nothing," she answered blankly, in a
+breath. "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"That's all right then. But take a friendly tip, and give him the office
+the minute he begins to talk about influencing managers to star you.
+I've heard about that guy, and he's a rotten proposition--grab it from
+me. He's Arlington's silent partner--and you know what kind of a rep.
+Arlington's got."
+
+"No, I don't," Joan challenged him sharply. "What's more, I don't care.
+Anyway, I don't see what Arlington's reputation's got to do with my
+being a friend of Marbridge's wife."
+
+"No more do I," grumbled Quard--"not if Marbridge believes you are."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Before leaving the restaurant Quard outlined in detail his plans for
+producing "The Lie" for vaudeville presentation. He named the other two
+actors, spoke of hiring a negro dresser who would double as the servant,
+and indicated his intention of engaging a producing director of the
+first calibre who, he said, thought highly of the play.
+
+Joan was a little overcome. Peter Gloucester was a producer quite worthy
+to be named in the same breath with Wilbrow.
+
+"Well, he believes in the piece," Quard explained--"the same as me--and
+he says he'll give us ten afternoon rehearsals for a hundred and fifty.
+It'll be worth it."
+
+"You must think so," said Joan, a little awed.
+
+"You bet I do. This means a lot to me, anyway; I gotta do something to
+keep my head above out-of-town stock--or the movies again." Mentioning
+his recent experience, he shuddered realistically. "But if this piece
+ain't actor-proof, I'm no judge. Gloucester says so, too. And to have
+him tune it up into a reg'lar classy act will be worth ... something, I
+tell you!"
+
+His hesitation was due to the fact that Quard was secretly counting on
+the representations of his agent, Boskerk, who insisted that, properly
+presented, the sketch would earn at least four hundred and fifty dollars
+a week, instead of the sum he had named to Joan.
+
+But Joan overlooked this lamely retrieved slip; she was all preoccupied
+with a glowing sense of gratification growing out of this endorsement of
+her first surmise, that Quard had only waited on her consent to go
+ahead. The thought was unctuous flattery to her conceit, inflating it
+tremendously even in the face of a shrewd suspicion that it was
+sentiment more than an exaggerated conception of her ability that made
+Quard reckon her coöperation indispensable. That the man was infatuated
+with her she was quite convinced; on the other hand, she didn't believe
+him sufficiently blinded by passion to imperil the success of his
+venture by giving her the chief part unless he believed she could play
+it--"actor-proof" or no.
+
+"Lis'n, girlie," Quard pursued after one meditative moment: "could you
+begin rehearsing tomorrow?"
+
+"Of course I could."
+
+"Because if we don't, we lose three days...."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well," Quard explained with a sheepish grin, "I guess I ain't any more
+nutty than the next actor you'll meet on Broadway; but I'd as lief slip
+my bank-roll to the waiter for a tip as start anything on a Friday. And
+Sat'day and Sunday's busy days for the Jinx, too. I got too much up to
+wish anything mean onto this piece!..."
+
+At his suggestion they left the dining-room by the hotel entrance on
+Forty-fourth Street, and Joan waited in the lobby while Quard telephoned
+Gloucester.
+
+"It's all right," he announced, beaming as he emerged from the
+booth--"Pete's ready to commence tomorrow aft'noon. Now I got to hustle
+and round up the rest of the bunch."
+
+"Where will it be?" asked Joan.
+
+"Don't know yet--I'll 'phone you where in the morning, at the
+latest...."
+
+Hastening home, Joan plunged at once into the study of her part, with
+the greater readiness since the occupation was anodynous to an uneasy
+conscience. Though she was always what is known as a "quick study," this
+new rôle was a difficult one; by far the longest, and unquestionably the
+most important, it comprised fully half the total number of "sides" in
+the manuscript--nearly half as many again as were contained in Quard's
+part, the next in order of significance. And her application, that
+first day, was hindered by a perplexing interruption in the early
+evening, when a box was delivered to her containing a dozen magnificent
+red roses and nothing else--neither a card nor a line of identification.
+At first inclining to credit Quard with this extravagance, on second
+thought she remembered Marbridge, whom she felt instinctively to be
+quite capable of such overtures. And her mind was largely distracted for
+the rest of the night by empty guesswork and futile attempts to decide
+whether or not she ought to run the risk of thanking Quard when next
+they met.
+
+Eventually she made up her mind to let the sender furnish the clue; and
+inasmuch as Quard never said anything which the most ready imagination
+could interpret as a reference to the offering, she came in time to feel
+tolerably satisfied that the anonymous donor must have been Marbridge.
+
+It was to be long, however, before this surmise could be confirmed;
+although, on getting home Saturday night, after a hard day's work and a
+late dinner with Quard, she was informed that a gentleman had called and
+asked for her during the afternoon, but had left neither word nor card.
+The same thing happened on Monday, under like circumstances; after which
+the attempts to see her were discontinued.
+
+And then, Joan noticed that Venetia didn't call....
+
+Interim, the task of whipping "The Lie" into shape went on so steadily
+that she had little leisure to waste wondering about Marbridge or
+feeling flattered by his interest; and she even ceased, except at odd
+moments, to regard Quard as a man and therefore a possible conquest:
+Gloucester drilled the actors without mercy and spared himself as
+little.
+
+A pursy body, with the childish, moon-like face of a born comedian, he
+applied himself to the work with the extravagant solemnity of a minor
+poet mouthing his own perfumed verses at a literary dinner. During
+rehearsals his manner was immitigably austere, aloof, inspired; but
+however precious his methods, he achieved brilliant effects in the
+despised medium of clap-trap melodrama; and under his tutelage even Joan
+achieved surprising feats of emotional portrayal--and this, singularly
+enough, without learning to despise him as she had despised Wilbrow.
+
+She learned what either Wilbrow had lacked the time to teach her or she
+had then been unable to learn: how to assume the requisite mood the
+moment she left the wings and drop it like a mask as soon as she came
+off-stage again. She was soon able to hate and fear Quard with every
+fibre of her being throughout their long scenes of dialogue, and to chat
+with him in unfeigned amiability both before and after. And her liking
+and admiration for the man deepened daily, as Gloucester deftly moulded
+Quard's plastic talents into a rude but powerful impersonation.
+
+Partly because of the brevity of the little play, which enabled them to
+run through it several times of an afternoon as soon as they were
+familiar with its lines, and partly because Gloucester was hard up and
+in a hurry to collect his fee, the company was prepared well within the
+designated ten days. And through the agent Boskerk's influence, they
+were favoured with an early opportunity to present it at a "professional
+try-out" matinée, a weekly feature of one of the better-class
+moving-picture and vaudeville houses.
+
+The audiences attracted by such trial performances are the most singular
+imaginable in composition, and of a temper the most difficult--with the
+possible exceptions of a London first-night house bent on booing
+whatever the merits of the offering, and a body of jaded New York
+dramatic critics and apathetic theatre loungers assembled for the fourth
+consecutive first-night of a week toward the end of a long, hard winter.
+
+On Tuesday afternoons and nights (as a rule) they foregather in the
+"combination houses" of New York, animated (save for a sprinkling of
+agents and bored managers) by a single motive, the desire to
+laugh--preferably at, but at a pinch with, those attempting to win their
+approbation. Their sense of humour has been nourished on the sidewalk
+banana-peel, the slap-stick and the patch on the southern exposure of
+the tramp's trousers; and while they will accept with the silence of
+curiosity, if not of respect, and at times even applaud, straight
+"legitimate" acting, the slightest slip or evidence of hesitation on the
+part of an actor, the faintest suggestion of bathos in a line, or even
+the tardy adjustment of one of the wings after the rise of the curtain,
+will be hailed with shrieks of delight and derision.
+
+Before an assemblage of this character, "The Distinguished Romantic
+Actor, Chas. H. Quard & Company," presented "The Lie" as the fifth
+number of a matinée bill.
+
+Waiting in the wings and watching the stage-hands shift and manoeuvre
+flats and ceiling, and arrange furniture and properties at the direction
+of the _David_ (who doubled that rôle with the duties of stage manager)
+Joan listened to the dreadful wails of a voiceless vocalist who, on the
+other side of the scene-drop, was rendering with sublime disregard for
+key and tempo a ballad of sickening sentimentality; heard the feet of
+the audience, stamping in time, drown out both song and accompaniment,
+the subsequent roar of laughter and hand-clapping that signalized the
+retirement of the singer, and experienced, for the first and only time,
+premonitory symptoms of stage-fright.
+
+Through what seemed a wait of several minutes after the disappearance of
+the despised singer--who, half-reeling, half-running, with tears
+furrowing her enameled cheeks, brushed past Joan on her way to her
+dressing-room--the applause continued, rising, falling, dying out and
+reviving in vain attempts to lure the object of its ridicule back to the
+footlights.
+
+At a word from _David_, the stage-hands vanished, and at his nod Joan
+moved on. _David_ seated himself and opened a newspaper while the girl,
+trembling, took up a position near a property fireplace, with an
+after-dinner coffee-cup and saucer in her hands. She was looking her
+best in the evening frock purchased for the week-end at Tanglewood, and
+was in full command of her lines and business; but there was a lump in
+her throat and a sickly sensation in the pit of her stomach as the cheap
+orchestra took up the refrain of a time-worn melody which had been
+pressed into service as curtain music.
+
+Peering over the edge of his newspaper, _David_ spoke final words of
+kindly counsel: "Don't you mind, whatever happens. Make believe they
+ain't no audience."
+
+The house was quiet, now, and the music very clear.
+
+Kneeling within the recess of the fireplace, almost near enough to touch
+her hand, Quard begged plaintively: "For the love of Gawd, don't let
+their kidding queer you, girlie. Remember, Boskerk promised he'd have
+Martin Beck out front!"
+
+Joan nodded--gulped.
+
+The curtain rose. Through the glare of footlights the auditorium was
+vaguely revealed, a vast and gloomy amphitheatre dotted with an
+infinite, orderly multitude of round pink spots, and still with the hush
+of expectancy. Joan thought of a dotted lavender foulard she had
+recently coveted in a department-store; and the ridiculous incongruity
+of this comparison in some measure restored her assurance. Turning her
+head slowly, she looked at _David_, who was properly intent on his
+newspaper, smiled, and parted her lips to speak the opening line.
+
+From the gallery floated a shrill, boyish squeal:
+
+"_Gee! pipe the pippin!_"
+
+The audience rocked and roared. Joan's heart sank; then, suddenly,
+resentment kindled her temper; she grew coldly, furiously angry, and
+forgot entirely to be afraid of that stupid, bawling beast, the public.
+But her faint, charming smile never varied a fraction. Turning, she
+spoke the first line, heedless of the uproar; and as if magically it was
+stilled. A feeling of contempt and superiority further encouraged her.
+She repeated the words, which were of no special value to the
+plot--merely a trick of construction to postpone the ringing of a
+telephone-bell long enough to let the audience grasp the relationship of
+those upon the stage.
+
+In a respectful silence, _David_ looked up from the newspaper and
+replied. The telephone-bell rang. Turning to the instrument on the table
+beside him, he lifted the receiver to his ear and--the plot began to
+unfold.
+
+_David_, the husband, in his suburban home, was being called to New York
+on unexpected business with a client booked to sail for Europe in the
+morning. It was night; reluctant to go, he none the less yielded to
+pressure, rang for the coachman and ordered a carriage, in the face of
+the protests of Joan, his wife. She was to be left alone in the house
+with their little son; for the maids were out and the coachman slept
+beyond call in the stable. Reassuring her with his promise to return at
+the earliest possible moment, _David_ departed....
+
+A brief and affectionate passage between the two was rendered inaudible
+by derisive laughter; but this was almost instantly silenced when Quard
+showed himself at a window in the back of the set, peering furtively in
+at the lonely woman in the unguarded house.
+
+An excellent actor when properly guided, and fresh from the hands of one
+of the most astute producers connected with the American stage, without
+uttering a word Quard contrived to infuse into this first brief
+appearance at the window a sense of criminal and sinister mystery which
+instantly enchained the imagination of the audience.
+
+In the tense silence of the house, the nervous gasp of a high-strung
+woman was distinctly audible. But it passed without eliciting a single
+hoot.
+
+Darting round to the door, Quard entered and addressed Joan. She cried
+out strongly in mingled terror and horror. A few crisp and rapid lines
+uncovered the argument: Quard was the woman's first husband, who had
+married and deserted her all in a week and whom she had been given every
+reason to believe dead. Ashamed of that mad union with a dissolute
+blackguard, she had concealed it from the husband of her second
+marriage. Now she was confronted with the knowledge that her innocently
+bigamous position would be made public unless she submitted to
+blackmail. Promising in her torment to give the man all he demanded, she
+induced him to leave before the return of the servant.... Alone she
+realized suddenly the illegitimacy of the child of her second marriage.
+
+At this, a scene-curtain fell, and a notice was flashed upon it
+informing the audience that the short moment it remained down indicated
+a lapse of five hours in the action.
+
+Already the interest of the audience had become so fixed that it
+applauded with sincerity.
+
+Hurrying to her dressing-room, Joan stepped out of her pretty frock and
+into a negligee. The removal of a few pins permitted her hair to fall
+down her back, a long, thick, plaited rope of bronze. Then grasping a
+revolver loaded with blanks, she ran back to the second left entrance.
+
+The scene-curtain was already up; on the stage, in semi-darkness, the
+_Thief_, having broken into the house by way of the back window, was
+attempting to force the combination of a small safe behind a screen....
+Quard, kneeling to peer through the fireplace, lifted a signalling hand
+to Joan. _David_ stamped loudly, off-stage. In alarm, the _Thief_ hid
+himself behind the screen; and Joan came on, with a line of soliloquy to
+indicate that she had been awakened by the noise of the burglar's
+entrance. As she turned up the lights by means of a wall-switch, Quard
+re-entered by way of the window, in a well-simulated state of
+semi-drunkenness which had ostensibly roused his distrust and brought
+him back to watch and threaten his wife anew....
+
+Here happened one of those terrible blunders which seem almost
+inseparable from first performances.
+
+As Joan wheeled round to recognize Quard, her hand nervously contracted
+on the revolver, and it exploded point-blank at Quard's chest. Had it
+been loaded he must inevitably have been killed then and there; and
+when, pulling himself together, Quard managed to go on with the
+business--springing upon Joan and wresting the weapon from her--the
+audience betrayed exquisite appreciation of the impossibility, and
+shrieked and whooped with joy unrestrained.
+
+It was some minutes before they were able audibly to take up the
+dialogue. And this was fortunate, in a way; for the shock of that
+unexpected explosion had caused Quard to "dry up"--as the slang of the
+stage terms nervous dryness of the throat whether or not accompanied by
+forgetfulness. He required that pandemoniac pause in which to recover;
+and even when able to make himself heard, he repeated hoarsely and with
+extreme difficulty the line called to him by _David_--who was holding
+the prompt-book, in the fireplace.
+
+But the instinct of one bred to the stage from childhood saved him. And
+with comparative quiet restored, he braced up and played out the scene
+with admirable verve and technique. Joan was well aware that, stronger
+though her rôle might be, the man was giving a performance that
+overshadowed it heavily.
+
+He was drunk and he was brutal: _David_ had telephoned that he was at
+the railroad station and would be home in a few minutes; Quard, not
+content with promises, insisted on money, of which the woman had none to
+give him, or her jewels, which were locked away in the safe. When she
+refused to disclose the combination or to open the safe, Quard in
+besotted rage attempted to force her to open it. Struggling, they
+overturned the screen, exposing the _Thief_. Through a breathless and
+silent instant the two men faced one another, Quard bewildered, the
+_Thief_ seeing his way of escape barred. Then simultaneously they
+fired--Quard using the woman's revolver. One shot only took effect--the
+_Thief's_--and that fatally. Quard fell. Joan seized the arm of the
+_Thief_ and urged him from the house; as he vanished through the window,
+she picked up the revolver which Quard had dropped, and turned to the
+door. Frantic with alarm, _David_ entered. Joan reeled into his arms,
+screaming: "I have killed a burglar!"
+
+On this tableau the curtain fell--and rose and fell again and again at
+the direction of the house-manager deferring to an enthusiastic
+audience. Crude and raw as was this composition, the surprise of its
+last line and the strength with which it was acted, had won the
+unstinted approval of a public ever hungry for melodrama.
+
+Quard, revivified, bowing and smiling with suave and deprecatory grace,
+Joan in tears of excitement and delight, and the subordinate members of
+the company in varying stages of gratification over the prospect of
+prompt booking and a long engagement, were obliged to hold the stage
+through nine curtain-calls....
+
+On her way back to her dressing-room Joan was halted by a touch on her
+shoulder. She paused, to recognize Gloucester, of whose presence in the
+house she had been ignorant.
+
+"Very well done, my dear," he said loftily; "very well done. You've got
+the makings of an actress in you, if you don't lose your head. Now run
+along and dry your eyes, like a good girl, and don't bother me with your
+silly gratitude."
+
+With this he brusquely turned his back to her.
+
+But Quard, overtaking her in the gangway, without hesitation or apology
+folded her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And Joan submitted
+without remonstrance, athrill and elate.
+
+"Girlie!" he cried exultantly--"you're a wonder!
+
+"I _knew_ you could do it!... But, O my Gawd! you nearly finished me
+when you let that gun off right in my face!..."
+
+Somehow she found her way home alone, and shut herself up in the
+hall-bedroom to calm down and try to review the triumph sensibly.
+
+Unquestionably she had done well.
+
+Quard had done much better--but no wonder! She wasn't jealous: she was
+glad for his sake as well as for her own.
+
+Of course, this meant a great change. There was to come the day of
+reckoning with Matthias.... She had four letters of his, not one of
+which she had answered.... If "The Lie" got booking, and she went on the
+road with it--as she knew in her soul she would: nothing now could keep
+her off the stage--she would almost certainly lose Matthias.
+
+Quard, however, would remain to her; and of Quard she was very sure.
+That he loved her with genuine and generous devotion was now the one
+clear and indisputable fact in her unstable existence. If only he would
+refrain from drinking....
+
+He was to telephone as soon as he received any encouraging news; and he
+had expected definite word from Boskerk before the afternoon was over.
+In anticipation of being called down-stairs at any minute, Joan remained
+in her street dress, aching for her bed though she was with reaction and
+simple fatigue. But it was nearly eight o'clock before she was summoned.
+
+"That you, girlie?" the answer came to her breathless "Hello?"
+
+"Yes--yes, Charlie. What is it?"
+
+"I've seen Boskerk--in fact, I'm eating with him now. It's all settled.
+We're to open next Monday somewhere in New England--Springfield,
+probably; and we get forty weeks solid on top of that."
+
+"I'm so glad!"
+
+"Sure you are. We're all glad, I guess."
+
+"And--Charlie--" she stammered.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+"Are you--are you all right?"
+
+"Sure I'm all right. Good night, girlie. Take care of yourself. See you
+tomorrow."
+
+"Good night," said Joan.
+
+Hooking up the receiver, she leaned momentarily against the wall,
+feeling a little faint and ill.
+
+Was it simply overtaxed imagination that had made her believe she
+detected a slight constraint in Quard's voice--a hesitation assumed to
+mask blurred enunciation?
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+But when Joan met Quard in the morning her anxious eyes detected in his
+assured bearing none of the nervous unrest, in his clear eyes and the
+even tone of his coarse, pasty-pale skin none of the feverish stains,
+that are symptomatic of alcoholic excesses.
+
+Surprised and grateful, she treated the man with a tenderness and
+sweetness she had otherwise been too wary to betray....
+
+By Thursday it was settled that they were to open on Monday at Poli's
+Theatre in Springfield, for an engagement of a week. If the audiences
+there endorsed the verdict of the first, Boskerk promised Quard a full
+season's booking.
+
+From the Springfield house he was to receive three hundred and fifty
+dollars. He permitted Joan to understand, however, that his fee would be
+no more than the sum he had first mentioned--three hundred dollars.
+
+It was decided to leave New York by a Sunday train which would put them
+down in Springfield in the middle of the afternoon, enabling the company
+to find suitable lodgings before meeting to run through their lines in
+the evening. They would have an opportunity for a sketchy, scrambly
+rehearsal on the stage Monday morning, but dared not depend on that; for
+the greater part of their allotted period would necessarily be consumed
+in the selection of a practicable "set" from the stock of the theatre,
+in making arrangements for suitable furniture properties, and in
+drilling the house electrician in the uncommonly heavy schedule of light
+cues--any one of which, if bungled, was calculated seriously to impair
+the illusion of the sketch.
+
+Joan thoughtfully stipulated for twenty-five dollars advance, against
+expenses. Quard protested, alleging financial straits due to his already
+heavy outlay, but the girl was firm. True, she still had (unknown to
+him) one hundred and twenty-five dollars; but not until near the end of
+their week at Springfield would they know whether or not they were to
+get further booking.
+
+In the end the actor ungraciously surrendered.
+
+She made her preparations for leaving her hall-bedroom with a craft and
+stealth worthy of a burglar preparing to break prison.
+
+If her break with Matthias was to become absolute, she was determined
+not to leave any clue whereby she might be traced.
+
+An enquiry as to the best place to take a dress to be dry-cleaned
+furnished sufficient excuse for lugging away one well-filled suit-case,
+which Joan left at a cheap theatrical hotel a few blocks farther uptown
+and east of Broadway, where she simultaneously engaged a room for
+Saturday night. And on Saturday afternoon she carried away a second
+suit-case containing the remainder of her wardrobe, informing Madame
+Duprat that she was going to visit her folks for a day or two.
+
+But first she had to undergo a bad quarter-hour in the back-parlour.
+
+The sense of her treachery would not lift from her mood. Perhaps she
+felt its oppression the more heavily because of her uncertainty: she
+couldn't yet be sure she wasn't committing herself to a step of
+irrevocable error; she was only sure that she was doing what she wanted
+to do with all her heart, whatever evil might come of it. And there
+would be more ease in companionship with Quard; with him she could have
+her own way in everything, could always be her natural self and still
+retain his respect--and her own. On the other hand, she could not look
+up to him, and was by no means as fond of him as of Matthias. Her
+fiancée was without reproach: he loved her; but his respect she could
+never own. Dimly she recognized this fact; though he thought he
+respected her, and did truly honour her as his promised wife, he was his
+own dupe, passion-blinded. Actually, they were people of different
+races, their emotional natures differently organized, their mental
+processes working from widely divergent views of life.
+
+Even in this instance, Joan's perception of the gulf between them was
+more emotional than thoughtful....
+
+She moved slowly about the room, resentfully distressed, touching with
+reluctant fingers objects indelibly associated in her memory with the
+man of her first love.
+
+Sitting at his desk, she enclosed in a large envelope his letters. Two
+had arrived since Thursday; but these she had not opened. She hardly
+understood why she desired not to open them; she still took a real and
+deep interest in his fortunes; but she was desperately loath to read the
+mute reproach legible, if to her eyes alone, between his lines.
+
+She meant to leave him a note of her own, tenderly contrite and at the
+same time firmly final; but in spite of a mood saturate with an
+appropriately gentle and generous melancholy, she could not, apparently,
+fix it down with ink on paper. Eventually she gave it up: destroyed what
+she had attempted, and sealed the packet, leaving Matthias no written
+word of hers save his name on the face of the envelope.
+
+There remained the most difficult duty of all.
+
+With painful reluctance, Joan removed the ring from her finger (where it
+had been ever since she had last parted with Quard) and replacing it in
+its leather-covered case, sat for a long time looking her farewell upon
+that brilliant and more than intrinsically precious jewel.
+
+At length, closing the case, she placed it on top of the envelope, rose
+and moved to the door. There she hesitated, looking back in pain and
+longing.
+
+There was no telling what might happen to it before Matthias returned. A
+prying chambermaid....
+
+And then it was quite possible that "The Lie" would not last out the
+week in Springfield.
+
+Quard had more than once pointed out: "There's nothing sure in this game
+but the fact that you're bound to close sooner 'n you looked for."
+
+"Maybe I'll be back inside a week," Joan doubted.
+
+There was always that chance; and she had already left one door open
+against her return.
+
+"Anyway, it isn't safe, there. And I can mail it to him, registered,
+when I'm sure he's home."
+
+Turning back, she snatched up the leather case and darted guiltily from
+the study and out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+The stage-wise have long since learned to discount a "slump" in the next
+performance to follow a brilliantly successful première: the phenomenon
+is as inevitable as poor food on a route of one-night stands.
+
+At Springfield, on Monday afternoon, "The Lie" was presented in a manner
+of unpardonable crudity. Quard forgot his lines and extemporized and
+"gagged" desperately to cover the consequent breaks in the dialogue;
+leaving poor Joan hopelessly at sea, floundering for cues that were
+never uttered.
+
+At the last moment it was discovered that nothing had been provided to
+simulate, at the beginning of the second scene, the sound of a clock
+striking twelve, off-stage. The property man could offer nothing better
+than an iron crowbar and a hammer; the twelve strokes, consequently,
+resembled nothing in the world other than a wholly untemperamental
+crowbar banged by a dispassionate hammer. Fortunately, the effect was so
+thin and dead that it convulsed only the first few rows of the
+orchestra.
+
+The light cues went wrong when they were not altogether ignored; and
+once, when Joan having indicated in a brief soliloquy her depression on
+being left alone in the gloomy house, gave the cue "_I must have more
+light_," at the same time touching a property switch on the wall, every
+light in the house other than the red "exit" lamps was "blacked out."
+And at all other times the required changes either anticipated or
+dragged far behind their cues.
+
+The _Thief_ forgot to load his revolver, with the result that Quard
+fired the only shot in their duel--and then fell dead. This so rattled
+_David_ that he anticipated his first entrance and rushed on the stage
+only to back off precipitately while Joan was urging the _Thief_ to go
+and leave her to shoulder his crime.
+
+The only misadventure that failed to attend upon the performance was a
+traditional one of the stage: the theatre cat by some accident did _not_
+walk upon the scene at a climax and seat itself before the footlights to
+wash its face.
+
+Nevertheless the sketch "got over" at the matinée, receiving three
+curtain calls; and at night--when the little company, conscious of its
+crimes, pulled itself together and acted with an intensity of effort
+only equalled by that of its first performance in New York--the house
+gave the piece a rousing reception.
+
+Thereafter they played it well and consistently, with increasing
+assurance as days passed and use bred the habit in them all.
+
+On Thursday Quard heard from Boskerk, and announced that the company
+would return to New York the following Monday to play a six weeks'
+engagement in the Percy Williams houses, beginning with a fortnight in
+Manhattan and winding up in Greenpoint, Long Island. He added that
+Boskerk was busy arranging a subsequent tour which would take them to
+the Pacific Coast and back. He did not add that the agent had
+successfully demanded as much as four hundred and fifty dollars a week
+for the offering from many of the more prosperous houses on their list;
+from which figure the price ranged down to as little as three hundred in
+some of the smaller inland towns. But even at this minimum, Quard had so
+scaled his salary list, contrary to his representations to Joan, that
+his gross weekly profit (excluding personal living expenses) would
+seldom be less than one hundred dollars a week.
+
+Back in New York, Joan established herself temporarily at a small
+and very poor hotel on the west side of Harlem. Since their
+engagement took her no farther south than Sixty-third Street and
+Broadway during its first week, and the second week was played at
+One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, she felt
+tolerably insured against meeting either Matthias or any member of her
+own family.
+
+She really meant to go home some time and see how her mother and Edna
+were doing, but from day to day put it off, if with no better excuse on
+the ground that she was too tired and too busy.
+
+As a matter of fact she was in the habit of waking up at about ten, but
+never rose until noon; spent the hours between three and four and nine
+and ten in the theatre; and was ordinarily abed by half-past twelve or
+one o'clock. Up to the matinée hour, and between that and the night, she
+managed without great difficulty to kill time, spending a deal of it,
+and a fair proportion of her earnings, in the uptown department stores.
+She dined with Quard quite frequently, and almost invariably after the
+last performance they supped together, often in company with friends of
+his--for the most part vaudeville people whom he had previously known or
+with whom he struck up fervent, facile friendships of a week's duration.
+
+They were a quaint, scandalous crew, feather-brained, irresponsible and,
+most of them, destitute of any sort of originality; but their spirits
+were high as long as they had a pay-day ahead, their tongues were quick
+with the patter of the circuits, and their humour was of an order new
+and vastly diverting to Joan. She had with them what she called a good
+time, and soon learned to look leniently upon the irregular lives of
+some who entertained her. Once or twice she was invited to "parties",
+sociable gatherings in flats rented furnished, at which she learned to
+regard the consumption of large quantities of bottled beer as a polite
+and even humorous accomplishment, and to permit a degree of freedom in
+song and joke and innuendo that would have seemed impossible in another
+environment.
+
+Probably she would have felt less tolerant of these matters had Quard
+betrayed the least tendency to "fall off the wagon." But in her
+company, at least, he refrained sedulously from drink; and since his was
+one of those constitutions whose normal vitality is so high and constant
+that alcohol benumbs rather than stimulates its functions, he shone the
+more by contrast with their occasionally befuddled companions.
+
+Joan admired him intensely for the steadfastness of his stand, and still
+more when she saw how established was the habit of regular if not always
+heavy drinking in the world of their peers. No one but herself pretended
+for a moment to regard the reformation of Quard as anything but a
+fugitive whim; and now and again she was made aware that his abstinence
+was resented. She once heard him contemptuously advised to "chuck the
+halo and kick in and get human again." At another time he explained a
+false excuse given in her presence for refusing an invitation: "It's no
+use trying to travel with that gang unless you're boozing. They got no
+use for me unless I'm willing to get an edge on. What's the use?"
+
+There was a surliness, a resentment underlying his tone. Intuitively
+Joan bristled.
+
+"No use," she said sharply. "You know what you're up against better than
+they do. You've got to stick to the soft stuff if you want to keep
+going."
+
+"Oh, I know," he grumbled. "But it ain't as easy as you'd think."
+
+"All right," she retorted calmly; "but I give you fair warning, I'll
+quit you the very first time you come around with so much as a whiff of
+the stuff on you."
+
+"You don't have to worry," he responded. "I'm on all right.... But," he
+added abruptly, "you needn't run away with any notion this piece would
+head for the storehouse if you _was_ to quit it. The woods are full of
+girls who'd jump at your chance."
+
+Joan answered only with an enigmatic smile. It is doubtful if Quard
+himself realized, just then, as keenly as the girl did, the depth and
+strength of his infatuation.
+
+But Joan did not doubt her power. Neither did she overestimate it.
+
+It was toward the end of their "time" in New York that she learned of
+the failure of "The Jade God," the information coming to her through the
+medium of one of those coincidences which would be singular anywhere but
+on the stage. An actress in a farcical sketch, which followed the
+intermission preceded by "The Lie," was assigned to use Joan's
+dressing-room when the latter was through with it. Naturally, the two
+struck up a chatting acquaintance. Joan one time replied to a question
+with the information that "The Lie" was booked for the Pacific Coast,
+and (Matthias in mind) confessed to some curiosity regarding Los
+Angeles. The other actress admitted ignorance of the West, but had only
+that morning received a letter from a sister who was playing with the
+Algerson stock company in Los Angeles. The letter contained a clipping
+describing the immediate and disastrous collapse of "The Jade God,"
+which had been withdrawn after its third repetition. Reading the review,
+Joan was puzzled to recognize some of its references; she was fairly
+familiar with the play, but here and there she encountered strictures
+which seemed to involve scenes she couldn't remember. But of the fact of
+the failure there could be no doubt.
+
+She was genuinely sorry. Her first impulse was to seek Matthias, if he
+were in town, and tell him of her sympathy; her second (discarded with
+even less ceremony than the first) to write to him. Two things held her
+back: sheer moral cowardice, that would not let her face the man whom
+she had failed even as had his play; and the impossibility of explaining
+that she loved the stage more than him or anything else in the
+world--except his ring. And while she never faltered from meaning to
+return this last "before long," she could not yet bring herself to part
+with it. Always it was with her, on her finger when at home and alone,
+in her pocket-book when abroad or with Quard; still in her imagination
+retaining something of its vaguely talismanic virtue; standing to her
+for something fanciful and magic, which she could not name, a visible
+token of the mystical powers that worked for her good fortune....
+
+It was mid-October: sweetest of all seasons in New York; a time of early
+evenings and long, clear gloamings beneath skies of exquisite suavity
+and depth; of crisp and heady days whose air is wine in a crystal
+chalice; when thoughts are long and sweet, gentle with the beauty and
+the sadness of aging autumn.
+
+At the first hint of winter Joan's heart turned in longing to the
+thought of furs. She wasted hours studying advertisements, and many more
+going from place to place, examining, rejecting, coveting. Her fancy was
+not modest: a year ago she would have been delighted with the meanest
+strip of squirrel for a neckpiece; today she felt a little ashamed even
+to price the less expensive furs, and would make no attempt to purchase
+until she had saved up enough money to meet her desires.
+
+And then, one morning--they were playing at the Orpheum Theatre in
+Brooklyn--a messenger brought her a package from one of the Fulton
+Street stores and required a signed receipt. It contained a handsome
+coat of imitation seal with a collar of rich black fur and lined with
+golden brocade. Fitting her perfectly, it enclosed her in generous
+warmth from throat to ankle. Accompanying it was the card of "_Mr.
+Charles Harborough Quard, Presenting 'The Lie,' the Sketch Sensation of
+the Year, Address c/o Jas. K. Boskerk, St. James Building, N.Y._"
+
+Not since that day when she had received his ring from Matthias had she
+been so happy.
+
+Meeting Quard in the gangway outside her dressing-room, before the
+matinée performance, she showed her gratitude by lifting her face for
+his kiss.
+
+In the world in which they existed, kisses were commonplaces, quite
+perfunctory, of little more significance than a slap on the shoulder
+between acquaintances. Not so Joan's: she had set a value upon her
+caresses, a standard peculiarly inflexible with respect to Quard. None
+the less, this was not the second time he had known her lips. But the
+occasion was one rare enough to render him appreciative.
+
+He wound an arm round her, and held her tight.
+
+"Like it, eh, girlie?"
+
+"I love it!"
+
+"Then I'm satisfied."
+
+"But how did you guess what I wanted most?"
+
+"Maybe I did a little head-work to find out."
+
+"It's dear of you!"
+
+"So long's you think so, I've got no kick coming."
+
+She disengaged, drew a pace or two away.
+
+"But what made you do it, Charlie?"
+
+"Well, I can't afford to have my leading lady out of the cast with a
+cold."
+
+Joan shook her head at him in gay reproof.
+
+"Or do you want me to tell you what you know already--that I'm crazy
+about you?"
+
+"Foolish! It's time we were dressing!"
+
+But her laugh was fond, and so was the look she threw over her shoulder
+as she evaded his arms and vanished into her dressing-room.
+
+Quard lingered a moment, with a fatuous smile for the panels of the
+closed door, and wagged his head doggishly. He felt that he was winning
+ground at a famous rate--the difficulties, the coolness and craft of his
+antagonist, considered. And in a way he was right, though perhaps not
+precisely the way he had in mind.
+
+Even before his princely gift, Joan had been thinking a great deal about
+him, and very seriously. Instinctively she foresaw that their
+relationship could not long continue on its present basis of simple
+good-fellowship. Quard wasn't the sort to be content at arm's-length:
+he must either come closer or go farther away, and might be depended
+upon not to adopt the latter course until the former had proved
+impracticable.
+
+And Joan didn't want him to go farther away. She was positive about
+this. But she was also very sure that the arm's-length relationship must
+be abridged only under certain indispensable conditions--decorously--and
+soon, if at all: else she must be the one to withdraw, lest a worse
+thing befall her. It was a problem of two factors: Quard's nature and
+her own; she had herself to reckon with no less than with him; and
+herself she distrusted, who was no stronger than her greatest weakness.
+He attracted her. She often caught herself thinking of him as she had
+thought of no other man--not Matthias, not the Quard of "The Convict's
+Return," not even Marbridge except, perhaps, for one shameful instant.
+
+Something in the lawless, ranging, wanton grain of this man called to
+her with a call of infinite allure: something latent in her thrilled to
+the call and answered.... That way lurked danger, disguised, but deadly.
+
+They moved on to Greenpoint, thence to Trenton for a week.
+
+Daily Quard's attentions became more constant, intimate and tender. They
+were much together, and now far more exclusively together than had been
+possible in New York, where acquaintances commandeered so much of their
+time. In Trenton they lodged at the same hotel, the other members of the
+company finding cheaper accommodations at greater distance from the
+theatre. This increased their close and confidential association. They
+fell into the habit of breakfasting together. Quard, always first to
+rise, would telephone to Joan's room, ascertain how soon she would be
+dressed, and order for both of them accordingly. In return for this
+privilege he had that of paying for both meals.
+
+A negro waiter spoke of Joan one morning, in her presence, as "the
+Missus." When he had retired out of earshot, their eyes sought one
+another's; constraint was swept away in laughter.
+
+"We might's well be married, the way we're together all the time," Quard
+presently ventured.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that," Joan retorted pertly.
+
+"I mean, the way other people see us. I shouldn't be surprised if
+everybody in the hotel thought we was married, girlie."
+
+Joan coloured faintly....
+
+"Well, the room-clerk knows better," she said definitely. "I'd like
+another cup of coffee, please."
+
+Quard snapped his fingers loudly to attract the attention of the waiter.
+
+He grew aware of an awkward silence: that the thoughts of both were
+converging to a common point.
+
+"Folks are fools that get married in the profession," he observed
+consciously. "It's all right if you've got a husband or I've got a wife
+at home--"
+
+"I don't see it," Joan interrupted smartly. "Anyway, _I_ haven't. Have
+you?"
+
+The actor stared, confused. "Have I--what?"
+
+"Got a wife at home?" Joan repeated, laughing.
+
+"No--nothing like _that_!" he asserted with intense earnestness. "I
+mean, it's all right if you've got somebody keeping a flat warm for you,
+some place not too far off Broadway; but if you marry into the
+business--good _night_! You got all the trouble of being tied up for
+life, and that's all."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Managers don't want husband and wife in the same company. They're
+always fighting each other's battles when they ain't fighting between
+themselves. So you're always playing different routes, and the chances
+are they never cross except it's inconvenient and you get caught and
+nominated for the Alimony Club."
+
+"Do you belong?"
+
+"Didn't I just tell you nothing like that?" Quard protested with
+unnecessary heat.
+
+"Well," Joan murmured mischievously, "you seem to know so much about it.
+I only wondered...."
+
+Their place on the bill was near the end, that week: a trick bicyclist
+followed them, and moving-pictures wound up the performance.
+Consequently, by the time they were able to leave the theatre in the
+afternoon the sun was already below the horizon. They emerged the same
+evening from the stage-door to view a cloudless sky of pulsing amber,
+shading into purple at the zenith, melting into rose along the western
+rim of the world. A wash of old rose flooded the streets, lifting the
+meanest structures out of their ugliness, lending an added dignity to
+rows of square-set, old-fashioned residences of red-brick with white
+marble trimmings.
+
+"Which way are you going?" Quard enquired as they approached the corner
+of a main thoroughfare. "Back to the hotel?"
+
+"No; I'm sick of that hole," Joan replied with a vivid shudder. "I'm
+going to take a walk. Want to come?"
+
+"I was just going to ask you."
+
+They turned off toward the Delaware.
+
+It was the twenty-first of November--winter still a month away; yet the
+breath of winter was in the air. It came up cool and brisk from the
+river, enriching the colour in Joan's cheeks that were bright and
+glowing from the scrubbing she always gave them after removing
+grease-paint with cold cream. The blood coursed tingling through her
+veins. Her eyes shone with deepened lustre. They walked with spirit, in
+step, in a pensive silence infrequently disturbed.
+
+"Of course," Quard presently offered without preface, "it's different in
+vodeveal, if you stick to it."
+
+"What's different?"
+
+"Being married."
+
+Joan's eyes widened momentarily. Then she laughed outright. "Gee! You
+don't mean to say you've been chewing _that_ rag ever since breakfast?"
+
+"Ah, I just happened to think of it again," said Quard with the air of
+one whose motives are wantonly misconstrued.
+
+Nevertheless, he wouldn't let the subject languish.
+
+"There's plenty of family acts been playing the circuits Gawd knows how
+long," he pursued, with a vast display of interest in the sunset glow.
+"Look't the Cohans, before George planted the American flag in Longacre
+Square and annexed it to the United States. And they ain't the only ones
+by a long shot. I could name a plenty that'll stick in the big time
+until their toes curl. It's all right to trot in double-harness so
+long's you manage your own company."
+
+"Well?" Joan asked with a sober mouth and mischievous eyes.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"If you're getting ready to slip me my two-weeks' notice, why not be a
+man and say so?"
+
+"What would I do that for?" Quard demanded indignantly.
+
+"Because you're thinking about getting married; and there's only room
+for one leading lady in any company I play in."
+
+"Quit your kidding," the man advised sulkily; "you know I couldn't get
+along without you."
+
+"Yes," Joan admitted calmly, "_I_ know it, but I didn't know you did."
+
+Quard shot a suspicious glance askance, but her face was immobile in its
+flawless loveliness.
+
+He started to say something, choked up and reconsidered with a painful
+frown. A mature man's perfect freedom is not lightly to be thrown away.
+And yet ... he doubted darkly the perfection of his freedom....
+
+They held on in silence until they came to Riverside Park.
+
+Over the dark profile of the Pennsylvania hills the sky was jade and
+amethyst, a pool of light that dwindled swiftly in the thickening shades
+of violet. Below them, as they paused on a lonely walk, the river stole
+swiftly, like a great black serpent writhing through the shadows. A
+frosty wind swept steadily into their faces, making cool and firm the
+flesh flushed with exercise. There was no one near them. A train of
+jewelled lights swept over the railroad bridge and vanished into the
+night with a purring rumble that lent an accent to their isolation. Joan
+hugged about her voluptuously her wonderful coat, stole a glance warm
+with gratitude at the face of Quard. He intercepted it, and edged
+nearer. Aglow and eager, she murmured something vapid about the
+prettiness of the sky.
+
+He answered only with the arm he passed about her. She suffered him,
+lashes veiling her eyes, her head at rest in the hollow of his shoulder.
+The man stared down at her exquisite, suffused face, luminous in the
+last light of gloaming.
+
+"Joan," he said throatily--"girlie, don't you love me--a little?"
+
+Her mouth grew tremulous.
+
+"I ... don't ... know," she whispered.
+
+"I love you!" he cried suddenly in an exultant voice--"I love you!"
+
+He folded her, unresisting, in both his arms, covering her face with
+kisses, ardent, violent kisses that bruised and hurt her tender flesh
+but which she still sought and hungered for, insatiable. She sobbed a
+little in her happiness, feeling her body yield and yearn to his,
+transported by that sweet, exquisite, nameless longing....
+
+Then suddenly she was like a steel spring in his embrace, writhing to
+free herself. Wondering, he tried to hold her closer, but she twisted
+and fended him off with all the power of her strong young arms. And
+still wondering, he humoured her. She drew away, but yet not wholly out
+of his clasp.
+
+"Charlie!" she panted.
+
+"Darling!"
+
+"How do you get married in New Jersey?"
+
+He pulled up, dashed and a little disappointed, and laughed nervously.
+
+"Why, you get a license and then--well, almost anybody'll do to tie the
+knot."
+
+She nodded tensely: "I guess a regular minister will be good enough for
+us."
+
+"I guess so," he demurred; and with another laugh: "I wasn't thinking
+serious' about it, but I guess I might's well be married as the way I
+am."
+
+"Well," she said quietly, "we've _got_ to. It's the only way...."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+And then, suddenly, the face of life was indescribably changed: Joan
+Thursday seemed but a memory, a slight and somehow wistful shadow in the
+shadowed depths of that darkling mirror, yesterday; in her place another
+creature altogether reigned, the Joan Quard of today, woman, actress,
+wife; with a gold band round her finger; mature, initiate of mysteries,
+ripe in wisdom; strong, poised serenely, clear of eye; with added
+graciousness in her beauty, conscious of added powers over Man, but
+discreet in their employment.
+
+She thought a great deal about herself in those days: not, perhaps, more
+than had been common with her in that so-dead yesterday, but much, and
+more profoundly; reading a new meaning into the riddle of existence, so
+changed had all things become since her marriage.
+
+Before her pensive vision Life unfolded rare, golden-vista'd promises.
+
+With another man, or in another stratum of society, she might have
+fulfilled herself wonderfully, even unto her salvation....
+
+To begin with, she was very happy. Fond to distraction of her husband,
+she never doubted that he worshipped her; he gave her quick wits no
+cause to entertain a doubt. They were together always, inseparable. She
+felt that nature must truly have fashioned them solely for one another,
+and could not forget her wonder that their passion should be so mutual,
+so complete. She loved him to distraction: all his traits, his robust
+swagger, his sonorous and flexible tones, the flowery eloquence of his
+gesture, his broad, easy-going, tolerant good-humour, the way he wore
+his clothes and the very cut and texture of them. And she ruled him like
+a despot.
+
+Quard submitted without complaint. She was all his fancy had painted
+her, and something more; recognizing dimly that she excelled him
+variously (although he was quite incapable of analyzing these
+distinctions) he served her humbly, with unconscious deference to her
+many excellences. She was by way of making him a better wife than he
+deserved. If at times conscious of some little irk from her amiable but
+inflexible autocracy, he reminded himself that she was a finer woman
+than any he had ever known, well worth humouring: it wasn't on every
+corner a fellow'd pick up one like Joan.
+
+He liked to follow her into hotel lobbies and restaurants and watch
+people turn to eye her, the men with sudden interest, the women with
+instinctive hostility. It even amused him to quell a too-ambitious stare
+with a fixed, grim, and truculent regard backed by the menace of his
+powerful physique. It gave a man standing, license to swagger, to own a
+woman like Joan.
+
+He came to pander oddly to this vanity--would leave Joan to go to their
+room alone, while he strolled off to a bar to meet some crony or
+acquaintance of the day, tell his best story, and then suddenly excuse
+himself:
+
+"Well, s'long. The wife's waiting for me."
+
+The response rarely failed: "Ah, let her wait; have another drink. Did
+_I_ ever tell you--"
+
+A lifted, deprecatory palm, a knowing look: "No--guess I'll kick along;
+y'see, _she_'s some wife...."
+
+Conscious only of his adoration, Joan was enchanted by their mode of
+life, with its constant shifts of scene, its spice of vagabondage. She
+believed she could never tire of travelling.
+
+Railroad journeys, with their inevitable concomitants of dirt, noise,
+and discomfort, never discouraged her: she really liked them; they were
+taking her somewhere--it didn't much matter where. She even derived a
+sort of pleasure from such nauseating experiences as rising to catch a
+train at four-thirty in the morning, against their "long jumps." And
+there was keen delight in napping in a parlour-car chair or with a head
+upon her husband's shoulder in a day-coach, to wake all drowsy, breathe
+air foul with coal-smoke, and peer through a black window-pane (shadowed
+by her hand) to catch a glimpse of some darkly fulgent breadth of
+strange water, or the marching defile of great alien hills, or a sweep
+of semi-wooded countryside bleached with moonlight--remembering that,
+only a few short months ago, the world of her travels had been bounded
+by Fort George on the north, Coney Island on the south, knowing neither
+east nor west.
+
+She was discovering America: even as she was discovering Life....
+
+Their route from Trenton took them south through Philadelphia,
+Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Norfolk; whence they
+doubled back by steamer to New York, took a Sound boat to Fall River,
+played Boston, and drifted through New England in bitter cold weather,
+eventually striking westward again, via Albany, Buffalo, and the middle
+country.
+
+Quard drew her attention to the fact that it was "a liberal
+education...."
+
+Sometimes she thought pityingly of Matthias, and wondered if he knew she
+was married and what she was doing; and whether he were angry, or
+heart-broken, or eaten up with morbid jealousy; and how he would act
+should chance ever throw them together again. She was sorry for him: he
+had lost her. If only he had been a little more enterprising.... She
+wondered what would have happened if Matthias _had_ been more
+enterprising; he could have possessed her at any time during the brief
+period of their infatuation. If he had married her then, would she be as
+contented as she was now, with Charlie? She doubted it; Quard was so
+completely his opposite....
+
+She ceased to worry about the ring. She meant to return it some day,
+perhaps. Though she did not wear it and had never so much as mentioned
+Matthias to Quard, it remained a possession whose charms tugged at her
+heart-strings. At times she amused herself formulating idle little
+intrigues, with the object (if ever set in motion) of excusing the
+appearance of the jewel upon her hand. But all her schemes seemed to
+possess some fatal flaw, and she was desperately afraid of the truth.
+Meanwhile, the ring lay perdue at the bottom of a work-basket of woven
+sweet-grass which she had purchased shortly after her marriage; twisted
+in an old, empty needle-paper and mixed in with a worthless confusion of
+trash, such as women accumulate in such receptacles, its hiding place
+was well calculated to escape detection by even an informed purloiner.
+
+Quard's tardy engagement ring was set with an inferior diamond flanked
+by artificial pearls. Joan despised it secretly. For a long time it was
+the sole blemish on the bright shield of her happiness....
+
+And then, the night of their opening day in Cincinnati, Quard escorted
+her from the theatre to the hotel, left her at the door, and turned back
+to "see a friend" who happened to be playing on the same bill.
+
+This was quite the usual thing, and Joan went contentedly off to her
+room and in due course to bed, confident that Quard would return within
+an hour.
+
+Five hours later she awoke to startled apprehension of the facts, first
+that she must have dropped off to sleep without meaning to, next that
+Quard had not returned, finally that it was past four o'clock in the
+morning.
+
+With a little shiver of sickening premonition she rose, slipped into a
+dressing-gown, called a bell-boy, and instructed him to look for her
+husband. Some time later the boy reported that the bar was closed and
+the gentleman not to be found.
+
+It was broad daylight when Quard staggered in with the assistance of
+the same bell-boy and his negro dresser. His eyes were glazed, his face
+ghastly, his mind wandered: he was as helpless as a child. With the aid
+of the boys, Joan managed to undress the man and put him to bed. At once
+he fell asleep, with the cold stump of a half-burned cigar obstinately
+clenched between his teeth. It was an hour before the muscles of his jaw
+relaxed enough to release it.
+
+Dressing, Joan left the hotel, swallowed some coffee and rolls,
+tasteless to her, in a nearby restaurant, and wandered about until eight
+o'clock, when she found a drug-store open, and consulted the clerk. He
+advised bromo seltzer and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Armed with these,
+she returned to her husband, and shortly after noon, daring to delay no
+longer, roused him by sprinkling cold water in his face--all other
+methods having failed even to interrupt his stertorous breathing. Even
+then it was some time before she could induce him to swallow the
+medicine, and it required no less than three powerful doses, together
+with much black coffee and followed by a cold bath, to restore him to
+presentable condition. In the end, however, she succeeded in getting him
+to the theatre in time for the matinée.
+
+Through it all she uttered no single word of reproach, but waited on the
+man with at least every outward sign of sympathy and devotion.
+
+His remorse (when another nap at the hotel after the matinée had brought
+him to more complete realization of what had happened) was touching and,
+as long as it lasted, unquestionably sincere. Joan accepted without
+comment his lame explanation as to the manner of his temptation and fall
+during an all-night session at poker "with the boys," and gave genuine
+credulity to his protestations that it would never, never happen again.
+
+But three weeks later in Chicago he repeated the performance, though
+under somewhat less distressing circumstances. As before, he left her in
+the lobby, "to finish his cigar and chin with Soandso." Within an hour
+he was half-led, half-carried to their room, in a hopelessly sodden
+condition. The actor with whom he had been drinking accompanied him,
+apparently quite sober, but puzzled; and after Quard had been helped to
+bed, explained to the girl that her husband's collapse had been
+incomprehensibly due to no more than three drinks.
+
+"I never seen nothin' like it!" the man expostulated, with an air of
+grievance. "There he was, standin' up against the bar, with his foot on
+the rail, laughin' and kiddin', same's the rest of us; and he'd only had
+three whiskeys--though I will say they was man-size drinks; and then,
+all of a sudden, he turns white as a sheet and starts mumblin' to
+himself, and we all thinks he's joshin' until he keels over, limp's a
+rag. If the stuff gets to him like that, he's got no business touchin'
+it, ever!"
+
+These experiences continued at varying intervals; and presently Joan
+began to understand that Quard had not only primarily a weakness to
+tempt him, but a constitutional inability to assert his will-power after
+he had surrendered to the extent of a single drink. One modest dose of
+alcohol seemed to exercise upon him a sort of hypnotic power, driving
+him on whether he would or not to the next, the next, and the
+next--until the nadir of unconsciousness was reached. It was not that he
+invariably succumbed to moderate indulgence, but that once started he
+rarely stopped until his identity was completely submerged. Indeed, the
+way of alcohol with him seemed never twice to follow the same route; but
+its end was invariably the same.
+
+Hoping against hope, fighting with him, pleading, reasoning, threatening
+with him, even praying, Joan endured for a long time--much longer than,
+in retrospective days, seemed possible even to her; for she was honestly
+fond of her husband, far more so than she was ever of any other living
+being save herself.
+
+They reached San Francisco the third week in April. For some time Quard
+had been drinking rather methodically but stealthily. A threat made by
+Joan, while he was sobering up from his last debauch, to the effect that
+on repetition of the offence she would leave him without an hour's
+notice, had frightened the man to the extent of making him hesitate to
+add one drink to another except at intervals long enough to retard the
+cumulative effect; but never a day passed on which, in spite of her
+watchfulness, he did not contrive to throw several sops to the devil in
+possession, if without ever quite losing his wits.
+
+Detected with reeking breath, he would adopt one of three attitudes: he
+was a man, subject to the domination of no woman and of no appetite, had
+learned his lesson and now knew when to stop; or he was sorry--hadn't
+stopped to think--and wouldn't let it go any further; or nothing of the
+sort had happened, he had drunk nothing except a glass of soda-fountain
+nerve-tonic, or possibly it was his cigar that she smelled. With the
+first, Joan had no patience; and since she had a temper, it was the last
+resort in Quard's more sober stages, seldom employed save when potations
+had made him either indifferent or vicious. In his contrition, whether
+real or assumed, she tried hard to believe. But his lies never deceived
+her: to these she listened in the silence of contempt and despair.
+
+On the Wednesday afternoon of their week in San Francisco, the girl did
+a bit of shopping after the matinée; it was half after five before she
+returned to the hotel, and walked into their room to find Quard, with
+his coat off, seated in a chair that faced the door. His back was to the
+windows, through which the declining sun threw a flood of blinding
+golden light, so that Joan's dazzled vision comprehended only the dark
+silhouette of his body.
+
+She said "Hello, dearie!" lightly enough in the abstraction of reviewing
+some especially pleasing purchases, closed the door, walked over to the
+bureau, put down her handbag and a small parcel, and removed her hat.
+Then the fact that Quard had not answered penetrated her reverie.
+Disposing of her hat, she looked half casually over her shoulder, to
+discover that he hadn't moved. Two surmises struck through her wonder:
+that he had fallen asleep waiting for her; with poignant apprehension,
+that he had been drinking again. But this seemed hardly likely: he had
+been entirely rational and unintoxicated during the matinée.
+
+She said sharply: "What's the matter?"
+
+Quard made no answer.
+
+With a troubled sigh she moved to his chair and bent over him. His eyes,
+wide and blazing, met hers with a look of inflexible hostility and rage;
+his mouth was set like a trap, his lips, like his face, were almost
+colourless. The air was pungent with his breath, but intuitively she
+divined that it was not drunkenness alone which had aroused this temper,
+the more dismaying since it was for the time being under control.
+
+From the look in his eyes she started back as from a blow.
+
+"Charlie! What's the matter?"
+
+Quard opened his lips, gulped spasmodically, closed them without
+speaking. The muscles on the left side of his face twitched nervously.
+
+Abruptly he shot up out of his chair, strode to the door, locked it and
+pocketed the key. His face as he turned was terrible to see.
+
+She shrank away, but his eyes held hers in the fascination of fright.
+
+"Why--Charlie!--what--"
+
+He interrupted with an imperative gesture, took a step toward her, and
+shook his hand in her face. Between his thumb and forefinger glittered
+something exquisitely coruscant in the sunlight.
+
+"What's that?" he demanded in a quivering voice.
+
+She moved her head in assumed bewilderment, staggered to recognize the
+symbol of her broken troth with Matthias.
+
+"I don't know. What is it? You keep moving it around so, I can't
+see...."
+
+"There, then!" he cried, steadying the hand under her nose.
+
+Instinctively her gaze veered to her trunk. Its lid was up. On the floor
+lay her work-basket in the litter of its former contents. Her
+indignation mounted.
+
+"What were you doing in my trunk?" she demanded hotly.
+
+Quard's eyes clouded under the impact of this counter attack.
+Momentarily his dazed expression made it very plain that he had taken
+advantage of her absence to drink heavily. And this was even more plain
+in the blurred accents, robbed of the sharpness rage had lent them, in
+which he endeavoured to justify himself.
+
+"I wanted--shew on s'pender button--wanted work-basket...."
+
+Anger returned; his voice mounted: "And I found this! What is it?"
+
+Joan snatched at the ring, but he drew back his hand too quickly for
+her.
+
+"It's mine. Give it to me!"
+
+"Where'd you get it? Tha'sh what I wanna know!"
+
+"None of your business. Give it--"
+
+"T' hell it ain't my business. I'm your husband--gotta right to know
+where you get diamonds"--he sneered--"diamonds like this! I never bought
+it."
+
+"No," she flamed back; "you're too stingy!"
+
+"Stingy, am I?" He faltered swaying. "Tha'snough. I'm tightwad, so
+s'nother guy gets chansh to buy you diamonds. Tha's way of it, hey?"
+
+"You give me that ring, Charlie," Joan demanded ominously.
+
+"You got anotha good guess coming. What I'll give you is jush two
+minutes to tell me name of the fellow't give it to you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Charlie!"
+
+"I don't intend to be fool--any longer. You tell me or--"
+
+He checked, searching his befuddled mind for a compelling threat.
+
+With a shift of manner, Joan extended her hand in pleading.
+
+"Give me the ring, Charlie, and be sensible. I haven't done anything
+wrong. I can explain."
+
+"Well...." Grudgingly he dropped the ring into her palm. But immediately
+her fingers had closed upon it, mistrust again possessed him. "Now, you
+tell me--"
+
+"Very well," she interrupted patiently. "You needn't shout. I don't mind
+telling you now. It's my engagement ring."
+
+"Your _what_?" sharply.
+
+"My engagement ring. I was engaged last summer to Mr. Matthias, before
+we began to rehearse the sketch."
+
+"Engaged?" he iterated stupidly. "Engaged for what?"
+
+"Engaged to be married. He was in love with me. I meant to marry him
+until you and I met the second time--"
+
+"Meant to marry who?"
+
+"Mr. Matthias. We--"
+
+"Matthias? What Matthias?"
+
+"John Matthias, the author--the playwright. He wrote 'The Jade God.'"
+
+Quard wagged his head cunningly. "Y'mean to tell me you was engaged to
+that guy, and--didn't marry him?"
+
+"Certainly. I married you, didn't I, dear?"
+
+"And if that's true, how't happen you didn't give'm back his ring?
+_Eh?_"
+
+"I meant to, Charlie, but he was out of town and I didn't know his
+address."
+
+"That's likely!" The actor laughed harshly. "Tha'sh _good_ one, that is!
+You going to marry him, and didn't know his address. Expect me to
+believe that?"
+
+"It's true, Charlie--it's God's truth."
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"Charlie--!"
+
+"I say, you're a liar! Wha'sh more, I mean it."
+
+Quard waved his hand, palm down, to indicate his scornful disposition of
+her yarn. Then he staggered, steadied himself by clutching the back of a
+chair, and conscious how this betrayed his condition, worked himself
+into a towering rage to cover it.
+
+"I know better. 'F you'd ever got a chance to marry that feller, you'd
+'ve jumped at it. He'd never've got away. You wouldn't 've given him no
+more chance'n you did me--you'd 've pulled wool over his eyes same way.
+_I_ know what'm talking about. You're a _liar_, a dam' dirty little
+liar, tha's what you are."
+
+Joan's colour deserted her face entirely.
+
+"Charlie! don't you say that to me again."
+
+"And what'll you do? Think I care? I know what you'll do, all right,
+because I'm going make you do it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Wha's more, I know now who gave you that ring. I was fool not to guess
+it before. I didn't give it to you--no! Mist' Matthias didn't give it to
+you--no! But somebody _did_ give it to you--_eh?_ Tha's right, isn't it?
+And his name--'s name was _Vincent Marbridge_! Wasn't it?"
+
+He thrust his inflamed face close to hers, leering wickedly.
+
+"Marbridge!" Joan echoed blankly.
+
+"Vincent Marbridge--tha's the feller't give you the ring. He's the
+feller't could do it, too--got all the money in the world--enough to buy
+dozens'r rings--enough to buy you all them good clothes you got hold of
+after you threw me down and before I was ass enough to take up with you
+again! A' that, you were a fool not to get more outa him."
+
+The insult ate like an acid into the pride of the girl. She flushed
+crimson, then in an instant paled again. Her eyes grew cold and hard.
+
+"That will do," she said bitterly. "You've said enough--too much. After
+all I've endured from you--your drunkenness, your--"
+
+There was a maniac glare in the eyes of the man as he thrust his face
+still closer.
+
+"And what'll you do, eh?" he shouted violently. "What'll _you_ do?"
+
+She turned her face aside, in disgust of his reeking breath.
+
+"And what'll _you_ do? Tell me that!"
+
+"I'll leave you--"
+
+"You betcha life you'll leave me. I knew _that_ before you come into
+this room!"
+
+"And I'm sorry I didn't go long ago--"
+
+"The hell you are!" In a gust of uncontrollable frenzy, Quard struck her
+sharply over the mouth. "You go--d'you hear?--you damn'----"
+
+In blind fury Joan flung herself upon him, sobbing, biting, scratching,
+kicking. He reeled back before that unexpected assault, then, sobered a
+trifle by its viciousness, caught her wrists, held her helpless for an
+instant, and threw her violently from him. She fell to her knees,
+lurched over on her side....
+
+The door slammed: he was gone.
+
+[Illustration: The door slammed. He was gone.]
+
+She knew the man too well not to know he would make instantly for the
+nearest bar; the only question was what guise intoxication would assume
+in him, this time. It was possible that he would drink himself raving
+mad and return fit for murder.
+
+She must make her escape with all possible expedition....
+
+Instantly Joan sat up, dried her eyes, convulsively swallowed her sobs,
+and felt of her bruised mouth.
+
+Before her on the carpet the diamond ring winked sardonically in the
+sunset light.
+
+She pondered savagely the wide and deep damnation it had wrought in her
+life.
+
+It seemed impossible that only a few minutes had elapsed since she had
+entered this room, an affectionate, patient, and not unhappy wife. Now
+she sifted her heart and found in it not one grain of the love it had
+once held for Quard. This alone would have rendered irrevocable her
+decision to leave him.
+
+The thing was over--settled--finished.
+
+She gave a gesture of finality.
+
+With all her heart she hoped that the sketch would go to the devil
+without her....
+
+Rising, she went to the mirror, to stare incredulously at the face it
+presented for her inspection, a cruel caricature, lined, distorted,
+blowsy, stained with tears. At this vision, hysteria threatened again.
+
+With a great effort she fought it down, and controlled and smoothed out
+the muscles of her face. Now she was more recognizable. Even her mouth
+was not seriously disfigured; he had struck with the flat of his hand
+only; her lips were sore and slightly but not markedly swollen. A veil
+would disguise them completely.
+
+At the wash-stand she devoted some very valuable moments to sopping her
+face with cold water, and particularly her mouth and eyes. The treatment
+toned down the inflammation of weeping, rendered her flesh firm and cool
+once more, and left her with a feeling of spiritual refreshment, with
+nerves again under control and her will even more inalterably fixed than
+before.
+
+Rouge and powder completed her rejuvenescence.
+
+Turning to her trunk, she took out the tray--and paused with a low cry
+of consternation. From the tumbled and disordered state of its contents,
+it was plain that, having discovered the ring, Quard had searched
+diligently for further confirmation of his suspicions.
+
+With quickening breath, the girl dropped to her knees and hastily but
+thoroughly ransacked and turned out upon the floor all her belongings.
+Within a brief period she satisfied herself of one appalling fact: Quard
+had not only insulted and struck her and cast her off--he had stooped to
+rob her. Her hands were tied: she had not money enough to leave him.
+
+Probably, with the low cunning and fallacious reasoning of dipsomania,
+he had pouched her savings with that very thought in mind. Meaning to
+break with her, to have his scene and satisfy his lust for brutality, he
+had also planned to prevent Joan's leaving the cast of "The Lie" until a
+successor could be found and broken in. Penniless (he had argued) she
+would be obliged to play on, at least until Saturday, to earn her fare
+back East.
+
+It was Quard's practice to carry his money in large bills folded in a
+belt of oiled silk which he wore buckled round his waist, beneath his
+underclothing--with a smaller fund for running expenses in a leather
+bill-fold more accessibly disposed. But Joan (finding a money-belt
+uncomfortable because of her corsets) had adopted the shiftless plan of
+secreting her savings in a pocket contrived for that purpose in an old
+underskirt. And since she had always held her husband rigidly to account
+for her individual fifty dollars per week, she had managed thus to set
+aside about three hundred dollars. Unfortunately, it had been their
+habit to carry duplicate keys to one another's luggage by way of
+provision against loss.
+
+So that now she was left with less than twenty dollars in her
+pocket-book.
+
+She paced the floor in wrathful meditation, pondering means and
+expedients. Once or twice she noticed the ring, but passed it several
+times before she paused, picked it up, and abstractedly placed it on her
+finger.
+
+It did not once occur to her that she could raise money by hypothecating
+the jewel at a pawn-shop: by hook or crook she was determined to regain
+her own money. She was wondering what good it would do her to threaten
+Quard with arrest. Had a wife any right to her earnings, under the law?
+
+After a time, she opened her handbag, found her personal bunch of keys,
+and unlocked her husband's trunk. Her pains, however, went for nothing;
+she investigated diligently every pocket of his clothing without
+discovering a piece of money of any description. But one thing she did
+find to make her thoughtful--Quard's revolver....
+
+Removing this last, she relocked the trunk and rang for a bell-boy. Then
+she put the weapon on the bureau and covered it with her hat.
+
+The youth who answered had an intelligent look. Joan appraised him
+narrowly before trusting him. She opened negotiations with a dollar tip.
+
+"I want you to find my husband for me," she said. "If he's anywhere
+around the hotel, he'll probably be in the bar. But look everywhere, and
+then come and tell me. You needn't say anything to him. I just want to
+know where he is. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+"You'd know him if you saw him--Mr. Quard, the actor?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+"That's all. Hurry."
+
+As soon as the boy was gone she turned again to her luggage, selecting
+indispensable garments and toilet articles and packing them in a
+suit-case. By the time a knock sounded again upon the door, she had the
+case strapped and locked.
+
+"He ain't nowhere about the house, ma'm," the bell-boy reported. "He was
+in the bar a while, but he's went out."
+
+Joan nodded, was dumb in thought.
+
+"Do you want as I should go look for him, ma'am?"
+
+"Can you leave the hotel?" Joan asked quickly.
+
+"I'm just going off-duty now, ma'm; the night shift came on about ten
+minutes ago, at six o'clock."
+
+"And you think you could possibly find him?"
+
+"He took a cab, ma'm. The driver's stand is in front of the hotel. If I
+can find him, I can find where your husband went. Anyhow, it ain't hard
+to follow up a gentleman as--"
+
+"As drunk!" Joan put in when the boy hesitated.
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+Joan weighed the chance distrustfully; but it was at least a chance, and
+this was no time to be careful. Taking a five-dollar gold-piece from her
+scanty store, she gave it to the boy.
+
+"Go find him," she said. "And if he seems to know what he's doing--just
+hang around until he doesn't: he won't keep you waiting long. Then bring
+him to me. But first take this suit-case down to the Union Ferry house,
+check it in the baggage-room, and give me the check when you bring him
+back. And--don't say anything to anybody."
+
+"Yes, ma'm--no, ma'm."
+
+Supperless, she sat down to wait, Quard's revolver ready to her hand.
+
+Twilight waned; night fell; hours passed. Motionless and imperturbable,
+Joan waited on, the tensity of her mood betrayed only by the burning of
+her baleful, dangerous eyes.
+
+At half-past nine a noise of scuffling feet, gruff voices and heavy
+breathing in the hallway, following the clash of an elevator gate,
+brought her to her feet. Going to the bureau, she opened a drawer and
+put the revolver away.
+
+There would be no need of that, now.
+
+Answering a knock, she threw the door wide. Two porters staggered in,
+one with the shoulders, one with the feet of Quard. The bell-boy
+followed. When they had lugged to the bed that inert and insensate thing
+she had once loved, Joan tipped the men and they departed. The boy
+lingered.
+
+"Is there anything more I can do, ma'm?"
+
+"Where did you find him?"
+
+"Down on the Coast. I don't know what wouldn't've happened to him if you
+hadn't sent me after him. He was up an alley--had been stuck up by a
+couple of strong-arms. I seen 'em making their get-away just as I come
+in sight."
+
+She uttered a cry of despair: "Robbed--you mean?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm. He ain't got as much's a nickel on him."
+
+Overwhelmed, Joan sank into a chair. The boy avoided her desolate eyes;
+he was a little afraid she might want part of the five dollars back.
+
+"Hadn't I better send the hotel doctor up, ma'm?"
+
+"Perhaps," she muttered dully.
+
+"Yes, ma'm. And here's the check for your suit-case. Nothing else? Good
+night, ma'm."
+
+The door closed.
+
+Of a sudden, Joan jumped up and ran to the bed in the alcove.
+
+Quard's condition was pitiable, but in her excited no compassion. His
+face was pallid as a death-mask save on one cheek-bone, where there was
+an angry and livid contusion. His hands were scratched, bleeding, and
+filthy, his clothing begrimed and torn, his pockets turned inside out.
+He seemed scarcely to breathe, and a thin froth flecked his slack and
+swollen lips.
+
+With feverish haste she unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and tugged at
+his undershirt. Then she sobbed aloud, a short, dry sob of relief. She
+had discovered the money-belt. In another minute she had unbuckled and
+withdrawn it from his body. She took it to the other room, to the light,
+and hastily undid its fastenings.
+
+There were perhaps two dozen fresh, new bills, for the most part of
+large denominations, folded once lengthwise to fit into the narrow
+silken tube; but someone knocked before she found time to reckon up
+their sum.
+
+Hastily cramming the money, together with the tell-tale belt, into her
+handbag, Joan took a deep breath and said "Come in!"
+
+There entered a grave man of middle-age, carrying a physician's satchel.
+
+He said, with a slight inclination of his head: "Mrs. Quard, I believe?"
+
+"Yes," Joan gasped. She nodded toward the alcove: "Your patient's in
+there."
+
+He murmured some acknowledgment, turning away to the bedside. For
+several minutes he worked steadily over the drunkard. While she waited,
+her wits awhirl, Joan mechanically pinned on her hat.
+
+Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat,
+turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing
+eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street.
+
+"Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear.
+
+"He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right.
+But I need your help. You were going out?"
+
+She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've
+got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the
+performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held
+up--all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday."
+
+"I see. And you can do without him?"
+
+"His understudy'll take his part--we'll manage somehow."
+
+"Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance--a trained nurse."
+
+"Do, please, doctor."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He moved toward the telephone.
+
+"I'll be back in about an hour."
+
+"Very well, Mrs. Quard."
+
+He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it....
+
+Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through
+a side door to the street.
+
+In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry.
+
+Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her
+transcontinental flight.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his
+feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window,
+began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration.
+
+But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not
+come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer
+mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned,
+discovered only an empty impasse.
+
+Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair,
+and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air
+fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like
+that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And
+truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for
+all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson
+border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed
+them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up.
+Curious whim of hers! Curious weather!
+
+Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to
+investigate these unseasonable phenomena.
+
+In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones,
+conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid
+opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow
+sunlight.
+
+In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim
+overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the
+earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an
+improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.
+
+At an open window across the way a public-spirited and extremely pretty
+young woman appeared with a towel pinned round her shoulders and let
+down her hair, a shimmering cascade of gold for the sun's rays to wanton
+with and, incidentally, to dry.
+
+Somewhere at a distance a cracked old piano-organ was romping and
+giggling rapturously through the syncopated measures of Tin Pan Alley's
+latest "rag."
+
+A vision drifted before Matthias' eyes, of the green slopes of
+Tanglewood, the white château on its windy headland, the ineffable blue
+of the Sound beyond....
+
+Incredulous, he turned to consult his calendar: the day was Wednesday,
+the seventeenth of April.
+
+It was true, then: almost without his knowledge the bleak and barren
+Winter had worn away and Spring had stolen upon Town, flaunting,
+extravagant, shy and seductive, irresistible Spring....
+
+For a little Matthias held back in doubt, with reluctant thoughts of his
+work. Then--all in a breath--he caught up hat and stick, slammed the
+door behind him, and blundered forth to fulfill his destiny....
+
+She was seated on a bench, in a retired spot sheltered from the breeze,
+open to the sun, when Matthias, having swung round the upper reservoir,
+came at full stride down the West Drive, his blood romping, his eyes
+aglow, warm colour in his face: for the first time in half a year
+feeling himself again, Matthias the lover of the open skies divorced
+from Matthias of the midnight lamp and the scored and intricate
+manuscripts--that Matthias whom the world rejected.
+
+At a word, her companion rose and moved to intercept him; and at the
+sound of his name, Matthias paused, wondering who she could be, this
+strange, sweet-faced woman, plainly dressed.
+
+"Yes?" he said, lifting his hat. "I am Mr. Matthias--yes--"
+
+"Mrs. Marbridge would like to speak to you."
+
+His gaze veered quickly in the direction indicated by her brief nod. He
+saw Venetia waiting, and immediately went to her, in his surprise
+forgetful of the woman who had accosted him. This last moved slowly in
+the other direction and sat down out of earshot.
+
+"This is awfully good of you, Venetia," he said, bending over her hand.
+"I didn't see you, of course--was thinking of something else--"
+
+"But I was thinking of you," she said. "I've been wanting to see you for
+a long time, Jack."
+
+"Surely Helena could have told you where to find me...."
+
+"I knew we'd run across one another, somehow, somewhere, sometime--today
+or tomorrow, without fail. So I was content to do without the offices of
+Helena. Do sit down. I want so much to talk to you."
+
+"Most completely yours to command," he said lightly, and took the place
+beside her.
+
+But his heart was on his lips and in his eyes, and Venetia was far from
+blind.
+
+"Then tell me about yourself," she asked. "It's been so long since I've
+had any news!"
+
+"Is it possible? I should have imagined my doting aunt--"
+
+She interrupted with a slight, negative smile and shake of her head:
+"Helena doesn't approve of me, you know, and of late there has been a
+decided coolness between the families. I'm afraid George fell out with
+Vincent for some reason--not too hard to guess, perhaps."
+
+He looked away, colouring with embarrassment.
+
+"So," she pursued evenly--"about yourself: are you married yet?"
+
+Matthias started, laughed frankly. "You didn't know about that,
+either?... Well, it's true even Helena couldn't have told you much, for
+I told her nothing.... No, I'm neither married, nor like to be."
+
+"She was so very sweet and pretty--"
+
+"Joan was wholly charming," he agreed gravely, "but--well, I fancy it
+was inevitable. We were lucky enough to be obliged to endure a
+separation of some weeks before, instead of after, marriage; and so we
+had time to think. At least, she must have foreseen the mistake we were
+on the point of making, for the break was her own doing--not mine."
+
+"You think it would have been a mistake?"
+
+"Oh, unquestionably. I confess I'd not have known it, probably, until
+too late, if she hadn't made me think when she threw me over. I hope it
+doesn't sound caddish--but I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief
+when I got back from California and found she'd cleared out without
+leaving me a line."
+
+"I think I understand. And did you never hear from her?"
+
+"Not from--by accident, _of_ her. She was predestined for the stage--I
+can see that clearly now, though I objected then. She was offered a
+chance during my absence, jumped at it, and made a sort of a half-way
+hit in a very successful sketch which, oddly enough, I happened to have
+written--under a pseudonym. It had been kicking round my agent's office
+for a year; he didn't believe in it any more than I did; and I
+disbelieved in it hard enough to be ashamed to put my own name to it.
+That's often the way with a fellow's work; one always believes in the
+cripples, you know.... Well, some actor chanced to get hold of the
+'script one day, fell in love with it and put it on with Joan as his
+leading woman. If it had been anybody else's sketch, I'd never have
+known what became of her, probably. As it was, I knew nothing until I
+got back from the Coast.... I believe they got married very shortly
+after it was produced; and now they're playing it all over the country.
+Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Very," Venetia smiled. "And so your heart wasn't broken?"
+
+He shook his head and laughed: "No!"
+
+But a spasm of pain shot through his eyes and deceived the woman a
+little longer.
+
+"And what have you been doing?" she pursued, meaning to distract him. "I
+mean, your work?"
+
+He shrugged. "Oh, I've had an average luckless year. To begin with,
+Rideout fell down on his production of 'The Jade God'--the only time it
+ever had a chance to get over--and a man named Algerson bought his
+contract and put it on at his stock theatre in Los Angeles. That's why I
+went out there--to see it butchered."
+
+"It failed?"
+
+"Extravagantly!"
+
+"But didn't you once have a great deal of confidence in it?"
+
+"Every play is a valuable property until it's produced," he answered,
+smiling. "This one was killed by its production. Nothing was right: it
+needed scenery, and what they gave it had served a decade in stock; it
+needed actors, and what actors were accidentally permitted to get into
+the cast got the wrong rôles; finally, it needed intelligent stage
+direction, and that was supplied by the star, whose idea of a good play
+is one in which he speaks everybody's lines _and_ his own. Then they
+rewrote most of the best scenes and botched them horribly."
+
+"You couldn't stop them?"
+
+"When I attempted to interfere, I was told civilly to go to the devil.
+Under my contract, I could have stopped them: but that meant suing out
+an injunction, which in turn meant putting up a bond, and--I didn't have
+the money."
+
+"I'm so sorry, Jack!"
+
+"Oh, it's all in the game. I learned something, at least. But the
+greatest harm it did me was to sap the faith of managers here. One
+man--Wylie--who was under contract to produce my 'Tomorrow's People,'
+paid me on January first a forfeit of five hundred dollars rather than
+run the risk after 'The Jade God.'"
+
+"And so you lost both plays?"
+
+"Oh, no; I still have 'Tomorrow's People,' and only a short time ago
+signed up with a manager who isn't afraid of his shadow. We'll put it on
+next Autumn."
+
+"And you believe in that, too?"
+
+"I know it will go," Matthias asserted with level confidence. "It's only
+a question of intelligence at the producing end--and I've arranged to
+get that."
+
+"And meanwhile--you've been working?"
+
+"Oh"--he spread out his hands--"one doesn't stop, you know. It's too
+interesting!"
+
+And then he laughed again. "But, you see, you flatter a fellow into
+talking his head off about himself! Forgive me, and let me do a little
+cross-examining. How are you? And what have you been doing? You--you
+know, Venetia--you're looking more exquisitely pretty than ever!"
+
+And so she was--more strangely lovely than ever in all the long span of
+their friendship: with a deeper radiance in her face, a clearer, more
+translucent pallor, in her eyes a splendour that lent new dignity to
+their violet-shadowed mystery.
+
+"I'm glad of that," she said quietly. She folded listless hands in her
+lap, her eyes seeking distances. "I'm going to be very happy ... I
+think...."
+
+He looked up sharply.
+
+That she wasn't happy now, he could well understand: that Marbridge was
+behaving badly was something rather too broadly published by the very
+publicity of his methods. Marriage had not been permitted to
+interfere--at least, not after his return from Europe--with the ordinary
+tenor of his bachelor ways. Matthias himself had seen him not
+infrequently in theatres and restaurants, but only once in company with
+Venetia--most often he had been dancing attendance upon a Mrs. Cardrow:
+she who had given her lips to Matthias, thinking him Marbridge, that
+long-ago night at Tanglewood. She was said to be stage-struck; and
+Marbridge was rumoured to be deeply, though quietly, involved in the
+financing of certain theatrical enterprises.
+
+Surely, then, Venetia must know what everybody knew, and be unhappy in
+that knowledge.
+
+But now she was so calmly confident that she was "going to be happy"!
+
+He wondered if she were contemplating divorce....
+
+And then in a flash he understood. That woman who had stopped him was
+not of Venetia's caste; if he guessed not wildly, she was a nurse. And
+Venetia afoot instead of in her limousine....
+
+She turned her eyes to his, smiling with a certain diffident, sweet
+sedateness. "You didn't know, Jack?"
+
+He shook his head, looking quickly away.
+
+"But you've guessed?"
+
+"Yes," he replied in a low voice.
+
+Her hand fell lightly over his for a single instant. "Then be glad for
+me, Jack," she begged gently. "It's--it's compensation."
+
+"I understand," he said, "and I'm truly very glad. It's kind of you
+to--to tell me, Venetia."
+
+"It changes everything," she said pensively: "all my world is changed,
+and I am a new strange woman, seeing it with new eyes. I have learned so
+much--and in so short a time--I can hardly believe it. To think, it's
+not a year since that time at Tanglewood--!"
+
+"Please!" he begged.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, Jack. But it's that I wanted to talk to
+you about. You won't mind, when you understand, as I have learned to
+understand.... I tell you, I'm altogether another woman. Marriage is
+like learning to live in a foreign land, but motherhood is another
+world. I find it difficult to realize Venetia of a year ago: she's like
+some strange creature I once knew but never quite understood. And yet,
+little as I understood her, I can make excuses for her: I know her
+impulses were not bad. I know, better than she knew ... she loved you,
+Jack."
+
+"You must not say that, Venetia!"
+
+"But it's true, my dear, most true," she insisted in her voice of gentle
+magic. "The rest ... was just madness, the sort of madness that some men
+have the power to--to kindle in women. It's a deadly power, very
+terrible, and they--who have it--use it as carelessly as children
+playing with matches and gunpowder--"
+
+"Oh, I understand, Venetia, I understand! Don't--"
+
+"No--let me tell you. I've got to, Jack. I've had this so long in my
+heart to tell you!... You must be patient with me, this once, and
+listen.... You must know that I loved you then when I--ran to you--threw
+myself into your arms--made you ask me to marry you and promised I would
+and--and thought that I was safe from _him_ because of my promise. But I
+didn't know myself--nor him. He seemed able to make his will my law so
+easily--so strangely!... Even when I ran away with him, I knew that
+happiness could never come of it.... It was just the madness ... I
+couldn't help myself ... I just could not _help_ myself.... And
+then--ah, but I have paid for my madness--many times over!..."
+
+For the moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. The woman bent
+forward to gain a glimpse of his half-averted face, and searched it
+anxiously with her haunted eyes.
+
+"You do understand, Jack?... You forgive?..."
+
+"There isn't any question of forgiveness," he said. "And I always
+understood--half-way. You know that--you must have known it, or you
+couldn't have said--what you have--to me."
+
+The woman laughed a little, tender, broken laugh.
+
+"I am so glad!" she said softly. "Perhaps it's wrong.... But you've made
+me a little happier. I have needed so desperately someone to confess
+to--someone on whose sympathy I could count. And--Jack--the only one in
+the world was you.... You--you've helped."
+
+She rose, holding out both hands to him, and as he took them and held
+them tight he saw that her lovely eyes were wide and dim with tears.
+
+"You've proved my faith in you," she said--"my gentle man--my knight
+sans peur et sans reproche!"
+
+He bent his head to her hands, but before his lips could touch them,
+very gently she drew them away, and turned and left him.
+
+Bareheaded and wondering, for a long time he stood staring at the spot
+where, in company with the nurse, she had disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan
+had reserved for her sole accommodation--in spite of the strain of
+thrift ingrained in her nature--she retired to it, buttoned securely the
+heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that
+state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then,
+by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out
+the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from
+Quard.
+
+The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She
+hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash.
+
+Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat
+packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of
+her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The
+remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to
+New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in
+one of her stockings.
+
+Then extinguishing the light, she lay back, but not to sleep. The
+pressure of her emotions was too strong to let her lose touch with
+consciousness. As a general rule, sleeping-cars had no terrors for Joan;
+never a nervous woman, her thoroughly sound and healthy organization
+permitted her to sleep almost at will, even under such discouraging
+circumstances as those provided by modern railway accommodations. But
+that night she lay awake till dawn flushed the windows with its wash of
+grey, awake and staring wide of eye into the gloom of her section,
+listening to the snores of conscienceless neighbours, and thinking,
+thinking--thinking endlessly and acutely.
+
+But they were thoughts singularly uncoloured by remorse for what she had
+done or fear of its consequences.
+
+She was not in the least sorry she had taken Quard's money; she was
+glad. The mere amount of it was proof enough for Joan that her husband
+had lied to her about the earnings of the sketch, had lied from the very
+beginning; otherwise he could by no means have laid by so much in the
+term of their booking to date. And for that, he deserved to suffer. She
+was only sorry he might not be made to understand how heavily he was
+paying for those months of deception. But that was something Quard would
+never know: with the story of the bell-boy he must be content; he must
+go through life placing the blame of his misfortune upon the heads of
+those nameless "stick-up men" of the Barbary Coast.
+
+Nor was he likely to suffer otherwise. Joan was confident the man would
+manage somehow to find his feet financially, almost as soon as
+physically. A telegram to his agent, Boskerk, would bring him aid if all
+else failed; the play was too constant an earner of heavy commissions
+for Boskerk to let it fall by the wayside for lack of a few hundred
+dollars. So was it too strong a "draw" on the vaudeville circuits to be
+blacklisted and barred by managers because of the temporary break-down:
+something which Quard would readily explain and excuse (and Joan could
+imagine how persuasively) with his moving yarn of foot-pads and
+knock-out drops. Nor would it be more than a temporary break-down; with
+Quard restored to his senses, the absence of the leading woman would
+prove merely a negligible check. Joan entertained no illusions as to her
+indispensability: once, in Denver, when she had been out of the cast for
+two consecutive performances, suffering with an ulcerated tooth, another
+actress had gone on and actually read the part from manuscript without
+materially lessening the dramatic effect of the playlet as a whole.
+Other women by the score could be found to fill her place acceptably
+enough, if few as handsomely (Joan soothed her pride with this
+reservation). "The Lie" would go on its conquering way without
+her--never fear!
+
+And Quard? Joan curled a lip: _he_ wouldn't pine away for her. She had
+come to know too well his shallow bag of tricks; and life to him was not
+life if he lacked one before whose dazzled vision he could air his
+graces and accomplishments--strut and crow and trail a handsome wing in
+the dust. Looking back she could see very clearly, now, how love had
+waned as soon as lust was sated in the man. That night in Cincinnati had
+been the turning point: he had refrained from drink only as long as his
+wife continued to intoxicate his senses.
+
+And Joan?... In the stifling gloom of her curtained section the girl
+stretched luxuriously, breathed deep, and smiled a secret, enigmatic
+smile. No more than he, would she waste herself away with grief and
+longing. She was no longer another's but now her own mistress: a free
+adventurer, by the gold band upon her finger licensed to cruise with
+letters of marque.
+
+Shortly before sunrise she fell asleep, still smiling, and slept on
+sweetly well into mid-morning. Then, rising, she refreshed herself in
+the wash-room, and went to a late breakfast with countenance as clear
+and firm and bright as if she had never known a wakeful hour.
+
+The eyes of men followed her wherever she moved, and when she was seated
+alone in her section, dreaming over a magazine or gazing pensively out
+of the window, men discovered errands that took them to and fro in her
+vicinity more often than was warranted by any encouragement she gave
+them. For she gave them none, she ignored them every one. She was
+through with Man for good and all!
+
+It was a brand new rôle, and to play it diverted her immensely for the
+time being....
+
+She spent the greater part of her waking hours, during the next few
+days, planning what she would do with all that money. Clothes, of
+course, figured ever first in these projections, and then a suite of
+rooms at some ostentatious hotel, and taxicabs when she went out to call
+on managers. How many times hadn't she heard Maizie Dean solemnly affirm
+that "a swell front does more to put you in _right_ than anything else,
+with them lowlifers"?
+
+And again she was pleasurably diverted by a vision of herself,
+extravagantly gowned, returning to recount her Odyssey to an admiring
+audience composed of Ma, Edna, and, perhaps, Butch; at the close of
+which she would distribute largesse, not forgetting to return Butch's
+loan with open-handed interest, and go on her way rejoicing, pursued by
+envious benedictions....
+
+New York received her like a bridegroom, clothed in April sunshine as in
+a suit of golden mail, amazingly splendid and joyous. After that weary
+grind of inland towns and cities, differing one from another only in
+degrees of griminess, greyness, and dullness, New York seemed Paradise
+Regained to Joan. She had not believed it could seem so beautiful, so
+magnificent, so sensuously seductive.
+
+In the exaltation of that delirious hour she plunged madly into a
+department store near the Pennsylvania Station, even before securing
+lodgings, and bought herself a pair of cheap white kid gloves, simply
+for the sheer voluptuousness of possessing once again something newly
+purchased in New York.
+
+It was the beginning of an orgy. Joan hadn't thought how shabby and
+travel-worn she must seem until she donned those fresh and staring
+gloves and saw them in relief against the wrinkled and dusty garments
+she had worn across the continent.
+
+Thoughtful, she sought a nearby mirror and looked herself over, then
+shook her head and turned away to check her suit-case at the parcels
+desk and surrender herself body and mind to the sweet dissipation of
+clothing herself afresh from top to toe....
+
+But first of all she visited the hairdressing and manicuring department:
+she meant to be altogether spick-and-span before venturing forth to woo
+and win anew this old and misprized lover, her New York.
+
+It was the head saleswoman of the suit department whose remote disdain
+led Joan deeper into extravagance.
+
+The girl had selected a taffeta costume which, while by no means the
+most expensive or the handsomest in stock, possessed the advantage of
+fitting well her average figure, requiring no alterations. On paying for
+it she announced her desire to put it on at once and have her old suit
+sent home.
+
+"Reully?" drawled the saleswoman, disappointed in her efforts to induce
+the girl to buy a higher-priced suit which did require alterations.
+Conjuring a pencil from the fastnesses of her back-hair, she produced an
+order pad. "Miss--what did you say? Ah, Thursday! Thanks. What numba,
+please? _Is_ it in the city?"
+
+Joan flushed, but controlled her impulse to wither and blast this
+insolent animal.
+
+"The Waldorf-Astoria," she said quietly--though never once had she
+ventured within the doors of that establishment--and withdrew in triumph
+to make her change of clothing.
+
+And having committed herself to this extent, she enjoyed ordering
+everything sent to that hotel, which in her as yet somewhat naïve
+understanding was synonymous with the last word in the sybaritism of
+metropolitan life.
+
+Her long experience on the road had served thoroughly to break her in to
+the ways of hotels, however, and she betrayed no diffidence in the
+matter of approaching the room-clerk for accommodations. Nor did she,
+apparently, find anything dismaying in the price she was asked to pay
+for a bedroom with private bath. It was only when, at length relieved
+of the attentions of the bell-boy whose unconcealed admiration alone was
+worth the quarter Joan gave him as a tip, she had inspected first her
+new quarters and then herself in a pier-glass, that the girl gave
+herself over to alternate tremors of self-approval and trepidation.
+These last were only increased when she reckoned up the money she had
+left, and appreciated how much she had spent in that one wild afternoon
+of shopping.
+
+On the other hand, she reminded herself, a complete new wardrobe was a
+necessity to one whose former outfit was lost beyond recall. Quard would
+never have forwarded the clothing she had left behind in San Francisco,
+even if she could have found the effrontery to write and demand it. And
+if she had expended upwards of five hundred dollars since reaching New
+York, there was less extravagance in that than might have been
+suspected; she had purchased cannily in almost every instance and, at
+worst, but few things that she could well have done without in that
+sphere of life to which she felt herself called.
+
+The excitement of unwrapping those parcels which began presently to
+arrive in shoals, and of reviewing such purchases as she had not worn to
+the hotel on her back, in time completely reassured her. It was with the
+composure of restored self-confidence and esteem that she presently went
+down to dinner.
+
+Conscious that she was looking her handsome best in a modish afternoon
+gown, she was able to receive the attentions of the head-waiter with
+just the proper degree of indifference, to order a simple meal and
+consume it appreciatively without seeming aware that she dined in
+strange surroundings.
+
+But all the while she was consumed with admiration of herself for her
+audacity, as well as with not a little awe-stricken wonder at the child
+of fortune, who in the space of one brief year--of less, indeed, than
+that full period--had risen from the stocking-counter of a department
+store and the squalor and poverty of East Seventy-sixth Street to the
+dignity of a leading woman and the affluence of lodging at the Waldorf!
+
+True, she now lacked an engagement; but she had to support her demands
+for new employment the prestige of a successful season with "The
+Lie"--"the vaudeville sensation of the year," as Quard had truthfully
+described it.
+
+Need she fret herself with vain questionings of an inscrutable future,
+who had made such amazing progress in so short a time?
+
+Surely she was justified in assuming that the end for her was not yet,
+that she was dedicated to some far richer and more gorgeous destiny than
+any she had ever conceived in her most wild imaginings.
+
+She had only to watch herself: she was her own sole enemy, with her
+fondness for the admiration of men and their society. Let them realize
+that weakness, and she was lost, doomed to the way too many capable
+girls had gone, to the end of infamy and despair. But if only she had
+the wit and art to make men think her weakness theirs....
+
+And that much Joan was sure she possessed: she believed she had learned
+to know Man better than herself.
+
+She meant to go far, now, a great deal farther than she had ever thought
+to go in those quaint, far-off days when the crown of her ambition had
+been to paint her pretty face, wear silken tights upon her pretty legs,
+and beat a drum in the chorus of Ziegfield's Follies.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+After dinner Joan treated herself to the experience of lounging in one
+of the corridors of the hotel, the one (she fancied: she wasn't sure)
+known through the Town as "Peacock Alley."
+
+She pretended to be waiting for somebody, made her gaze seem more
+abstracted than demure. Inwardly she quivered with the excitement, the
+exaltation of forming a part of that rich and sensuous scene.
+
+There were women all about her, many women of all ages and from every
+grade of society, alike in one respect alone, that they were radiantly
+dressed and, like Joan, found pleasure in sunning themselves in the
+soft, diffused glow of the many shaded electric lamps as well as in the
+regard, as a rule less shaded, of that endless parade of men who moved,
+sometimes alone, again with other men, more commonly with women,
+continually from one part to another of the hotel.
+
+Muted strains from an excellent orchestra, not too near, added the final
+touch of enchantment to this ensemble.
+
+Entranced though, indeed, seeming little more conscious of her
+surroundings than one in a day-dream, Joan was acutely sensitive to all
+that passed in her vicinity. Not a woman came within the range of her
+vision without being critically inspected, dissected, analyzed,
+catalogued, both as to her apparel and as to the foundations for her
+pretensions to social position or beauty. Not a man strolled by, were he
+splendid in evening dress or merely "smart" in the ubiquitous "sack
+suit" of the period, without being scrutinized and appraised with a
+minute attention to detail that would have flattered him had it been
+less covert.
+
+Joan felt the lust for this life burning like a fire through all her
+being: there was nothing she could imagine more desirable than to live
+always as lived, apparently, these hundreds of well-groomed,
+high-spirited, carefree people....
+
+She had been steeping her soul in the blandishments of this atmosphere
+for fully half an hour, and was beginning to think it time to return to
+her room, when she was momentarily startled out of her assumed
+preoccupation by sight of one who hadn't been far from her thoughts at
+any time since her break with Quard.
+
+He came walking her way from the general direction of the bar, with
+another man--both attired as richly as masculine conventions permit in
+America, and not altogether unconscious of the fact, each in his way
+guilty of a mild degree of swagger. Of the two, the one betraying the
+most ease and freedom from ostentation was one known to Joan, chiefly
+through the medium of his portraits published in _The Morning Telegraph_
+and other theatrical organs, as "Arlie" Arlington, a producing manager
+locally famous both for his wit and the shrewdness and success with
+which he contrived to gauge, year in, year out, public taste in musical
+comedies. Broadway had tagged him "the only trustworthy friend of the
+Tired Business Man." Infrequently Arlington adventured in plays without
+music or dancing, but as a rule with far less success.
+
+His companion, the man whom, Joan felt, she had been subconsciously
+waiting for ever since entering the hotel, was Vincent Marbridge.
+
+She was impressed with the appositeness of his appearance there to her
+unexpressed desire, this man who had been so plainly struck by her
+charms at first sight and who was credited with silent partnership in
+many of Arlington's enterprises. And comprehending for the first time
+fully how much she had been subjectively counting on meeting him again
+and enlisting his sympathies--his sympathies at least--she steeled
+herself against the shock of recognition, lest she betray her fast
+mounting anxiety. He must not for a moment be permitted to suspect she
+considered him anything but the most distant of acquaintances or
+believed him to have been the anonymous author of that magnificent gift
+of roses....
+
+But Marbridge passed without seeing her, at all events without knowing
+that he saw her. Rolling a little as he walked, with that individual
+sway of his body from the hips, he leaned slightly toward Arlington and
+gesticulated with immense animation while recounting some inaudible
+anecdote which seemed to amuse both men mightily. And in the swing of
+his narrative his glance, wandering, flickered across Joan's face and on
+without in the least comprehending her as anything more than a lay
+figure in a familiar setting.
+
+But Arlington, less distracted, looked once keenly, and after he had
+passed turned to look again.
+
+In spite of this balm to her vanity, Joan flushed with chagrin. She knew
+in her heart that Marbridge had not other than inadvertently slighted
+her; yet she felt the cut as keenly as though it had been grossly
+intentional.
+
+Nevertheless she waited there for many minutes more, in the hope that he
+would return and this time know her.
+
+At length, however, she saw the two men again, at some distance,
+standing by the revolving doors at the Thirty-third Street entrance.
+Both now wore top-coats and hats. Marbridge was still talking, and
+Arlington listening with the same expression of faintly constrained but
+on the whole genuine amusement. And almost as soon as Joan discovered
+them, they were joined by two women in brilliant evening gowns and
+wraps. An instant later the party was feeding itself into the
+inappeasable hopper of the revolving door, and so disappeared.
+
+A prey to a sudden sensation of intense loneliness and
+disappointment--and with this a trace of jealousy; for in spite of the
+distance she had been able to see that both women were very
+lovely--Joan got up and returned to her room....
+
+An hour later she rose from a restless attempt to go to sleep, went to
+the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to find out whether or
+not Mr. Vincent Marbridge was a guest of the hotel.
+
+The answer was in the affirmative, if modified by the information that
+the party wasn't in just then.
+
+Intensely gratified, the girl went back to bed and promptly fell asleep
+formulating ingenious schemes to meet Marbridge by ostensible accident.
+
+On the following day she lunched at the hotel, spent two fruitless hours
+in its public corridors between tea time and time to dress for dinner,
+and another in Peacock Alley after dinner, seeing nothing whatever of
+Marbridge.
+
+And the day after provided her with a fatiguing repetition of this
+experience.
+
+She began to be tremendously bored by this mode of existence, to sense
+the emptiness, the vapidity of hotel life for a friendless woman.
+
+Once or twice she revived and let her fancy play about her project to
+revisit her family in the guise of Lady Bountiful, but only to defer its
+execution against the time when she could go to them with another
+engagement to drive home the stupendous proportions of her success.
+
+Besides (she told herself) they seemed to be worrying along without her,
+all right. If they cared anything about her, they could have written, at
+least; Edna had the West Forty-sixth Street address....
+
+Not once or twice but many a time and oft she found herself yearning
+back to the homely society of the Sisters Dean's salon in the
+establishment of Madame Duprat. And though she held back from revisiting
+the house through fear of meeting Matthias, she wasted many an hour
+promenading Broadway from Thirty-eighth Street north to Forty-eighth,
+in the hope of encountering Maizie or May or one of their friends.
+
+But it was singularly her fate to espy not one familiar face among the
+multitude her wistful eyes reviewed during those dreary mid-afternoon
+patrols.
+
+Everybody she knew, it would seem, was either busy or resting out of
+town.
+
+On her fourth morning at the Waldorf, reading _The Morning Telegraph_
+over the breakfast tray in her room, Joan ran across an illuminating
+news item that carried a Buffalo date line. It chronicled the first
+performance of Arlington's most recent venture, "Mrs. Mixer," announced
+as a satirical comedy of manners by an author unknown either to Joan or
+to fame, and projected by Arlington as a vehicle to exploit the putative
+talents of Nella Cardrow, "the stage's latest recruit from the Four
+Hundred." The Buffalo performance was, it appeared, the first of a
+fortnight's trial on the road, following which the production was to be
+withdrawn pending a metropolitan début in the Autumn.
+
+The story of the first night was infused with a thinly sarcastic humour.
+
+"After the final curtain," it pursued, "the audience filed reverently
+from the house, omitting flowers, and Arlie Arlington broke a track
+record reaching the nearest Western Union office to summon several
+well-known ante-mortem specialists of New York to the bedside of the
+patient. Meanwhile, Vincent Marbridge was hastily organized into a posse
+of one to prevent Undertaker Cain from laying hands upon the sufferer
+and carting it off to what might prove premature interment in the
+mausoleum of his celebrated storage warehouses...."
+
+Dropping the paper, Joan went directly to the telephone and asked the
+office to have her bill ready within an hour's time.
+
+From this she turned to pack her new possessions in a trunk as new.
+
+It had never occurred to her that Marbridge might have left the hotel.
+
+Now she said that it was "just her luck!..."
+
+By one o'clock that afternoon she had shifted bag and baggage to a
+stuffy and poorly furnished bedchamber in a crowded, noisy, and not
+overclean theatrical hotel situated on a corner of Longacre Square.
+
+This establishment consisted of an old and rambling structure of four
+storeys, of which the street floor was given over to tradesmen. An
+all-night drug-store held the corner shop, while other subdivisions were
+occupied by a "tonsorial parlor," a dairy-lunch room in the favour of
+many taxicab chauffeurs, a boot-blacking business, and a theatrical
+hair-dresser's. Next door, off Broadway, stood one of those reticent
+brown-stone residences with perennially shuttered windows and a
+front-door to all appearances hermetically sealed, but negotiable, none
+the less, to those whom fortune had favoured with the password and
+sufficient money and witlessness to make them welcome with proprietors
+of crooked gambling layouts. Across the street rose the side wall of a
+theatre, decorated with an angular iron fire-escape.
+
+The day was almost unseasonably warm, but the hour appointed when the
+city should blossom out in awnings had not arrived. Joan's room was hot
+with sunlight that mercilessly enhanced the shabbiness of all its
+appointments, from the stained and threadbare carpet to the cheap bureau
+with its mottled, dark mirror, and the scorched and blistered edges of
+its top where cigarettes had been suffered to burn out, forgotten.
+
+But when Joan had unpacked and disposed of her belongings, she went to
+the window as she was, in a loose kimono generously open at the throat,
+and stood there for a long time, contentedly looking out.
+
+Taxicabs darted or stood with motors sonorously rumbling in the street
+below. Round the corner, Longacre Square roared with the traffic of its
+several lines of surface-cars and its unending procession of
+motor-driven vehicles. The windows of the theatre across the way were
+open, and through them drifted the clatter of a piano with the surge of
+half a hundred feminine voices repeating over and over the burden of a
+chorus--betraying the fact that a rehearsal was in progress. At one of
+the open fire-escape exits lounged a youth in his shirt-sleeves, smoking
+a cigarette, and conversing amiably with a young woman in a
+stiffly-starched white shirtwaist, ankle-length skirt, and brazen hair:
+principals, Joan surmised, waiting for their turn, when the chorus had
+learned its business acceptably.
+
+Nearer at hand, in the room to the right of Joan's, a woman with a good
+voice was humming absently an aria from "La Tosca," while to the left
+another woman was audible, her strained and nervous accents stuttering
+on in an endless monologue of abuse, evidently aimed at the head of a
+husband who, if he had been "drinking again," retained at least wit
+enough to attempt no sort of interruption or rejoinder.
+
+Joan smiled in comprehension.
+
+Breathing long and deep of tepid air flavoured strongly with dust and
+the effluvia of dead cigars and cigarettes, she turned away from the
+window, lifted her arms and spread them wide, luxuriously.
+
+"Thank God!" she murmured with profound sincerity--"for a place you can
+stretch in!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+With scant delay Joan began to pick up acquaintances: nothing is easier
+in that milieu to which the girl dedicated herself.
+
+The process of widening her circle began with meeting the girl whom Joan
+had heard singing in the adjoining bedchamber. They passed twice in the
+corridors of the Astoria Inn before Joan had been resident there
+twenty-four hours, and on the second occasion the girl with the voice
+nodded in a friendly way and enquired if Joan didn't think the weather
+was simply awf'ly lovely today. Joan replied in the affirmative, and
+their acquaintanceship languished for as long as twelve hours. Then,
+toward six in the evening, the girl presented herself at Joan's door in
+a condition of candid deshabille, wishing to borrow a pair of
+curling-irons. Being accommodated, she came on into the room, perched
+herself on the edge of the bed, and made herself known.
+
+Her name was Minnie Hession and she had been singing in the chorus for
+seven years. Originally a prettyish, plump-bodied brunette, she was at
+present what she herself termed "black-and-tan": in the middle of the
+process of "letting her hair go back." Her father was Chief of Police of
+some Western city (name purposely withheld: Joan was, however, assured
+that she would be surprised if she knew _what_ city) and her folks had
+heaps of money and had been wild with her when she insisted on going on
+the stage.
+
+"But, goodness, dearie, when you've got tempryment, whatcha goin' to do?
+Nobody outsida the business ever understands."
+
+All the same, much as the folks disapproved of her carving out a career
+for herself, whenever she got hard up all she had to do was telegraph
+straight back home....
+
+She was, of course, at present without employment; but Joan was advised
+to wait until Arlie Arlington got back into Town; Arlie never forgot a
+girl who had not only a good voice but _some_ figure, if Miss Hession
+did say it herself.
+
+They went shopping together the following afternoon, and in the evening
+dined together at a cheap Italian restaurant, counterpart of that to
+which Quard had first introduced Joan and the Sisters Dean. Joan paid
+the bill, by no means a heavy one, and before they went home stood treat
+for "the movies."
+
+After that their friendship ripened at a famous rate, if exclusively at
+Joan's expense.
+
+Before it had endured a week Joan had loaned Minnie ten dollars. Toward
+the end of its first fortnight she mortally offended the girl by
+refusing her an additional twenty, and the next day Minnie moved from
+the Astoria Inn without the formality of paying her bill or even of
+giving notice. The management philosophically confiscated an empty
+suit-case which she had been too timorous to attempt to smuggle out of
+the house--everything else in her room had mysteriously vanished--and
+considered the incident closed. In this the management demonstrated its
+wisdom in its day and generation: it never saw Miss Hession again.
+
+Nor did Joan.
+
+But through the chorus girl, as well as independently, Joan had
+contracted many other fugitive friendships. She never lacked society,
+after that, whether masculine or feminine. Men liked her for her good
+looks and unaffected high spirits; women tolerated her for two reasons,
+because she was always willing to pay not only her own way but
+another's, and because she was what they considered a "swell dresser":
+her presence was an asset to whatever party she lent her countenance.
+
+Frankly revelling in freedom regained, and intoxicated by possession of
+a considerable amount of money, she let herself go for a time, quite
+heedless of expense or consequence. Within a month she had become a
+familiar figure in such restaurants as Burns', Churchill's, and
+Shanley's; and her laughter was not infrequently heard in Jack's when
+all other places of its class boasted closed doors and drawn blinds.
+
+Inevitably she acquired a somewhat extensive knowledge of drink. Most of
+all she learned to love that champagne which Matthias had been too
+judicious to supply her and from which she had abstained out of
+consideration for Quard's weakness. But now there was no reason why she
+should not enjoy it in such moderation as was practised by her chosen
+associates. She preferred certain sweetish and heady brands whose
+correspondingly low cost rendered them more easy to obtain....
+
+But with all this she never failed to practise a certain amount of
+circumspection. In one respect, she refrained from growing too
+confidential about herself. That she had been the leading woman with
+"The Lie" was something to brag about: the very cards which she had been
+quick to have printed proclaimed the fact loudly in imitation Old
+English engraving. But that she had been wife to its star was something
+which she was not long in discovering wasn't generally known. The
+success of the sketch was a by-word of envy among actors facing the
+prospect of an idle summer; and the route columns of _Variety_ told her
+that, in line with her prediction, Quard had somehow surmounted his San
+Francisco predicament and was continuing to guide the little play upon
+its triumphal course. But Quard himself had always been too closely
+identified with stock companies of the second class to have many friends
+among those with whom his wife was now thrown: actors for the most part
+of the so-called legitimate stage, with scant knowledge or experience
+(little, at least, that they would own to) of theatrical conditions away
+from Broadway and the leading theatres of a few principal cities. So
+Joan kept her own counsel about her matrimonial adventure: its
+publication could do her no good, if possibly no harm; and she preferred
+the freedom of ostensible spinsterhood. Her wedding-ring had long since
+disappeared from her hand, giving place to the handsome diamond with
+which Matthias had pledged her his faith.
+
+Furthermore, such dissipation as she indulged in was never permitted to
+carry her beyond the border-line which, in her understanding, limited
+discretion in her relations with men. She enjoyed leading them on, but
+marriage had made her too completely cognizant of herself to permit of
+any affair going beyond a certain clearly defined point: she couldn't
+afford to throw herself away. And more than once she checked sharply and
+left an undrained glass, warned by her throbbing pulses that she was
+responding a trace too ardently to the admiration in the eyes of some
+male companion of the evening.
+
+But there were only two whom she held dangerous to her peace of mind,
+one because she was afraid of him, the other because she admired him
+against her will.
+
+The first was an eccentric dancer and comedian calling himself Billy
+Salute. A man of middle-age and old beyond his years in viciousness, the
+gymnastic violence of his calling in great measure counteracted the
+effects of his excesses and kept him young in body. He was a constant
+and heavy but what was known to Joan's circle as a safe drinker;
+drunkenness never obliterated his consciousness or disturbed his
+physical equilibrium; in spite of its web of wrinkles, his skin remained
+fair and clear as a boy's, and retained much of the fresh colouring of
+youth. But his eyes were cold and hard and profoundly informed with
+knowledge of womankind. His regard affected Joan as had Marbridge's,
+that day at Tanglewood; under its analysis she felt herself denuded;
+pretence were futile to combat it: the man _knew_ her.
+
+He made no advances; but he watched her closely whenever they were
+together; and she knew that he was only waiting, patient in the
+conviction that he had only to wait.
+
+And thus he affected her with such fear and fascination that she avoided
+him as much as possible; but he was never far out of her thoughts; he
+lingered always on the horizon of her consciousness like the seemingly
+immobile yet portentous bank of cloud that masks the fury of a summer
+storm....
+
+The other man pursued her without ceasing. He was young, not over
+twenty-five or six--an age to which Joan felt herself immeasurably
+superior in the knowledge and practice of life--and happened to be the
+one man of her acquaintance who was neither an actor nor connected with
+the business side of the stage. By some accident he had blundered from
+newspaper reporting to writing for cheaply sensational magazines, and
+from this to writing for the stage. It is true that his achievements in
+this last quarter had thus far been confined to collaboration with a
+successful playwright on the dramatization of one of his stories; but
+that didn't lessen his self-esteem and assertiveness. He claimed
+extraordinary ability for himself in a quite matter-of-fact tone, and on
+his own word was on terms of intimacy with every leading manager and
+star in the country. Nobody Joan knew troubled to contradict his
+pretensions, and despite that wide and seasoned view of life she
+believed herself to possess she was still inexperienced enough to credit
+more than half that he told her, never appreciating that, had the man
+been what he claimed, he would have had no time to waste toadying to
+actors.
+
+He might, if not discouraged, prove very useful to her.
+
+In fact, he promised to--repeatedly.
+
+More than this, his attentions flattered her more than she would have
+cared to confess even to herself. He didn't lack wit, wasn't without
+intelligence, and the power of his imagination couldn't be denied; thus
+he figured to her as the only man of mental attainments she had known
+since Matthias. It was something to be desired by such as this one, even
+though his abnormally developed egotism sometimes seemed appalling.
+
+It manifested itself in more ways than one: in his strut, in the
+foppishness of his dress, in his elaborate affectation of an English
+accent. He was a small person by the average standard, and slender, but
+well-formed, and wore clothing admirably tailored if always of an
+extreme cut. His cheeks were too fleshy, almost plump: something which
+had the effect of making his rather delicate features seem pinched.
+Near-sighted, he wore customarily a horn-rimmed pince-nez from which a
+wide black ribbon dangled like a mourning-band.
+
+His name was Hubert Fowey.
+
+So Joan tolerated him, encouraged him moderately through motives of
+self-interest, checked him with laughter when he tried to make love to
+her, secretly admired him even when his conceit was most fatiguing, and
+wondered what manner of women he had known to make him think that she
+would ever yield to his insistence....
+
+She had been nearly six weeks in New York when she awoke one morning to
+rest in languorous regret of a late supper the preceding night, and to
+wonder whither she was tending, spurred to self-examination by that
+singularly clear introspective vision which not infrequently follows
+intemperance--at least, when one is young.
+
+She was reminded sharply that, since returning to Town, she had made
+hardly a single attempt to find work, beyond having her professional
+cards printed.
+
+And this was the edge of Summer....
+
+Where would the Autumn find her?
+
+Slipping quickly out of bed, she collected her store of money, and
+counted it for the first time in several weeks.
+
+The sum total showed a shocking discrepancy between cold fact and the
+small fortune she had all along been permitting herself to believe she
+possessed. Even allowing for these heavy initial purchases on returning
+to New York, her capital had shrunk alarmingly.
+
+She began anew, that day, the rounds of managers' offices.
+
+Also, she laid down for her guidance a rigid schedule of economies. Only
+by strict observance thereof would she be able to scrape through the
+Summer without work or financial assistance from some quarter.
+
+Characteristically, she mourned now, but transiently, that she had so
+long deferred going to see her mother and Edna--something now obviously
+out of the question; they would want money, to a certainty, and Joan had
+none to spare them.
+
+A few days later she moved to share, half-and-half, the expenses of a
+three-room apartment on Fiftieth Street, near Eighth Avenue, with a
+minor actress whom she had recently met and taken a fancy to. Life was
+rather less expensive under this régime; the young women got their own
+breakfasts and, as a rule, lunches that were quite as meagre: repasts
+chiefly composed of crackers, cold meats from a convenient delicatessen
+shop, with sometimes a bottle of beer shared between two. If no one
+offered a dinner in exchange for their society, they would dine frugally
+at the cheaper restaurants of the neighbourhood. But their admirers they
+shared loyally: if one were invited to dine, the other accompanied her
+as a matter of course.
+
+An arrangement apparently conducive to the most complete intimacy;
+neither party thereto doubted that she was in the full confidence of the
+other. There were, none the less, reservations on both sides.
+
+Harriet Morrison, Joan's latest companion, was a girl whose very
+considerable personal attractions and innate love of pleasure were
+balanced by greenish eyes, a firm jaw, and the sincere conviction that
+straight-going and hard work would lead her to success upon the
+legitimate stage. She knew Joan for an incurable opportunist with few
+convictions of any sort other than that she could act if given a chance,
+and that men, if properly managed, would give her that chance. For one
+so temperamentally her opposite, Hattie couldn't help entertaining some
+unspoken contempt. On the other hand, she believed Joan to be decent, as
+yet; and halving the cost of living permitted her to indulge in the
+luxury of a week-end at the seaside once or twice a month.
+
+One day near the first of July the two, happening to meet on Broadway
+after a morning of fruitless search for engagements, turned for luncheon
+into Shanley's new restaurant--by way of an unusual treat.
+
+They had barely given their order when Matthias came in accompanied by a
+manager who had offices in the Bryant Building, and sat down at a table
+not altogether out of speaking-distance.
+
+To cover her discomfiture, which betrayed itself in flushed cheeks, Joan
+complained of the heat: an explanation accepted by Hattie without
+question, since Matthias had not yet looked their way.
+
+Joan prayed that he might not; but the thing was inevitable, and it was
+no less inevitable that he should look at the precise instant when Joan,
+unable longer to curb her curiosity, raised her eyes to his.
+
+For a moment she fancied that he didn't recognize her. But then his face
+brightened, and he nodded and smiled, coolly, perhaps, but civilly,
+without the least evidence of confusion. They might have been the most
+casual acquaintances.
+
+And, indeed, the incident would probably have passed unremarked but for
+the promptings of Joan's conscience. She was sure the glance of Matthias
+had shifted from her face to the hand on which his diamond shone, and
+had rested there for a significant moment.
+
+As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had happened. Matthias was
+absorbed in negotiations concerning an old play which had caught the
+fancy of the manager. Joan, though he knew her at sight, was now too
+inconsiderable a figure in his world for him to recall, off-hand, that
+he had ever made her a present.
+
+Nevertheless the girl coloured furiously, and blushed again under the
+inquisitive stare of her companion.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Who?" Joan muttered sullenly.
+
+"The fellow who bowed to you just now."
+
+"Oh, that?" Joan made an unconvincing effort at speaking casually: "A
+man named Matthias--a playwright, I believe."
+
+"Oh," said the other girl quietly. "Never done anything much, has he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You don't know him very well?"
+
+There was a touch of irony in the question that struck sparks from
+Joan's temper.
+
+"That's my business!"
+
+"I'm sure I _beg_ your pardon," Hattie drawled exasperatingly.
+
+And the incident was considered closed, though it didn't pass without
+leaving its indelible effect upon their association.
+
+With Joan it had another result: it made her think. Retrospectively
+examining the contretemps, after she had gone to bed that night, she
+arrived at the comforting conclusion that she had been a little fool to
+think that Matthias "held that old ring against her." He hadn't been her
+lover for several weeks without furnishing the girl with a fairly clear
+revelation of his character. He was simple-hearted and sincere; she
+could not remember his uttering one ungenerous word or being guilty of
+one ungenerous action, and she didn't believe he could make room in his
+mind for an ungenerous thought.
+
+Now if she were to return it, he would think that fine of her....
+
+Of course, she must take it back in person. If she returned it by
+registered mail, he would have reason to believe her afraid to meet
+him--that she had been frightened by his mere glance into sending it
+back.
+
+Not that she hadn't every right in the world to keep it, if she liked:
+there was no law compelling a girl to return her engagement ring when
+she broke with a man.
+
+But Matthias would admire her for it.
+
+Moreover, it was just possible that he hadn't as yet arrived at the
+stage of complete indifference toward her. And he had "the ear of the
+managers."
+
+Nerving herself to the ordeal, two days later, she dressed with
+elaborate care in the suit she had worn on her flight from Quard. Newly
+sponged and pressed, it was quite presentable, if a little heavy for the
+season; moreover, it lacked the lustre and style of her later
+acquisitions. It wouldn't do to seem too prosperous....
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, and Hattie had taken herself off to a
+nearby ocean beach for the week-end; something for which Joan was
+grateful, inasmuch as it enabled her to dress her part without exciting
+comment.
+
+To her relief, a servant new to the house since her time, answered her
+ring at the bell of Number 289, and with an indifferent nod indicated
+the door to the back-parlour.
+
+Behind that portal Matthias was working furiously against time,
+carpentering against the grain that play to discuss which he had lunched
+at Shanley's; the managerial personage having offered to consider it
+seriously if certain changes were made. And the playwright was in haste
+to be quit of the job, not only because he disapproved heartily of the
+stipulated alterations, but further because he was booked for some weeks
+in Maine as soon as the revision was finished.
+
+Humanly, then, he was little pleased to be warned, through the medium of
+a knock, that his work was to suffer interruption.
+
+He swore mildly beneath his breath, glanced suspiciously at the
+non-committal door, growled brusque permission to enter, and bent again
+over the manuscript, refusing to look up until he had pursued a thread
+of thought to its conclusion, and knotted that same all ship-shape.
+
+And when at length he consented to be aware of the young woman on his
+threshold, waiting in a pose of patience, her eyes wide with doubt and
+apprehensions, his mind was so completely detached from any thought of
+Joan that he failed, at first, to recognize her.
+
+But the alien presence brought him to his feet quickly enough.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said with an uncertain nod. "You wished to see
+me about something?"
+
+Closing the door, Joan came slowly forward into stronger light.
+
+"You don't remember me?" she asked, half perplexed, half wistful of
+aspect. "But I thought--the other day--at Shanley's--"
+
+"But of course I remember you," Matthias interrupted with a constrained
+smile. "But I wasn't--ah--expecting you--not exactly--you understand."
+
+"Oh, yes," Joan replied in subdued and dubious accents--"I understand."
+
+She waited a moment, watching narrowly under cover of assumed
+embarrassment, the signs of genuine astonishment which Matthias felt too
+keenly to think of concealing. Then she added an uneasy:
+
+"Of course...."
+
+"Of course!" Matthias echoed witlessly. "You wanted to see me about
+something," he iterated, wandering. With an effort he pulled himself
+together. "Won't you sit down--ah--Joan?"
+
+"Thank you," said the girl. "But I'm afraid I'm in the way," she
+amended, dropping back into the old, worn, easy-chair.
+
+"Oh, no--I--"
+
+The insincerity of his disclaimer was manifest in an apologetic glance
+toward the manuscript and a hasty thrust of fingers up through his hair.
+Joan caught him up quickly.
+
+"Oh, but I know I am, so I shan't stay," she said, settling herself
+comfortably. "I only ask a minute or two of your time. You don't mind?"
+
+"Mind? Why, I--certainly not."
+
+She looked down as if disconcerted by his honest, perplexed, questioning
+eyes.
+
+"I was afraid you might, after--after what's happened--"
+
+He fumbled for a cigarette, beginning to feel more calm, less nervous
+than annoyed. The fact of her unruffled self-possession had at length
+penetrated his understanding.
+
+"No," he said slowly, rolling the cigarette between his palms, "I don't
+mind in the least, if I can be of service to you."
+
+"But I was very foolish," Joan persisted, "and--and unkind. I've been
+sorry ever since...."
+
+"Don't be," Matthias begged, his tone so odd that she looked up swiftly
+and coloured.
+
+Thus far everything had gone famously, quite as rehearsed in the theatre
+of her optimistic fancy; but the new accent in his voice made her
+suddenly fear lest, after all, the little scene might not play itself
+out as smoothly as it had promised to.
+
+"Don't be," Matthias repeated coolly. "It's quite all right. Take my
+word for it: as far as I'm concerned you've nothing at all to reproach
+yourself with."
+
+Her flush deepened. "You mean you didn't care--!"
+
+Matthias smiled, but not unkindly. "I mean," he said slowly--"neither of
+us really cared."
+
+"Speak for yourself--" Joan cut in with a flash of temper; but he
+obtained her silence with a gentle gesture.
+
+"Please ... I mean, we both lost our heads for a time. That was all
+there was to it, I think. Naturally it couldn't last. You were wise
+enough to see that first and--ah--did the only thing you decently could,
+when you threw me over. I understood that, at once."
+
+"But I," she began in a desperate effort to regain lost ground--"I was
+afraid you'd hate and despise me--"
+
+"Not a bit, Joan--believe me, not for an instant. When I had had time to
+think it all out, I was simply grateful. I could never have learned to
+hate or despise you--as you put it--whatever happened; but if you hadn't
+been so sensible and far-sighted, the affair might have run on too far
+to be remedied. In which case we'd both have been horribly unhappy."
+
+This was so far from the attitude she had believed he would adopt, that
+Joan understood her cause to be worse than forlorn: it was lost; lost,
+that is, unless it could be saved by her premeditated heroic measure.
+
+Fumbling in her bag, she found his ring.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," she said with a little sigh. "Anyhow, it's like
+you to put it that way.... But what I really came for, was to return
+this."
+
+She offered the ring. He looked, startled, from it to her face,
+hesitated, and took it. "O--thanks!" he said, adding quite truthfully:
+"I'd forgotten about that"; and tossed it carelessly to his work-table
+where, rolling across the face of a manuscript, it oscillated
+momentarily and settling to rest, seemed to wink cynically at its late
+possessor.
+
+Joan blinked hastily in response: there was a transient little mist
+before her eyes; and momentarily her lips trembled with true emotion.
+The scene was working out more painfully than she had ever in her
+direst misgivings dreamed it might.
+
+Deep in her heart she had all along nursed the hope that he would insist
+on her retaining the ring. That would have been like the Matthias of her
+memories!
+
+But now he seemed to think that she ought to be glad thus to disburden
+her conscience and by just so much to modify her indebtedness to him!
+
+Struck by this thought, Joan gasped inwardly, and examined with startled
+eyes the face of Matthias. It was her first reminder of the fact that he
+had left her one hundred and fifty unearned dollars. She had forgotten
+all about that till this instant. Otherwise, she would have hesitated
+longer about calling. She wondered if he were thinking of the same
+thing; but his face afforded no index to his thoughts. He wasn't looking
+at her at all, in fact, but down, in abstraction, studying the faded
+pattern of the carpet at his feet.
+
+She wondered if perhaps it would advance her interests to offer to
+return the money, to pay it back bit by bit--when she found work. But
+wisely she refrained from acting on this suggestion.
+
+"I'm sorry I was so long about bringing it back," she resumed with an
+artificial manner. "I was always meaning to, you know, and always kept
+putting it off. You know how it is when you're on the road: one never
+seems to have any time to one's self."
+
+"I quite understand," Matthias assured her gravely.
+
+She grew sensitive to the fact that he was being patient with her.
+
+"But I really mustn't keep you from your work," she said, rising.
+"You--you knew I was working, didn't you?"
+
+"I heard," Matthias evaded--"in a roundabout way--that you were playing
+in vaudeville."
+
+The girl nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes; I was all over, playing the lead
+in a sketch called 'The Lie.' It was a regular knock-out. You ought to
+have seen how it got over. It's still playing, somewhere out West, I
+guess."
+
+"You left it, then?" Matthias asked, bored, heartily wishing her out of
+the house.
+
+She was aching to know if he had learned of her marriage. But then she
+felt sure he couldn't possibly have heard about it. Still, she wondered,
+if he did know, would it modify his attitude toward her in any way?
+
+"Yes," she resumed briskly, to cover her momentary hesitation, "I left
+it the week we played 'Frisco. I had to. The star and I couldn't seem to
+hit it off, somehow. You know how that is."
+
+"And yet you must have managed to agree with him pretty well, from all I
+hear."
+
+"What did you hear?"
+
+(Did he really know, then?)
+
+"Why," Matthias explained ingeniously, "you must have been with the
+sketch for several months, by your own account. You couldn't have been
+bickering all that time."
+
+Confidence returned.... "Oh, that! Yes, of course. But I could see it
+coming a long ways ahead. So I quit, and came back to look for another
+engagement. You--"
+
+She broke off, stammering.
+
+"Beg pardon?" Matthias queried curiously.
+
+Joan flushed again. "You don't know of anything I could do, just now, I
+suppose?"
+
+He shook his head. "Not at present, I'm afraid."
+
+"If you should hear of anything, it would be awful' good of you to let
+me know."
+
+"Depend upon me, I shall."
+
+"Care of The Dramatic Mirror will always get me."
+
+"I shan't forget."
+
+"Well...." She offered him her hand with a splendidly timid smile. "I
+suppose it's good-bye for good this time."
+
+Matthias accepted her hand, shook it without a tremor, and released it
+easily.
+
+"I've a notion it is, Joan," he admitted.
+
+She turned toward the door, advanced a pace or two, and paused.
+
+"They say Arlington's going to make a lot of new productions next
+Fall...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind putting in a good word for
+me."
+
+"I would be glad to, but unfortunately I don't know Mr. Arlington."
+
+"But you know Mr. Marbridge, and everybody says he's Arlington's silent
+partner."
+
+Matthias looked as uncomfortable as he felt.
+
+"I am not sure that is true," he said slowly, "and--well, to tell the
+truth, Marbridge and I aren't on the best of terms. I'm afraid I
+couldn't influence him in any way--except, perhaps, to prejudice him."
+
+"Oh!" Joan said blankly....
+
+It came to her, in a flash, that the two men might have quarrelled about
+her, thanks to the obvious fascination she had exerted over Marbridge,
+that age-old day at Tanglewood.
+
+"I suppose," she ventured pensively, "I might go to see him--Mr.
+Marbridge--myself--?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't advise you."
+
+This time the accent of finality was unmistakable. Joan bridled with
+resentment. After all, he'd no real call to be so uppish, simply because
+she hadn't let him stand between her and her career....
+
+"You don't really think I ought to go and see him, do you?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't ask me, Joan."
+
+"But I've got no one to advise me.... If you don't think it wise, I wish
+you'd say so. I thought perhaps it was a chance...."
+
+Matthias shrugged, excessively irritated by her persistence. "I can only
+say that I wouldn't advise any woman to look to Marbridge for anything
+honourable," he said reluctantly.
+
+"Oh!" the girl said in a startled tone.
+
+"But--I'm sorry you made me say that. It's none of my affair. Please
+forget I said it."
+
+"But you make it so hard for me."
+
+"I?" he cried indignantly--"_I_ make it hard for you!"
+
+"Well, I come to you for advice--friendly advice--and you close in my
+very face the only door I can see to any sort of work. It's--it's pretty
+hard. I can act, I know I can act! I guess I proved that when I was with
+Charlie--Mr. Quard--the star of 'The Lie,' you know. I couldn't've stuck
+as long as I did if I hadn't had talent.... But back here in New York,
+all that doesn't seem to count. Here I've been going around for two
+months, and all they offer me is a chorus job with some road company.
+But Arlington ... he employs more girls than anybody in the business. I
+know he'd give me a chance to show what I can do, if I could only get to
+him. And then you tell me not to try to get to him the only way I know."
+
+Abruptly Joan ceased, breathing heavily after that long and, even to
+her, unexpected speech. But it had been well delivered: she could feel
+that. She clenched her hands at her sides in a gesture plagiarized from
+a soubrette star in one of her infrequent scenes of stage excitement;
+and stood regarding Matthias with wide, accusing eyes.
+
+His own were blank....
+
+He was trying to account to himself for the fact that this girl seemed
+to have the knack of making him feel a heartless scoundrel, even when
+his stand was morally impregnable, even though it were unassailable.
+
+Here was this girl, evidently convinced that he had not dealt squarely
+with her, believing that he deliberately withheld--out of pique,
+perhaps--aid in his power to offer her....
+
+He passed a hand wearily across his eyes, and turned back toward his
+work-chair.
+
+"You'd better sit down," he said quietly, "while I think this out."
+
+Without a word the girl returned to the arm-chair and perched herself
+gingerly upon the edge of it, ready to rise and flee (she seemed)
+whenever it should pardonably suggest itself to Matthias that the only
+right and reasonable thing for him to do was to rise up and murder
+her....
+
+On his part, sitting, he rested elbows upon the litter of manuscript,
+and held his head in his hands.
+
+He was sorry now that he had yielded to the temptation to be
+plain-spoken about Arlington and Marbridge. But she had driven him to
+it; and she was an empty-headed little thing and ought really to be kept
+out of _that_ galley. On the other hand, he was afraid that if he
+allowed himself to be persuaded to help her find a new engagement, she
+would misunderstand his motives one way or another--most probably the
+one. He couldn't afford to have her run away with the notion that his
+affection for her had been merely hibernating. He had not only himself,
+he had Venetia to think of, now. To her he had dedicated his life, to a
+dumb, quixotic passion. Some day she might need him; some day, it seemed
+certain, she would need him. She was presently to have a child; and
+Marbridge was going on from bad to worse; things could not forever
+endure as they were between those two. And then she would be friendless,
+a woman with a child fighting for the right to live in solitary
+decency....
+
+But Joan!... If she were headed that way, toward the Arlington wheel
+within the wheel of the stage, even at risk of blame and
+misunderstanding Matthias felt that he ought to do what could be done to
+set her back upon the right road. It was too bad, really. And it was
+none of his business. The girl had given herself to the theatre of her
+own volition, after all. Or had she? Had the right of choice been
+accorded her? Or was it simply that she had been designed by Nature
+especially for that business, to which women of her calibre seemed so
+essential? Was she, after all, simply life-stuff manufactured hastily
+and carelessly in an old, worn mould, because destined solely to be fed
+wholesale into the insatiable maw of the stage?
+
+He shook his head in weary doubt, and sighed.
+
+"Probably," he said, fumbling with a pen and avoiding her eyes--"I
+presume--you'd better come back in a day or two--say Tuesday. That will
+give me time to look round and see what I can scare up for you. Or
+perhaps Wednesday would be even better...."
+
+He dropped the pen and rose, his manner inviting her to leave.
+
+"Wednesday?" she repeated, reluctantly getting up again.
+
+"At four, if that's convenient."
+
+"Yes, indeed, it is. And ... thank you so much ... Jack."
+
+"No, no," Matthias expostulated wearily.
+
+"No, I mean it," she insisted. "You're awf'ly sweet not to be--unkind to
+me."
+
+"Believe me, I could never be that."
+
+"Then--g'dafternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon, Joan."
+
+But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from
+a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence
+there assorted ill with his latest assurance to the girl. Catching it
+up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go.
+
+"And this," he said, smiling--"don't forget it, please."
+
+Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes
+widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly.
+
+"You--you don't mean it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I've really no use for it, Joan,
+and--well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned
+awry. "It might be of service to you some day."
+
+With a cry of gratitude that was half a sob, but with no other
+acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in
+a daze, and so from the house.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the
+man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had
+no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as
+a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of
+prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone
+of an ichthyosaurus....
+
+They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you
+knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference
+in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their
+sentiments, or their appetites, and if these failed you appealed to
+their pride in their self-assumed rôle of the protectors.
+
+It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it.
+
+By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and
+that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world destitute of a
+single human soul that commanded her respect.
+
+She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate
+chivalry....
+
+As if she didn't know what Arlington's companies were like! The facts
+were notorious; nobody troubled to blink them; Arlington's employees
+least of all. It wasn't their business to blink the facts; a girl
+without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his
+choruses as a girl without a pretty figure.
+
+But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure....
+
+Joan glanced in a shop window, en passant; but she saw nothing of the
+display of wares. The plate glass made a darkling mirror for the
+passers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted
+her becomingly, even though it was a trifle passé.
+
+She hurried home and changed it, and hurried forth again to keep an
+appointment with Hubert Fowey.
+
+They dined at a pretentious hotel, in an "Orange Garden" whose false
+moonlight and tinkling, artificial fountain manufactured an alluring
+simulacrum of romantic night, despite the incessant activities of a
+ragtime-bitten orchestra and the inability of the ventilating system to
+infuse a hint of coolness into the heavy, superheated air.
+
+Joan had little appetite--the day had been too over-poweringly hot--but
+she was very thirsty; and Fowey provided a brand of champagne less sweet
+and heady than she would have chosen, and consequently more insinuative.
+
+During the meal Billy Salute appeared at a table across the room and
+invisible to Fowey, whose back was toward it, but still not far enough
+removed to prevent Joan from recognizing that look in the dancer's eyes
+which she resented so angrily. She didn't once look at the man; but she
+never quite lost sight of him, and was well aware that he was ridiculing
+Fowey to his companion--an actor, by many an indication, but a stranger
+to Joan.
+
+Provoked, she demonstrated her contempt of Salute by flirting
+outrageously with Fowey. Unconscious of her motive, that aspiring little
+dramatic author lost his head to some extent. Now and again his voice
+trembled when he spoke to her, and once he mumbled something about
+marriage, but checked at discretion, and let his words trail off
+inarticulately.
+
+Joan was not to be denied.
+
+"What did you say?" she demanded, with her most distracting smile.
+
+"Oh, nothing of any importance," muttered Fowey, his face reddening.
+
+"But you did say something. I only caught part of it. Hubert, I want to
+know!"
+
+It was the first time she had used his given name.
+
+"I--I only wondered if you were married," he stammered. "You talk so
+cursed little about yourself!"
+
+"Does it matter?" she parried, surrender in her eyes.
+
+He choked and gulped on his champagne.
+
+"But you're not, are you?" he persisted.
+
+"What's that to you?"
+
+He hesitated and changed the subject, fearful lest his tongue compromise
+him.
+
+"What shall we do now? Don't say a roof garden. Let's get out of this
+infernal smother. I vote for a taxi ride to Manhattan Beach."
+
+Joan assented.
+
+Leaving, they passed Salute's table. Joan gave the dancer a distant and
+chilling greeting, and swept haughtily past, ignoring his offer to rise.
+The insolent irony of his eyes was incredibly offensive to her. They
+said: "I am waiting, I am patient, I make no effort, I am inevitable."
+
+She swore in her soul that she would prove them wrong.
+
+In the taxicab Fowey made some slighting reference to the dancer.
+
+"He's the devil!" Joan declared with profound conviction.
+
+But she wouldn't explain her reasons for so naming him.
+
+When occasion offered, in the more shadowed stretches of their course to
+the sea, Fowey attempted to kiss her. But she would have none of him
+then, fending him off by main strength and raillery; and she was pleased
+with the discovery that she was stronger than he. Yet another evidence
+of the inferiority of man!
+
+At the beach, Fowey ordered a claret cup. Joan demanded an ice and drank
+sparingly; but when again in the motor-car, homeward-bound, she was
+abruptly smitten with amazement to find herself in Fowey's arms,
+submitting to his kisses if not returning them.
+
+For a time she remained so and let him talk love to her.
+
+It was pleasant, to be--wanted....
+
+Arrived at the little flat, she had to prevent Fowey's following her in,
+again by main strength, slamming the door in his face.
+
+Bolting the door, she turned to a mirror "to see what a fright she must
+have looked." But it seemed a radiant vision that smiled back at her.
+
+She thought hazily of Hubert Fowey.
+
+"That kid!" she murmured, not altogether in contempt, but almost
+compassionately.
+
+It was a shame to tease him so....
+
+Not until the next day, that dawned upon her consciousness amid the
+thunders of a splitting headache, did she appreciate how far the affair
+had gone.
+
+Penitent, she vowed reformation. She wasn't going to let any man think
+he could make a fool of her, much less that conceited little
+whippersnapper.
+
+As it happened, she didn't see the amateur dramatist again for some
+days. He, too, had vowed reformation, and on much the same moral
+grounds.
+
+Her appointment with Matthias, for Wednesday at four, Joan failed to
+keep. And since that was her own affair, and since she had not left him
+her address, Matthias kept to himself the word that he had for her and,
+in accordance with his original intention, boarded the Bar Harbor
+Express that same evening, and forgot New York for upwards of ten weeks.
+
+It had rained all day Tuesday, and Wednesday was overcast but dry and,
+by contrast with what had been, cool. Dressing for her interview with
+Matthias, Joan donned a summery gown of lawn, liberally inset with
+lacework over her shoulders and bosom: a frock for the country-house or
+the seashore, never for the Broadway pavements. None the less it was
+quite too pretty to be wasted on Matthias alone. She set out to keep her
+appointment with an hour to spare, purposing to employ the interval by
+running, at leisure, the gauntlet of masculine admiration on Broadway as
+far south as Thirty-eighth Street. For this expedition she would have
+preferred company; but Hattie, having looked her over, announced that
+she couldn't dress up to Joan's style, didn't mean to try, and didn't
+care to be used as a foil; furthermore, it was much more sensible to
+loaf round the flat in little or no clothing at all, and read up on
+Pinero.
+
+From the Astor Theatre corner Joan struck across Broadway to the eastern
+sidewalk, chiefly to avoid the throng of loungers in front of the Bryant
+Building: it is good to be admired, but Joan had little taste for the
+form of admiration that becomes vocal at once intimately and publicly.
+
+Half-way down the New York Theatre Building block, she turned abruptly
+and scuttled like a frightened quail into the lobby, from the back of
+which, turning, she was able to see, without being seen by, Quard.
+
+Brief as the term of their dissociation was, in mere point of elapsed
+time, Joan had so completely divorced herself from her husband that she
+was actually beginning to forget him; physically no less than mentally
+she was beginning to forget him. An outcast from her life, he no longer
+had any real existence in her world. By some curious freak of sophistry
+she had even managed to persuade herself she was never to see him again.
+Thus it seemed the most staggering shock she had ever experienced, to
+recognize the man's head and shoulders looming above the throng before
+the entrance to the moving-picture show, just south of the lobby to the
+New York Theatre proper.
+
+But Quard hadn't seen her. He was with companions, a brace of vaudeville
+actors whom Joan knew through him. But while she waited for them to
+pass, two other friends accosted the three, directly before the lobby
+entrance, and they paused to exchange greetings. Quard slapped both
+newcomers on their shoulders, and kept his hand on the last he slapped,
+bending forward and engaging their interest with some intimate bit of
+ribaldry. He had been drinking--Joan saw that much at a glance--not
+heavily, but enough to render his good-fellowship boisterous.
+
+Otherwise he looked well. He was hardly to be identified with that
+sodden wreck which had been brought from the Barbary Coast back to the
+woman he had insulted and abused. His colour was good, his poise
+assured. He was wearing new clothing--a loud shepherd's-plaid effect
+which Joan couldn't possibly have forgotten. No one could possibly have
+forgotten it. And he had acquired a dashing Panama hat which at least
+looked genuine at that slight distance. Useless to have wasted pity on
+the man: he had fallen, but not far, and he had fallen on his feet.
+
+Joan eyed him with fear, despair, and loathing.
+
+Had he come to render New York too small to contain them both?
+
+She skulked in the farthest corner of the lobby, in shadows, not quite
+round the corner of the elevator shaft--where she could just see and ran
+least risk of being seen--and waited. But the group on the sidewalk
+seemed to have settled down to a protracted session. When Quard had
+finished talking, and the laughter had quieted down, another fixed the
+attention of the group with a second anecdote, of what nature Joan could
+well surmise.
+
+Of course, it was only a question of time before Quard would propose a
+drink.
+
+Then she would be free to proceed to her appointment.
+
+But through some oversight the suggestion remained temporarily in
+abeyance; and Joan was unlucky in that none of the policemen appeared,
+who are assigned to the business of keeping actors moving in that
+neighbourhood.
+
+After a minute or two Quard shifted his position so that he could, by
+simply lifting his eyes, have looked directly into the lobby.
+
+At this Joan turned in desperation and entered the cage of an elevator,
+which happened just then to be waiting with an open gate.
+
+There were several theatrical enterprises with offices on one of the
+upper floors: no reason why Joan shouldn't wait in one of these until it
+would be safe to venture forth again. There was Arlington's, for
+instance.
+
+Joan's was no strange figure there. She had long since made several
+attempts to see Arlington or one of his lieutenants; but her
+professional cards, borne in to them by a disillusioned office-boy, had
+educed no other response than "Mist' Arlington says they's nothin' doin'
+just' present."
+
+But it was as good a place as any for Joan's purpose, and there could be
+no harm trying again.
+
+The same world-weary boy received her card when she entered the suite of
+offices. He considered it, and Joan as well, dispassionately.
+
+"Whoja wanna see?" he mumbled with patent effort.
+
+Joan's prettiest smile was apparently wasted upon the temperament of an
+anchorite.
+
+"Mr. Arlington, please."
+
+The boy offered to return the card: "He ain't in."
+
+"That's what you always tell me."
+
+"He ain't never in."
+
+"Very well," said Joan sweetly: "I'll wait."
+
+The boy started to say something pointed, hesitated, regarded her with
+dull suspicion, and suddenly enquired:
+
+"Whaja wanna see 'm 'bout?"
+
+"A matter of private business."
+
+"Ah," drawled the boy with infinite disgust, "tha's what they all say!"
+An embittered grimace shaped upon his soiled face. "Lis'n!" he said,
+almost affably--"if yuh'll think up a good one, I'll fetch this inta his
+sec't'ry. Now cud anythin' be fairer 'n that?"
+
+"I'll go you," Joan retorted, falling in with his spirit. "Tell him a
+friend of Mr. Marbridge's wants to see him."
+
+She esteemed this a rather brilliant bit of diplomacy, and at the same
+time considered herself stupid not to have thought of it before. But it
+failed to move the office-boy. His head signalled a negative.
+
+"Havta do better'n that," he announced. "If I fell for ev'ry wren what
+claims she's a nintimate frien' of Mista Marbridge--"
+
+"But I am a friend of his--truly I am!" Joan insisted warmly.
+
+The boy rammed a hand into a trouser's-pocket. "Betcha--" he began; but
+reconsidered. "Yuh never can tell 'bout a skirt," he reminded himself
+audibly. "But, jus' to prove I'm a sport, I'll go yuh."
+
+Motioning Joan through the door of the reception room, he shambled off
+with an air of questioning his own sanity.
+
+The reception room was perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen wide: an
+interior room, lighted, and none too well, by electricity, ventilated,
+when at all, through the doorways of adjoining offices. A row of
+cane-seated chairs was aligned against the inner wall. In the middle of
+the floor stood a broad and substantial table of oak; it was absolutely
+bare. Here and there a few unhappy lithographs, yellowing "life-size"
+photographs of dead or otherwise extinguished stars, and a framed
+play-bill or two of Arlington's earlier ventures, decorated the dingy
+drab wall. There was no floor-covering of any description.
+
+In this room herded some two-score people of the stage, waiting
+hopefully for interviews that were, as a rule, granted to not more than
+one applicant in ten: a heterogeneous assemblage, owning a single
+characteristic in common: whenever, at the far end of the room, the
+door opened leading to the offices of the management, every head turned
+that way, and every voice was hushed in reverence.
+
+Yet it was seldom that the door disclosed anything more unique than a
+second office-boy, even more dejected than the first, who, peering
+through, would, after examining the card in his hand for the name of the
+applicant, painfully recite some stereotyped phrase worn smooth--"Mista
+Brown? Y'ur party says t' come back next week!" "Miss Holman? Y'ur
+party's went out 'n' won't be back th'safternoon!" "Miss Em'rson? Mista
+Arlington says ever'thin's full up just'present. Call 'n ag'in!" or more
+infrequently: "Mista Grayson's t' step in, please...."
+
+Joan found a vacant chair.
+
+She had no hope whatever of being admitted to the Presence, despite the
+unexpected condescension of the office-boy. Marbridge's name might prove
+the Open Sesame; but she doubted that vaguely: "it wouldn't be her if
+_that_ happened!"
+
+The atmosphere was stifling with heat complicated by stale human breath
+and the reek of perfumery, all stratified with layers of tobacco smoke
+which entered over the transoms of the communicating offices. Above the
+muted murmurings of the unemployed's apprehensive voices could be heard
+the brisk chattering of two or three type-writing machines; and
+telephone bells rang incessantly, near and far, one taking up the tune
+as soon as another ended. The throng of applicants shuffled their feet
+uneasily, expectantly, morosely.
+
+Joan was so uncomfortable and oppressed that she was tempted to rise and
+go without waiting for the discounted answer. Only dread of encountering
+Quard restrained her. The longer she delayed, the slighter the chance of
+finding him still in front of the theatre....
+
+Her thoughts drifted into reverie dully coloured with misgivings. She
+thought of Charlie Quard as a bird of ill-omen whose appearance could
+presage nothing but suffering and disaster; ignoring altogether the
+truth, that through his good offices alone, however tainted with
+self-interest, she had been suffered to enter into the profession whose
+ranks she had elected to adorn; with that other truth, that she owed him
+for the clothing she wore, the food she ate, the very roof that
+sheltered her--and meant never to repay....
+
+The voice of the second office-boy chanted her name twice before she
+heard it.
+
+"Miss Thursd'y?... Miss Joan Thursd'y?"
+
+Joan started to her feet.
+
+"Yes--?"
+
+"Th' party you ast for says please t' step this way!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Between gratification and misgivings, Joan followed her guide in a
+flutter of emotion. When intending nothing more than to provide an
+excuse for using the anteroom as a temporary refuge, she hadn't for an
+instant questioned her right to use Marbridge's name. But now that it
+appeared she was to gain thereby the boon of an audience with Arlington,
+she was torn by doubts.
+
+After all, her acquaintance with Marbridge had been one of the most
+tenuous description. True, the man had seemed attracted by her at the
+time; but that was many months ago; and only recently he had looked her
+fair in the face without knowing her. She had really gained her
+advantage through false pretences. And when Marbridge learned of this,
+would he not resent it? Had she not, through her presumption, put
+herself in the way of defeating her own ends?
+
+She brought up before a closed door in a state of nervousness not
+natural with her.
+
+"You're to wait a minute," her guide advised.
+
+She was thankful he wasn't the guardian of the outer defences: just at
+present she was in no fit mood to bandy persiflage successfully.
+
+But she was uncomfortably conscious that this present boy eyed her
+curiously as he threw open the office door.
+
+She entered, and he closed it after her.
+
+The room was untenanted, but a haze of cigar smoke in the air indicated
+that it had been only recently vacated. It was handsomely furnished,
+carpeted and decorated. The broad, flat-topped desk in one corner
+boasted an elaborate display of ornate desk hardware. In the middle of
+the blotting-pad a sheaf of letters lay beneath a bronze paperweight of
+unique design. All in all, an office owning little in common with the
+generality of those to which Joan had theretofore penetrated....
+
+She sat herself down uneasily.
+
+A door communicating with the adjoining office, though a solid door of
+oak, was an inch or so ajar. Through it penetrated sounds of masculine
+voices in conversation--but nothing distinguishable.
+
+Five minutes passed. Then the conference in the next room broke up amid
+laughter; the doorknob rattled; and Joan rose automatically.
+
+Marbridge entered.
+
+For a moment, in her surprise and consternation, Joan could only stare
+and stammer. But obvious though her agitation was, Marbridge ignored it
+gracefully. Shutting the door tight, he advanced with an outstretched
+hand and a smile there was no resisting--with, in short, every normal
+evidence of friendly pleasure in their meeting.
+
+"Well, Miss Thursday!" he said, gratification in his carefully modulated
+voice. "This is public-spirited of you!"
+
+Joan shook hands limply, her face crimson beneath his pardonably
+admiring stare.
+
+"I--thank you--but--"
+
+"Really," he went on smoothly, "I consider it mighty nice of you to look
+me up. Fancy your remembering me! Do sit down. We must have a chat.
+Fortunately, you've caught me in an off-hour."
+
+Retaining her hand coolly enough, he introduced the girl to a capacious
+lounge-chair beside the desk, then settled himself behind it.
+
+Joan shook her wits together.
+
+"You're awf'ly kind--"
+
+"I--kind?" Marbridge denied the implication with an indulgent smile. "My
+dear Miss Thursday, if you get to know me well--and I sincerely hope you
+will some day--you'll find there's not a spark of human generosity in
+my system. I think only of my own pleasure. How can there be kindness to
+you in my seizing this chance to improve our acquaintance? I declare, I
+thought you'd forgotten me!"
+
+"Oh, no!" Joan protested.
+
+"Really? That's charming of you. But tell me about yourself. How long
+have you been back?"
+
+"Not long," Joan replied instinctively to the first stock question that
+marks every other similar meeting in the theatrical district of New
+York. "That is--I mean--a couple of months."
+
+"Oh, then you didn't stay with 'The Lie'?"
+
+"You knew about that?"
+
+Marbridge nodded briskly. "Indeed, I did! Pete Gloucester told me all
+about you--how splendidly you were doing at rehearsals--and then, one
+afternoon in Chicago, I saw the sketch billed and dropped in at the
+theatre for the sole purpose of seeing you. And if I hadn't had a train
+to catch, I'd have come right round back to congratulate you. Fact! You
+were wonderful. You were more than wonderful: you were downright
+adorable, and no mistake!"
+
+Under the tonic stimulus of his flattery, Joan recovered her
+self-possession with surprising readiness--so swiftly that she almost
+forgot to cover the phenomenon with prolonged evidences of pretty
+confusion.
+
+She looked down, her colour high, and smiling traced with a gloved
+forefinger an invisible seam in her skirt; and then, looking up shyly,
+she appraised Marbridge with one quick, shrewd, masked glance.
+
+Her instinct had not misled her: this man esteemed her at a high value.
+
+"It's awf'ly kind of you to say so," she murmured demurely.
+
+Marbridge bent forward, leaning on the desk, his gaze ardent.
+
+"I only say what I think, Miss Thursday. I watched you act that
+afternoon--and so far as I was concerned, you were the whole
+sketch!--and made up my mind then and there you were a girl with a great
+big future."
+
+"Oh, but really, Mr. Marbridge--"
+
+"Give you my word! I said to myself then and there: 'Here's a little
+woman worth watching, and if ever I get a chance to lend her a helping
+hand and don't do it, I'd better quit fussing with this theatrical
+game.' And that was the effect of seeing you play just once, mind you!"
+
+"I'm afraid you're a dreadful kidder, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+His injured look was eloquent of the injustice that she did him.
+
+"You don't believe me? Very well, Miss Thursday--wait! Some day I'll
+surprise you." He swung back in his chair, smiling genially. "Some one
+of these days you'll set your heart on something I have the say in--and
+then you'll be able to judge of my sincerity."
+
+"If I dared believe you," Joan told him boldly, "I might put you to the
+test sooner than you think."
+
+"Well, and why not? I'm ready."
+
+But as Joan would have gone on, the desk-telephone rang sharply, and
+Marbridge, excusing himself with a mumbled apology, turned to the
+instrument and lifted the receiver to his ear.
+
+"Hello.... Who?... Oh, send her in to see Mr. Arlington.... Oh, he did,
+eh?... Well, say I'm not in either.... Yes, gone for the day."
+
+Replacing the instrument, he swung round again. "There's proof already,"
+he informed her cheerfully. "That was Nella Cardrow--one of the biggest
+propositions on our list--star of 'Mrs. Mixer.' And I'm putting her off
+solely to show you how sincerely I'm interested in what you have to say
+to me." He bent forward again, confidentially. "Now tell me: what can I
+do for you?"
+
+"Give me a job," Joan informed him honestly. "That's all I want just
+now--work--a part in anything you have influence with."
+
+"Then you _have_ left 'The Lie'?" Marbridge persisted incredulously.
+
+Joan nodded. "I had to. I couldn't stand it any longer."
+
+"But--without you--why, I don't know what they were thinking of, to let
+you go!"
+
+"I just couldn't get along with the star, and that's all there was to
+it," Joan declared. "He was a boozer and--well, I had to quit."
+
+"And the sketch--"
+
+"Oh, it went on, all right, I guess."
+
+"Without you! Well, that's hard to credit. However...." Marbridge leaned
+back and for a moment stared thoughtfully out of the window. "I really
+can't think of anything we've got open just now that's good enough to
+offer you."
+
+"Please don't think of me that way, Mr. Marbridge," Joan pleaded
+earnestly, more than half deceived. "I'm ready for anything, to get a
+chance to show these people what I can do. Anything--however small--just
+so it gives me a show--I don't care what!"
+
+Marbridge preserved admirably his look of intent gravity. "Let me think
+a moment," he requested, pursing his full lips.
+
+Joan watched him closely through that brief silence, her mood one of
+curious texture, compounded in almost equal parts of hope and doubt, of
+wonder and misgivings, of appreciation of her own courage and
+shrewdness, and of admiration for Marbridge.
+
+He was by no means what she would have termed handsome, but he was
+uncommonly individual, a personality that left an ineffaceable
+impression of strength and masculinity; and with this he had an air of
+being finished and complete, as though he not only knew better than most
+how to take care of himself in all ways, but slighted himself in none.
+She thought his mode of dress striking, combining distinction and taste
+to an extraordinary degree.... And when in his abstraction he pinched
+his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, she was impressed with the
+discovery that a man's hand could be at once well-manicured and
+muscular....
+
+He turned back abruptly with a sparkle of enthusiasm in his bold and
+prominent eyes.
+
+"By George, I think I have it!..."
+
+"Yes--?" she breathed excitedly.
+
+He considered an instant longer, shook his head, and jumped up. "I must
+consult Arlington first," he declared. "I wouldn't care to commit him
+without his consent. No--don't get up. Just excuse me one minute. I'll
+be right back."
+
+And before she could protest--had she entertained the faintest idea of
+doing anything of the sort--he left the room by the same door which had
+admitted him.
+
+Immediately she was again aware of a rumble of voices in the next
+office, but now it was even more indefinite.
+
+And again she waited a full five minutes alone....
+
+When Marbridge rejoined her, it was with an air apologetic and
+disappointed.
+
+"It's too bad," he announced, aggrieved, "but it seems Arlington has
+really gone for the day. I shan't see him before evening, likely,
+possibly not until tomorrow. So I must ask you to trouble yourself to
+come back, if you don't mind."
+
+"Mind!" Joan laughed, rising. "Oh, I guess not."
+
+"Well," Marbridge assured her, "I don't think you'll have any wasted
+time to regret. But I can't promise anything until I'm sure Arlington
+hasn't made other arrangements, or until I've managed to put a crimp
+into 'em if he has."
+
+"But you mustn't do that--"
+
+"Hush!" Marbridge paused to chuckle infectuously. "There's one trouble,"
+he amended, more gravely, "and that is, I haven't got any too much time.
+I'm booked to sail for Europe Saturday, and have got so many little
+things to attend to, I'm running round in circles. But don't you fret:
+I've got this matter right next to my heart, Miss Thursday, and I'm
+going to put it through if it humanly can be done. Now let me think when
+I can ask you to call again."
+
+"Any time that suits your convenience, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"Well, it's a question. I'd like mighty well to have you lunch with me
+before I go, but.... The truth is, I haven't got hardly a minute
+unengaged. You just happened to catch me right, today.... I wonder if
+you could call in Friday, say, about half-past three?"
+
+"Of course I can, but I don't want you to--"
+
+"Didn't I tell you, _hush_!" Marbridge interrupted, mock-impatient. "Not
+another word. Remember what I told you about how I felt that day I saw
+you act, out in Chicago. The time's coming when I'm going to be
+powerful' glad you gave me this chance to give you a lift, Miss
+Thursday. And then"--he paused in the act of opening the door, and took
+Joan's hand, subjecting it to a firm, friendly pressure before
+continuing--"and then, perhaps, I'll be coming round and begging favours
+of you."
+
+For an instant Joan's eyes endured, without a tremor, the quick
+searching probe of the man's.
+
+She nodded quietly, saying in a grave voice: "I guess you won't have to
+beg very hard--not for anything I could ever do for you, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+His smile was as spontaneous and bright as a child's. "It's a bargain!"
+he declared spiritedly. "And you can bet your life I won't forget my end
+of it!... Good afternoon, Miss Thursday. Remember--Friday at
+three-thirty...."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+As one result of her interview with Marbridge, Joan returned to her
+quarters in a state of thoughtfulness which was responsible not only for
+her forgetting the appointment with Matthias and the risk she ran of
+encountering Quard at every corner, but also for her unquestioning
+acceptance of Hattie's absence from the flat in the face of her
+expressed determination not to go out that afternoon.
+
+Hattie, however, was nothing loath to explain her change of mind when
+she blew in cheerfully shortly before dinner-time.
+
+"Hello!" she exclaimed, tossing her hat one way and her parasol another.
+"Did you miss me?"
+
+Joan looked up blankly from the depths of her musing. "No," she said
+dully. "Why?"
+
+"Well, you went off half-peeved because I wouldn't go trapesing with
+you--and then I went out after all."
+
+"Oh--I'd forgotten," Joan admitted without much interest.
+
+"Well, I didn't mean to go out, but Billy Emerson sent me a tip and ...
+I bet you can't guess who I've seen."
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"Arlington!"
+
+"Arlington!" Joan exclaimed.
+
+"Well, and why not?"
+
+"Nothing--only I thought you weren't looking for anything in musical
+shows."
+
+"No more am I, and it wasn't a musical show I went to see him about.
+Billy sent me a card of introduction with the tip, and Arlington saw me
+and--well, I guess it's just about settled. I'm to understudy Nella
+Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Arlington wouldn't promise, but told me to come
+in Saturday morning, and the understanding is he'll have contracts ready
+to sign then. I do believe my luck's turned at last!"
+
+"But," Joan argued, perplexed, "I don't understand.... Of course, it's
+fine to get the job, and all that--and I'm awf'ly glad for you,
+Hattie--but you act as excited as if it was the title rôle you expected
+to play."
+
+"Maybe I do," Hattie retorted. "That's what an understudy's for, isn't
+it--to play the star part in case of an emergency?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Anyhow, I don't mind telling you that's what I'm looking forward to."
+
+"You mean you think Mrs. Cardrow--?"
+
+"Now don't you ask me any questions; I can't tell you what I think; it's
+a secret." Having made this statement, Hattie sat down on the edge of
+the bed, lighted a cigarette, vacillated one second, and proceeded to
+divulge the secret: "You see, I called around to thank Billy Emerson,
+after my talk with Arlington, and he told me the whole story in
+confidence. Nobody's to know it yet, so you mustn't breathe a word to
+anybody; but the thing's all fixed, and Nella Cardrow's never going to
+play 'Mrs. Mixer' before a Broadway audience. She couldn't play it
+anyhow--'s just a plain-boiled dub--never did anything before she
+persuaded Marbridge to put her on in this show. It's _his_ money that's
+behind it, mostly--Arlington's too wise to risk much on an uncertain
+proposition like the Cardrow. Marbridge just hides behind Arlington."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Well, I guess he figures home would be none the happier if Friend Wife
+knew he was footing the bills for Nella Cardrow's show. He and Cardrow,
+Billy Emerson says, are just about as friendly as the law allows--and
+that isn't all."
+
+"But," Joan persisted stupidly, "if that's the case, I don't see what
+makes you think he'll throw her down to give you the part--"
+
+"If they ever caught anybody on Broadway as innocent as you pretend to
+be," Hattie commented with a scorn for grammar as deep as for Joan's
+obtuseness--"they'd arrest 'em, that's all! Who ever told you Marbridge
+was the kind of a guy to stick to a woman forever--not to say when she's
+losing money for him? Billy Emerson saw the show when they put it on up
+in Buffalo, a while ago, and he says the play's a wonder but Cardrow
+can't even look the part, much less act it. He says if they ever let her
+loose on the stage of a Broadway theatre--well, Marbridge and Arlington
+can just kiss their investment a fond farewell. For reasons of his own,
+Marbridge isn't ready to break with Cardrow yet, but he knows he's got a
+big success on his hands in this 'Mrs. Mixer' with her out of it. So
+they're going right ahead, just as if she was to be the star, but when
+the show opens it'll be little Miss Understudy who'll do all the
+acting."
+
+The actress tossed aside her cigarette and bent forward, regarding Joan
+with mock solicitude.
+
+"Does it begin to penetrate, dearie?"
+
+"It sounds to me like a pretty mean trick to play on Mrs. Cardrow," Joan
+suggested.
+
+"Don't you worry about her. She'll survive, all right. And anyhow, when
+you've been as long in this game as I have, you'll realize that the
+motto of the profession is 'Everybody for himself and the devil take the
+hindermost'! I've waited seven years for this chance, and I'm not going
+to let it get past me through any sentimental considerations, not if I
+know myself. And you'd do just the same thing in my place, too."
+
+"I don't see what right you've got to say that--"
+
+"Then you don't know yourself as well as I know you," Hattie laughed.
+"But listen: I oughtn't to have told you all this. You won't say
+anything, will you, dear?"
+
+"No, I won't say anything...."
+
+Nor did Joan consider it necessary to repay confidence with confidence
+by confessing the fact of her coincidental interview with Marbridge. The
+reflection that they must have been in adjoining offices at much the
+same time, in spite of Marbridge's assertion that Arlington was out,
+counselled reticence, even if envy hadn't served to impose silence upon
+Joan. And she was profoundly envious of Hattie's good fortune.
+
+Why could it not have been her own, instead?
+
+If Marbridge honestly esteemed her abilities one-half as highly as he
+had pretended to, why could he not have seen to it that Joan Thursday
+rather than Hattie Morrison was selected for Mrs. Cardrow's understudy?
+
+Still, the matter was not yet definitely settled. Hattie's contract
+remained a thing of the future, and she might be congratulating herself
+prematurely.
+
+Struck by this reflection, Joan withdrew even more jealously into her
+reserve....
+
+But she anticipated her appointment for Friday afternoon with an
+impatience that lent each hour the length of three, and when the time
+drew near prepared herself for it with such exacting attention to the
+minutiæ of her toilet that a final survey in a cheval-glass sent her
+forth radiant with consciousness that she had never looked more
+charming.
+
+To her surprise and somewhat to her disappointment, Marbridge didn't
+receive her alone. She was shown into Arlington's office, finding there
+Marbridge in company with the great man himself.
+
+Entrenched behind his desk, Arlington didn't move when she entered, and
+only when Marbridge formally presented Joan deigned to rise half out of
+his chair and extend to her, across the mahogany barrier, a hand almost
+effeminately white, soft, and bedizened with rings.
+
+"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Thursday, I'm sure," he drawled, his clasp
+as languid as the glance with which he looked Joan over; and sank
+wearily back into his chair. "I've been hearing wonderful things about
+you--ah--from Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"He's very kind," said Joan in her best manner.
+
+"Not at all," Marbridge protested. "I've only been describing how
+splendid your work was in 'The Lie.' But Mr. Arlington is the original
+of the gentleman from Missouri: you've got to show him. However, I know
+you can--so that's all right."
+
+"Oh, I hope so," Joan replied with becoming diffidence--"if I ever get a
+chance."
+
+"You'll get that, never fear," Arlington observed dispassionately.
+"Marbridge has fixed it all up for you. It's a risk, a pretty big risk
+to take with an actress of your--ah--comparative inexperience, but as a
+rule I find it advisable to give Marbridge his head when he sets his
+heart on anything."
+
+"You're awf'ly good," Joan murmured.
+
+"Don't think it," Arlington returned in a tone of remote amiability,
+teetering in his chair. "I've nothing whatever to do with it, beyond
+engaging you and being responsible for your salary. It's all Marbridge's
+doing."
+
+He examined with a perplexed air his highly polished fingernails....
+
+"You're to have a small part in a new comedy we're putting on next
+September," he announced, "and at the same time you will understudy the
+star--Nella Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Your salary will be sixty a week
+unless through some accident you're called upon to play the title rôle
+regularly--and accidents will happen in the best regulated theatrical
+enterprises. In which case you'll draw one-hundred a week for the first
+season. There are some details which Marbridge will explain to you--and
+if you'll drop in any time Monday and ask for Mr. Grissom he will have
+your contracts ready. And now if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment."
+
+Consulting his watch, he rose and moved round from behind his desk.
+"Good day, Miss Thursday," he said with a shadow of a formal smile. "I
+shall see much of you, no doubt, when the rehearsals begin."
+
+"Oh, thank you--thank you!" Joan cried.
+
+Arlington disclaimed title to her gratitude with a weary gesture. "Don't
+thank me, please--thank Marbridge.... You won't be long, Vin?" he added,
+at the door.
+
+"I'll be with you in ten minutes."
+
+"Right you are. Good afternoon, Miss--ah--Thursday...."
+
+Alone with Marbridge, Joan began impulsively to protest her thanks, but
+on glancing up, fell silent, abashed by an expression that glowed in the
+man's eyes like a reflection of firelight.
+
+She lowered demure lashes to cloak her confusion, a smile about her lips
+at once sophisticated and timid: a distractingly pretty woman fully
+conscious of her allure and of his attraction for her: a vision of
+provoking promise.
+
+Marbridge drew a deep breath.
+
+"If you persist in looking like that," he said in a voice that trembled
+between laughter and a sigh--"don't blame me if I forget myself and take
+you in my arms and kiss you. There are limits to my endurance...."
+
+Joan looked up, smiling.
+
+"Well--" she said with a little nervous laugh--"Well, what of it?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Before Joan left Marbridge, they had arrived at an understanding which
+was not less complete and satisfactory in that it was largely implicit.
+
+Without receiving any definite explanation of the circumstances
+complicating the production of "Mrs. Mixer," Joan carried away with her
+a tolerably clear notion thereof, both confirming and supplementing the
+second-hand information of Hattie Morrison.
+
+Mrs. Cardrow owned a heavy interest in the play, Joan had gathered; and
+there existed, as well, a contract between her and Arlington which would
+have to be eliminated before it would be possible to go ahead and make
+the production with another actress in place of the erstwhile star. Some
+very delicate diplomatic manoeuvring was indicated....
+
+Interim, Joan was to be privately drilled by Peter Gloucester for some
+weeks prior to calling together the full company to rehearse for the
+September production. Gloucester was just then out of Town, but she
+would be advised when and where to meet him on his return.
+
+Marbridge was to be absent from New York until the middle of September
+or longer; but he promised to be back a week or two before the opening
+performance.
+
+There were other promises exchanged....
+
+With her future thus schemed, the girl was very well content, who had
+attained by easy stages to one of mental development in which those
+primary moral distinctions upon which she had been reared were no longer
+perceptible--or, if perceptible, had diminished to purely negligible
+stature.
+
+It was not in nature for her to disdain or reject her bargain on moral
+grounds: she knew, or recognized, none that applied.
+
+For over a year during the most impressionable period of her life, Joan
+Thursday had breathed the atmosphere of the stage. She had become
+thoroughly accustomed to recognize without criticism those irregular
+unions and regular disunions that characterized the lives of her
+associates. She had observed many an instance where the most steadfast
+and loyal love existed without bonds of any sort, and as many where it
+existed in matrimony, and as many again where neither party to a
+marriage made aught but the barest pretence of fidelity.
+
+She had remarked that material and artistic success seemed to depend
+upon neither the observance nor the disregard of sexual morality. She
+knew of husbands and wives against whom scandal uttered no whisper and
+whose talents were considerable, but who had struggled for years and
+would struggle until the end without winning substantial recognition.
+And she knew of the reverse. The one unpardonable sin in her world was
+the sin of drunkenness, and even it was venial except when it "held the
+curtain" or prevented its rising altogether.
+
+As far as concerned her attitude toward herself, she considered Joan
+Thursday above reproach, seeing that she had withdrawn from her marriage
+long before even as much as contemplating any man other than her
+husband. She held that she was now free, at liberty to do as she liked,
+untrammelled by opinion whether public or private: that she had outgrown
+criticism.
+
+True, Quard might divorce her. But what of that? If he did, Joan
+Thursday wouldn't suffer. If he didn't, he himself would be the last to
+pretend he was leading a life of celibacy because of her defection.
+
+Marbridge she really liked; his appeal to her nature was stronger than
+that of any man she had as yet encountered. He attracted her in every
+way, and he excited her curiosity as well. He was a new type--but in
+what respect different from other men? He was famously successful with
+women: why? He had wealth, cultivation of a certain sort (real or
+spurious, Joan couldn't discriminate) and social position; and this
+flattered, that such an one should reject the women of his own sphere
+for Joan Thursday--late of the stocking counter.
+
+And if she could turn this infatuation of his to material profit, while
+at the same time satisfying the several appetites Marbridge excited in
+her: why not? Other women by the score did as much without censure or
+obvious cause for regret. Why not she?
+
+How many women of her acquaintance--women whose interests, running in
+grooves parallel to hers, were intelligible to Joan--would have refused
+the chance that was now hers through Marbridge? Not one; none, at least,
+who was free as Joan was free; not even Hattie Morrison, whose views
+upon the subject of such arrangements were strong, whom Joan considered
+straitlaced to the verge of absurdity. Hattie, Joan believed, would have
+jumped at the opportunity.
+
+But of course, denied, Hattie would be sure to decry it, and with the
+more bitterness since Joan had won it in the wreck of Hattie's hopes.
+
+And here was the only shadow upon the fair prospect of Joan's
+contentment. She who had questioned Hattie's right to become a party to
+the conspiracy against Mrs. Cardrow--how could she ever go home and face
+the girl, with this treachery on her conscience?
+
+True: Hattie didn't know, wouldn't know before morning, might never
+learn the truth during the term of their association.
+
+None the less, to be with Hattie that night would be to sit with a
+skeleton at the feast of her felicity....
+
+On impulse Joan turned to the left on leaving the New York Theatre
+building, and moved slowly, purposelessly, down Broadway.
+
+It was an afternoon of withering heat: the pavements burning palpably
+through the paper-thin soles of her pretty slippers, and the air close
+with the smell of hot asphaltum. The rays of the westering sun made
+nothing of the fabric of Joan's white parasol, their heat penetrating
+its sheer shield as though it were glass. Mankind in general sought the
+shadowed side of the street and moved only reluctantly, with its coat
+over its arm, a handkerchief tucked in between neck and
+collar--effectually choking off ventilation and threatening
+"sun-stroke."
+
+Waiting upon the northeast corner of Forty-second Street for the traffic
+police to check the cross-town tide, Joan felt half-suffocated and
+thought longingly of the seashore....
+
+Once across the street, she turned directly in beneath the permanent
+awning of the Knickerbocker Hotel, and entered the lobby, making her way
+round, past the entrance to the bar, to the recess dedicated to the
+public telephone booths.
+
+A semi-exhausted and apathetic operator looked up reluctantly as Joan
+approached, with one glance appraising her from head to heels. At any
+other time the dainty perfection of Joan's toilet would have roused
+antagonism in the woman; today she found energy only sufficient for a
+perfunctory mumble.
+
+"What numba, please?"
+
+Joan hesitated, feeling herself suddenly upon the verge of dangerous
+indiscretion, but stung by the operator's look of jaded disdain, took
+her courage in hand and pursued her original intention.
+
+"One Bryant," she said.
+
+The operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her
+and iterated the number mechanically.
+
+In another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths.
+
+"Numba five--One Bryant," she said.
+
+Joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver.
+
+"Hello--Lambs' Club?" she enquired.... "Is Mr. Fowey in the club?... Will
+you page him, please.... Miss Thursday.... Yes, I'll hold the wire."
+
+The booth was hermetically sealed. Perspiration was starting out all
+over her body. And somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet,
+lurked a long unburied cigar. She thrust the door ajar, but only to
+close it immediately as Fowey's voice saluted her.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+"Hello, Hubert," Joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery
+in her accents.
+
+"Is that you, Joan--really?" the voice demanded excitedly.
+
+"Real-ly!" she affirmed. "What're you doing there, shut up all alone by
+yourself in that stupid club, Hubert?"
+
+Prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came
+briskly: "Where are you now, anyway?"
+
+"That doesn't matter," she retorted. She had meant to ask him to meet
+her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest Marbridge might chance
+to see them. "What really matters is that this is my birthday and I'm
+going to give a party. Have you got anything better to do?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"Then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the Sixth
+Avenue L at Battery Place."
+
+"Battery Place! What in thunder--"
+
+"Never mind--tell you all about it when we meet. Will you come?"
+
+"Will I! Well, rawther!"
+
+"Half an hour, then--"
+
+"I'll be there, with bells on!"
+
+"Then good-bye for a little--Hubert."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than Joan.
+
+As he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to
+join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight,
+dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so
+ultra-English in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger
+brother. And the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager
+countenance seemed little short of offensive. She was sorry now that she
+had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so
+insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of
+the man who now filled all her thoughts--Marbridge; and so transparent
+that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible
+doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had
+at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her
+requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.
+
+But she permitted nothing of her thoughts to become legible in her
+manner. After all, she had only wanted an escort for the evening, an
+excuse to postpone that unavoidable return to the company of the girl
+she had betrayed; and Fowey had seemed the most convenient and the least
+dangerous man she could think of. If in the inflation of his
+insufferable conceit he dreamed for an instant another thing.... Well,
+Joan promised herself, he'd soon find out his mistake!...
+
+Keeping up the fiction of her imaginary birthday, she outlined her
+plans: they would take one of the Iron Steamboat Company's boats from
+Pier 1, North River--a short walk from the station--to Coney Island.
+When that resort palled, they would drive to Manhattan Beach and dine,
+perhaps "take in" Pain's Fireworks; and return to New York by the same
+route.
+
+Fowey's objections were instant and sincere and well-grounded: the boats
+would be crowded beyond endurance with an unwashed rabble liberally sown
+with drunks and screaming children. If she would only let him, he'd get
+a taxicab--or even a touring-car.
+
+Quietly but firmly Joan overruled him. It must be her party or no party,
+as she proposed or not at all.
+
+He yielded in the end, but the event proved him right in all he had
+foretold. Joan was very soon made sorry she hadn't suffered herself to
+be gainsaid.
+
+They had half an hour to wait for the boat, and the waiting-room upon
+the second-storey of the pier was like an oven, packed with a milling,
+sweating mob exactly fulfilling Fowey's prediction. They were elbowed,
+shouldered, walked upon, and at one time openly ridiculed by a gang of
+hooligans, any one of whom would have made short work of Fowey had he
+dared show any resentment.
+
+Upon the boat, when at length it turned up tardily to receive them,
+conditions were little better, save that the open air was an
+indescribable relief after the reeking atmosphere of the pier. Fowey
+managed to secure two uncomfortable folding stools, upon which they
+perched, crowded against the rail of the upper deck; a wretched
+"orchestra" wrung infamous parodies of popular songs from several
+tortured instruments; children scuffled and howled; burly ruffians in
+unclean aprons thrust themselves bodily through the throng, balancing
+dripping trays laden with glasses of lukewarm beer and "soft drinks" and
+bawling in every ear their seductive refrain--"Here's the waiter! Want
+the waiter? _Who_ wants the waiter?"--and an alcoholic, planting his
+chair next to Joan's, promptly went to sleep, snoring atrociously, and
+threatened every instant to topple over and rest his head in her lap.
+
+A single circumstance modified in a way Joan's regret that she hadn't
+heeded Fowey's protests.
+
+As the boat swung away from the pier, a larger steamship of one of the
+coastwise lines, outward bound from its dock farther up the North River,
+passed with leeway so scant that the dress and features of those upon
+its decks were clearly to be discerned. And at the moment when the two
+vessels were nearest, Joan discovered one who stood just outside an open
+cabin door, leaning upon the rail with an impressively nonchalant pose,
+and smoking a heavy cigar. He wore clothing of a conspicuous
+shepherd's-plaid, and his pose was an arrested dramatic gesture.
+
+In a moment a woman emerged from the open door behind him and joined him
+at the rail, placing an intimate hand on his forearm and saying
+something which won from him a laugh and a look of tender admiration: a
+handsome, able-bodied woman, expensively but loudly dressed, her
+connection with the stage as unquestionable as was his.
+
+Joan dissembled the odd emotion with which she recognized the man, and
+turned to Fowey.
+
+"What boat is that, do you know, Hubert?"
+
+Fowey raked her with an indifferent glance, fore and aft. "Belongs to
+the New Bedford Line," he announced--"can't make out her name--connects
+at New Bedford for the boats to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Ever
+been up that way?"
+
+"No. What's it like?"
+
+"Pretty islands. Don't know Martha's Vineyard very well, but Nantucket's
+my old stamping-ground. Go up there in the middle of the summer--about
+now--and you'll find every actor and actress you ever heard of, and then
+some. Great place. Wish we were going there."
+
+"Don't be silly...."
+
+The boats were drawing apart. Joan looked back for the last sight she
+was ever to have of her husband.
+
+Though she couldn't have known this, she sighed a little, in strange
+depression.
+
+Perplexed, she tried vainly to analyze her emotion: was it regret--or
+jealousy?
+
+Of a sudden, in the heart of that immense crowd, with Fowey attentive at
+her elbow, she was conscious of a feeling of intense loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+When, after a long and tedious voyage over a sea as flat as a plate and
+unflawed by a single cooling drift of air, the steamboat was made fast
+to the end of that long iron pier which juts out from the flat, low
+coast of Coney Island, its passengers rose en masse and crowded toward
+the gangways. Joan and Fowey, attempting to hang back until the crowd
+had thinned out sufficiently to enable them to go ashore in comfort,
+were caught in the swirl of it and swept along willy-nilly.
+
+Once on the pier-head the multitude had more elbow room and spread out,
+the main body streaming headlong shorewards, keen-set for the delights
+promised by the two great amusement parks which had grown up in the
+heart of that frontier settlement of gin-mills, dance-halls, side-shows,
+eating-houses, and dives unspeakable.
+
+Joan and Fowey followed more at their leisure, constraint and silence
+between them like a wall. The girl was deeply disappointed with the
+expedition, as far as it had gone, doubting whether anything better
+would follow, and still labouring under that unaccountable depression
+which had settled down upon her spirits at sight of Quard on the New
+Bedford boat. Fowey, no less disgusted, was puzzled by his companion's
+attitude, at once tolerant and aloof, keenly watchful for an opening
+through which to pursue his conquest, and wondering how it would end. If
+she were simply bent on tantalizing him again, for her own amusement....
+
+He swore angrily but inaudibly.
+
+Near the shore end of the pier they delayed to watch the antics of the
+hundreds of bathers churning the shallows in front of huge and hideous
+bathing establishments. In countless numbers, they dotted the sea like
+flies and darkened the sun-baked, unclean sands, into which their feet
+had trodden the wreckage of ten thousand lunches.
+
+Fowey said something inexpressively cynical about the resemblance of the
+scene below to a congregation of bacilli crawling upon a slide beneath a
+microscope.
+
+Joan heard without response, either vocal or mental. She resented
+bitterly the superior attitude adopted by her companion. For her part,
+she would have asked nothing better than to mingle with the throng and
+taste those crude pleasures so dear to its simple heart and, had she but
+dared admit it, to her own. But she had Fowey to live up to.
+
+Very heartily she regretted the impulse which had dictated her
+invitation. She had been far happier alone--though it would have been
+strange had she been suffered to remain long alone.
+
+By the time they left the pier, the evening was so far advanced that the
+myriad lights of the tawdry town were flashing into being. They
+debouched into a roaring mob which filled the wide avenue from curb to
+curb, packed so densely, though in constant motion, that trolley cars
+and automobiles forced a way through it only at a snail's pace and with
+great difficulty. Encouraged by the excessive heat which rendered Town
+intolerable to all who had the means to escape it, the week-end swarming
+had begun in all sincerity. In spite of the terrific congestion which
+already obtained in all the streets and avenues and beaches, piers,
+amusement parks, catch-penny shows, saloons, and restaurants, scarcely a
+minute passed without the arrival at some one of the trolley terminals
+of a car packed to the guards with more visitors.
+
+A good-natured if rowdy mob, for the most part, with only a minimum
+element of the downright vicious in its composition, it was none the
+less bent on amusement in its cheapest form, that is to say, at somebody
+else's expense. It gathered thickest round the places of free
+entertainment, where acrobats performed on open-air stages or crawled
+upon high, invisible wires, or where slides were supplied gratis for
+public diversion: grinning always, but howling with delight when treated
+to real misadventure, as when some girl, negotiating a bamboo slide upon
+a grass mat, her skirts wrapped tight about her, would lose balance and
+shoot headlong, sprawling, to the level; the greater the exposure, the
+greater the diversion....
+
+Nor was Fowey permitted to escape unteased: his conspicuous clothing,
+and the broad black ribbons dangling from his horn-rimmed glasses were
+too tempting to be resisted. Once his Panama was smashed down over his
+eyes; and his glasses were so frequently jerked by their moorings from
+his nose that he was fain at length to pocket them and poke owlishly
+along at Joan's guidance.
+
+Dazzled to blindness by those ten million glaring bulbs which lifted up
+tier upon tier against the blank purple skies; deafened by an
+indescribable cacophony of bands, organs, bells, horns, human tongues
+incessantly clattering; suffering acutely from the collective heat of
+the multitude added to that of the still and muggy night; buffeted and
+borne hither and yon at the will of the mass: they contrived in the end
+to engage an open, horse-drawn vehicle, of the type colloquially known
+in those days as "low-neck hack," and ordered themselves driven to the
+Manhattan Beach Hotel.
+
+When presently they had gained the darkling peace of a long road between
+marsh-lands, Fowey resumed with his glasses his hateful cynicism.
+
+"That was considerable treat, all right," he said pensively.
+
+"Glad you liked it," Joan replied with the curtness of chagrin.
+
+"We'll go back and have some more after dinner," he suggested.
+
+"Thanks--I've had plenty."
+
+"No, but really!" he insisted. "We haven't seen half of it--"
+
+"Oh, shut up!"
+
+Her anger was real; and when he would have mollified the girl with soft
+words and an arm that sought to steal round her waist, she repeated her
+injunction with added coarseness and struck his hand away with a force
+that he felt.
+
+In spite of this, he schooled himself to patience.
+
+Dinner, served perfunctorily by a weary waiter and consumed upon the
+verandah of the hotel at a table, the best they could command, far
+removed from the comparative coolness and ease of those beside the
+railing, did little if anything to modify Joan's temper.
+
+She, who had set out, believing herself the happiest of mortals, to
+spend an evening of real enjoyment, felt utterly wretched and forlorn.
+
+Moment by moment her distaste for Fowey was gaining strength. She was
+put to it to listen to his bragging and to make response civilly. She
+did not relish her food, her company, or her surroundings; and in utter
+ennui tried to stimulate herself with her favourite brand of sweet
+champagne, insisting on another bottle when they had emptied one between
+them. It served only to stimulate a fictitious gaiety in her, one swift
+to wane.
+
+For all this, she was reluctant to contemplate going home. Anything were
+preferable to that--at least until she could feel reasonably sure of
+finding Hattie abed and asleep.
+
+They finished their meal at an hour too late to make it worth while to
+patronize one of the open-air entertainments with which she had promised
+herself diversion; and since she would neither go home nor, at Fowey's
+mischievous suggestion, return to Coney Island, they moved to another
+table, nearer the railing, and whiled away one more hour listening to
+the band music over their cigarettes and liqueurs.
+
+Toward eleven o'clock, Joan suddenly announced that she was sick of it
+all and ready to go. Fowey revived his preference for a motor-car, and
+got his way against scanty opposition. In a saner humour, Joan would
+have stuck to her original plan. As it was, she accepted the motor ride
+with neither gratitude nor graciousness.
+
+Curiously enough, once established in the car, her hat off, the swift
+rush of night air cooling her moist brows, her head resting back against
+the cushions, she permitted Fowey to repeat his ardent love-making which
+had made their previous ride together memorable. Her dislike of him was
+no less thorough-paced, but had passed from an active to a passive
+stage; she was at once too indifferent to resist him and so bored that
+she welcomed anything that promised excitement. She suffered his kisses,
+confident in her power to control him, and drew a certain satisfaction
+from reminding him, now and again forcibly, that there were limits to
+her toleration. But for the most part she lay in his arms in passive
+languor, her eyes half closed, and tried to forget him, or rather to
+believe him someone else, one whose embraces she could have welcomed....
+
+When they came to lighted streets, she bade Fowey "behave," and would
+not permit him even so slight a lapse from decorum as that of "holding
+hands."
+
+She sat up, rearranging the disorder of her hair, adjusted her hat,
+surreptitiously restored the brilliance of her lips with a stick of
+rouge.
+
+The man drew back sullenly into his corner, fuming....
+
+At her door, dismissing the car, he followed her up to the stoop.
+
+"Joan--" he began angrily.
+
+She turned back from using her latch-key, with a wondering, child-like
+stare.
+
+"Yes, Hubert?" she enquired with hidden malice.
+
+"You're not--you're not going to send me off like this?"
+
+"Why not?" she demanded with fine assumption of simplicity. "It's awful'
+late."
+
+Fowey seized her wrist.
+
+"Now, listen to me!"
+
+Joan broke his grasp with little or no effort.
+
+"Silly boy!" she said. "Do you really want to come in and visit a while
+before you say good night?"
+
+Her look was false with a winning softness. Fowey stammered.
+
+"You--you know--"
+
+"Then come along!" she said, with a laugh; and turning fled lightly
+before him up the darkened stairway.
+
+She had opened the door to the tiny private hallway of the flat when he
+overtook her, panting. She paused, with a warning finger to her lips.
+
+"S-sh!" she warned. "Don't wake Hattie!"
+
+He swore viciously, discountenanced; and she laughed and, leaving the
+door wide, went on into the small sitting-dining-room, meanly exulting
+in the discomfiture she had planned, knowing quite well that he had
+either forgotten Hattie or believed her to be spending this week-end out
+of Town, as before.
+
+In the act of lighting the gas, she heard the door close and saw Fowey
+come, white and shaken, into the room.
+
+"Hush!" she said gaily. "I'll make sure she isn't awake--"
+
+Removing her hat, she passed on into the adjoining bedroom, and stopped
+short with a sensation of sinking dismay. The room was empty, the bed
+she shared with Hattie untouched. So much was visible in the faint light
+entering through windows that opened on a well.
+
+Wondering, Joan struck a light. Its first glimmer revealed to her the
+fact that Hattie's trunk was gone. The flare of the gas-jet disclosed
+greater changes in the aspect of the room, due to the disappearance of
+Hattie's toilet articles and knick-knacks.
+
+Hattie had left, bag and baggage--had gone for good!
+
+But why?
+
+Had she discovered Joan's treachery? Or what had happened?
+
+And in her surprise and perplexity, the girl was conscious anew of that
+sense of loneliness. She had been afraid to return to the one whom she
+had betrayed so lightly; but now she was afraid to be without her.
+
+Going back to the adjoining room, she found Fowey standing beside the
+table and with a slight smile examining a sheet of paper.
+
+"I found this lying here," he announced, handing it over--"didn't
+realize it was anything until I'd read half of it."
+
+His smile was again confident, bright with premature pride of conquest.
+But Joan didn't heed it. She was reading rapidly what had been written,
+swiftly and in a sprawling hand, upon the half sheet of note-paper.
+
+     "By rights I ought to stay until you come back, whenever you
+     have the cheek to, and tell you what I think of you--I saw B.
+     E. this evening and he told me all about it--but I want never
+     to see you again--the rent's paid up till next Wednesday--then
+     you can stick or get out--I don't care which--and I wish you
+     joy of your bargain!--H. M."
+
+"You've been scrapping with Hattie, eh?" Joan heard Fowey say in an
+amused voice.
+
+Without answering, she let the sheet of paper fall to the table, and
+stood with head bowed in thought, suffering acutely the humiliation
+inspired by Hattie's contemptuous dismissal.
+
+"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry--"
+
+"Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of
+opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't
+matter."
+
+"It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly.
+
+Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position.
+
+"Oh ..." she said blankly.
+
+Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him
+off.
+
+"Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now--of
+course. I'm sorry. Good night."
+
+He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with passion; his small
+eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides,
+but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body
+trembling and shaken beyond control.
+
+She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of
+pity for him.
+
+"Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away."
+
+"No, I'm damned if I do. You asked me up here--I know now--just to tease
+me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone
+and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged--"don't treat me so
+cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you,
+more than a chance to torment me? My God! what kind of a woman are you?
+I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this
+week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were--"
+
+"What am I?" Joan cut in quickly.
+
+Fowey choked again, with a gesture of impotent exasperation.
+
+"You," he almost shouted--"you're the woman I love and who's driving me
+mad--mad I tell you!"
+
+"Hubert! You mean that? You really love me?"
+
+"You know I do. You know I'm crazy about you. Haven't you seen it from
+the first?"
+
+Hesitating, Joan experienced a sense of one in deep waters. There was a
+sound as that of distant surf in her ears. All through her body pulses
+were throbbing madly.
+
+She struggled still a little, instinctively; but Fowey advantaged
+himself of that instant of indecision. He held her in his arms, now; her
+face was stinging beneath his kisses.
+
+Almost unconsciously, she lifted her arms and clasped them round his
+neck, drawing his face to hers.
+
+"You poor kid!" she murmured fondly, her eyes closed.... "You poor
+kid...."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Without knowing how she had come there, Joan found herself standing
+beside the outer doorway, in the narrow hall; one hand hugging about her
+the kimono she must have snatched up by instinct, while yet not fully
+wakened, the other hand fumbling with the lock; sleep clouding her brain
+like a fog, fatigue weighting her eyelids and chaining her limbs, panic
+hammering in her bosom.
+
+Overhead the doorbell was ringing imperatively, without interruption,
+even as it must have been ringing for many minutes before she was
+consciously awake.
+
+Dimly she felt that this alarm by night must portend something strange
+and terrible.
+
+And still she held her hand, wondering. Who could it be? Not Quard: for
+she had seen him leave New York. Never Marbridge: that were unthinkable!
+Hattie Morrison, perhaps.... And that meant....
+
+The bell ground on implacably.
+
+At length she found courage to adjust the chain-bolt and open the door
+to the limit permitted by that guard.
+
+In the outer hallway a gas-jet burned, turned low, diffusing just enough
+illumination to show her the figure, somehow indefinitely familiar in
+spite of its style, of a man in a chauffeur's uniform: a young and wiry
+man clothed in khaki coat and breeches and leather leggins, and wearing
+a cap with visor shadowing heavily his narrow, sharp-featured
+countenance.
+
+As the door opened he removed his finger from the bell-push, and drove
+home recognition with his voice.
+
+"Miss Thursby live here? I got a message for her."
+
+Joan gasped: "Butch!"
+
+"It's me, all right," her brother admitted crisply in his
+well-remembered tone of irony. "You certainly are one sincere little
+sleeper. I been ringing here--"
+
+"How did you get in?"
+
+"Rang up the janitor--if _that_ matters. Lis'n: you betta hustle into
+your clothes quick 's you can if you wanta get home in time to say
+good-bye to the old woman."
+
+"Mother!" Joan shrilled. "What--what's the matter--?"
+
+"Dyin'," Butch told her briefly and without emotion. "She said she
+wanted to see you. So get a move on. My car's waitin', and I dassent
+leave it alone. Hustle--y' understand?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" Joan promised with a sob. "I'll hurry, Butch--"
+
+"See you do, then!"
+
+The boy swung about smartly and disappeared down the well of the
+stairway.
+
+Joan closed the door, and leaned against it, panting. Suppose he had
+wanted to come in!...
+
+For the moment, this was her sole coherent thought.
+
+Then, rousing, she crept stealthily back to the darkened bedroom,
+gathered up her clothing with infinite precautions against noise, and
+returned to the sitting-room to dress in feverish haste....
+
+There was an open taxicab waiting in front of the door. As she came out,
+Butch bent over and cranked the motor. Straightening up, he waved her
+curtly into the body of the car.
+
+"Jump in and shut the door," he ordered briefly, climbing into the
+driver's seat.
+
+"But--Butch--"
+
+"Doncha hear me? Get in and shut that door. We got no time to waste
+chinnin' here."
+
+Abashed and frightened, the girl obeyed.
+
+Immediately Butch had the cab in motion, tearing eastward at lawless
+speed through streets whose long ranks of yawning windows, seen
+fugitively in the formless dusk of early morning, seemed to look down
+leering, as if informed with terrible intelligence.
+
+She shut out the sight of them with hands that covered her face until
+the swift rush of cool air steadied and sobered her, so that she grew
+calmer in the knowledge that, in veritable fact (and this was all that
+really mattered) "nobody knew"....
+
+Then, sitting up, she composed herself, and with deft fingers completed
+the adjustment of her garments. By the time she had finished her toilet,
+aided by a small mirror inset between the forward windows, Butch was
+stopping the cab before the East Seventy-sixth Street tenement.
+
+Bending back, he unlatched the door and swung it open.
+
+"You go on up," he ordered. "I'll be around before long--gotta run this
+machine back to the garage."
+
+Joan stepped quickly to the sidewalk, and shut the door.
+
+"All right," she responded, and added, almost timidly, avoiding her
+brother's eyes: "Thank you, Butch."
+
+He grunted unintelligibly and, as Joan moved up the stoop, threw in the
+power again and drew swiftly away down the street.
+
+For an instant Joan held back in the vestibule, sickened to recognize
+anew the home of dirt and squalor she had fled, a long lifetime since,
+it seemed, and struggling with almost invincible repugnance for the
+ordeal awaiting her at the head of those five weary flights.
+
+Then, more through instinct than of her will, her finger pressed the
+call-button beneath the Thursby letter box.
+
+The latch clicked. She pushed the door open, moved reluctantly into the
+shadows and addressed herself wearily to the stairs, inhaling with a
+keen physical disgust the heavy and malodorous atmosphere in which her
+youth had been shaped toward womanhood.
+
+As the dining-room door admitted her, she checked again, almost tempted
+to question the soundness of those faculties which insisted that more
+than a year had passed, rather than an hour or two, since she had left
+that mean and sordid place.
+
+Above the dining-table blazed and wheezed a single gas-jet, whose ragged
+bluish flame was yet sufficiently strong to turn to the colour of night
+the dull dawnlight outside the air-shaft windows. It revealed to her not
+a single article of furniture other than as memory placed it, and showed
+her, seated on the far side of the table, her father lifting a heavy and
+sullen face from the note-book between his soiled fat fingers, that
+inevitable sheaf of dope lying at his elbow.
+
+There was no sort of greeting, in proper sense, between these two. For a
+little neither spoke. Joan hesitated, with shoulders against the panels
+of the door, in an attitude instinctively defiant and defensive. Thursby
+looked her up and down, a louring sneer marking his recognition of his
+daughter's finery.
+
+Suddenly, explosively, she found her tongue: "How's ma?"
+
+Thursby jerked a thumb in the direction of the bedrooms.
+
+"She died an hour ago," he said slowly, "just after Ed went to find you.
+Edna's in there."
+
+Joan made a gesture of horror.
+
+"My God!" she said throatily, and turned away.
+
+A moment later, loud cries of lamentation ringing through the flat
+testified that she had found her sister.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+With peculiar irony, the passing of that pallid, vague, and ineffectual
+character, Mrs. Thursby, proved the signal for the dissolution of the
+family which, denying her both respect and affection during her life,
+had none the less lost, in losing her, its sole motive or excuse for
+unity.
+
+The return from the cemetery was accomplished toward noon of a July day
+whose heavily overcast sky seemed only to act as a blanket over the
+city, compressing its heated and humid atmosphere until the least
+exertion was to be indulged in only at the cost of saturated clothing.
+
+The four were crowded in common misery within a shabby, stuffy,
+undertaker's growler.
+
+Thursby occupied the back seat with his eldest daughter, notwithstanding
+the fact that, since apprising her of her mother's death, the morning of
+her return, he had addressed no word to her directly. He sat now with
+fat and mottled hands resting on his knees, his waistcoat unbuttoned,
+exposing soiled linen, his dull and heavy gaze steadfastly directed
+through the window.
+
+Opposite him, on the forward seat, Edna wept silently and incessantly
+into a black-bordered handkerchief.
+
+Butch, beside her, looked serious and depressed in a suit of black
+clothing borrowed for the occasion.
+
+Nobody spoke from the time they re-entered the carriage, after the
+burial, until they left it. Joan huddled herself into her corner,
+putting all possible space between herself and her father. A sense of
+lassitude was heavy upon her. She meditated vaguely on the strangeness
+of life, its inscrutable riddle, the enigma of its brief and feverish
+transit from black oblivion through light to black oblivion. But the
+problem only wearied her. She dropped it from time to time and tried to
+think of other things; as a rule this resulted in her speculations
+centering about Butch.
+
+The boy mystified her, awed her a little with a suggestion of spirit and
+strength, character and intelligence, conveyed by a forceful yet
+unassuming manner. It was a new manner, strangely developed in the year
+that spaced her knowledge of him, only to be explained by his sudden
+determination to go seriously to work and make something of himself; and
+the motive for that remained inexplicable, and would ever as far as
+concerned Joan. For the personal reticence that had always sealed his
+cynical mouth was more than ever characteristic of the boy today; and
+the sympathy which once had existed between himself and Joan was become
+a thing of yesterday and as if it had never been. His attitude toward
+her was touched with just a colour of contempt, almost too faint to be
+resented; she shrank from it, feeling that he saw through her
+shallowness, that he knew her, not as Marbridge knew her, perhaps, or as
+Billy Salute, but thoroughly and intimately, and far better than she
+would ever know herself.
+
+She knew now--through Edna--that within the last twelve-month Butch had
+learned his trade of chauffeur and pursued it with such diligence that,
+aside from being the main support of the family which she had deserted,
+he was half-owner of his taxicab and in a way to acquire an interest in
+a small garage....
+
+When the carriage stopped, the father was the first to alight. With no
+word or look for either of his daughters, and only a semi-articulate
+growl for Butch, to the effect that they'd see one another again at
+dinner, he pulled his rusty derby well forward over his haggard, haunted
+eyes, thrust his hands deep into trouser-pockets, and slouched
+ponderously away in the direction of his news-stand. Before he turned
+the avenue corner, Joan, looking after him while she waited for Butch
+to settle with the driver, saw Thursby produce his packet of dope and,
+moistening a thumb, begin to con it as he plodded on.
+
+So, pursuing his passion to the end, he passed forever from her life,
+yet never altogether from her memory; in which, as time matured the
+girl, his inscrutable personality assumed the character of a symbol of
+aborted destiny. What he had been, whence he had sprung, what he might
+have become, she never learned....
+
+Then, preceded by Edna, followed by Butch, she climbed for the last time
+those weary stairs.
+
+Arrived in the flat, Butch shut himself into his room to change to
+working clothes. He could not afford to waste an afternoon, he said.
+Joan and Edna sat down in the dark and dismal dining-room, conferring in
+hushed voices until he rejoined them. He came forth presently, the
+inevitable cigarette drooping from his thin, hard lips, and sat down,
+his spare, wiry body looking uncommonly well set-up and capable in the
+chauffeur's livery.
+
+After a little hesitation, Joan mustered up courage to say her say, if
+with something nearly approaching appeal in the way that she addressed
+this taciturn and self-sufficient man who had replaced her loaferish
+brother.
+
+"I've been telling Edna," she said, "that I'm going to take care of her
+from now on."
+
+"That so?" Butch exhaled twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. "How?" he
+enquired without prejudice.
+
+"Well ... she's coming to live with me--"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm leaving where you found me. By the way, how did you
+know where to look for me, Butch?"
+
+"Seen you one day when you was livin' in the Astoria Inn. There's a
+dairy lunch on the ground floor where I gen'ly eat. After that I kept an
+eye on you."
+
+"Oh!" said Joan thoughtfully, wondering how much that eye had seen of
+the brief but lurid existence she had led before coming partially to her
+senses and moving to share Hattie Morrison's lodgings. "Well, I'll find
+a good place, and Edna can stay with me and act as my maid until she's
+old enough to find something to do for herself."
+
+"On the stage, eh?"
+
+"I guess so. I'm getting on, you know. Chances are I could give her a
+boost."
+
+Butch shook his head: "Nothin' doin'."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He was unmoved by the flash of hostility in Joan's manner.
+
+"I guess," he said after a deliberate pause, "we don't have to go into
+that. Anyway, I got other plans for Edna. She's goin' to the country,
+up-State, to spend the summer on a farm--family of a fellow I know.
+After that, if she's strong enough, she can come back and keep house for
+me, if she wants to, or go to work any way she chooses--that's not my
+business. Only--understand me--she isn't going to go into the chorus
+until she's old enough to know what she's doin', and strong enough to
+stand the racket. That's settled."
+
+Rising, he jerked the stub of his cigarette through the air-shaft
+window, and slowly drew on his gauntlets.
+
+"You do what packin' you wanta, kid," he advised Edna, "before three
+o'clock thisaft'noon. I'll be back for you then. Your train leaves at
+four. You'll travel along with the mother of this friend of mine--Mrs.
+Simmons, her name is."
+
+As he had said, the matter was settled. Joan conceded the point without
+bickering, with indeed a feeling of mean relief. Moreover, she was
+afraid of Butch....
+
+The flat in Fiftieth Street had gained associations insufferably
+hateful. She returned to it only long enough to pack up and move out.
+Incidentally she found, read, and destroyed without answering, a note
+from Fowey suggesting an assignation. Her paradoxical dislike for the
+man had deepened into detestation. She both hoped and intended never to
+see him again.
+
+She moved before nightfall, leaving no address, and established herself
+in an inexpensive but reputable boarding establishment, little
+frequented by the class of theatrical people with which she was
+acquainted, and where a repetition of her escapade was impossible. On
+the third day following she began rehearsing privately with Gloucester,
+and threw into the work all she could muster of strength, patience, and
+intelligence, leaving herself, at the end of each day's work, too
+exhausted in mind and body to indulge in any of the pleasures to which
+her tastes inclined.
+
+Fowey, unable to trace her and seeing nothing of the girl in those
+restaurants and places of amusement she had been wont to frequent, in
+time gave up the chase; and before the first presentation of "Mrs.
+Mixer" the newspapers supplied Joan with the news of his clandestine
+marriage and subsequent flight to Europe with a widow whose fortune
+doubtless promised compensation for the fact that she had a son nearly
+as old as her latest husband.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+The rehearsals of "Tomorrow's People" were arranged to begin on the
+twenty-third day of September; and since all the important rôles had
+been filled before he left Town, and Wilbrow, whom he could trust, had
+charge of all other details, Matthias delayed his home-coming until the
+twenty-second.
+
+Not until the twentieth did he emerge from the wilderness up back of the
+Allagash country into the comparative civilization of Moosehead Lake. In
+eight weeks he had not written a line, received a letter, or read a
+newspaper. But, as he telegraphed Helena from the Mt. Kineo House, he
+was so healthy that he was ashamed of it.
+
+The day-letter telegram she sent in reply was delivered on the train.
+Its news, though condensed, was reassuring: Venetia was well and her boy
+developing into a famous ruffian; the two were making a visit at
+Tanglewood, and on the return of Marbridge from his summer in Europe
+would move back to New York, where Venetia was to reassume charge of his
+town-house.
+
+Thus satisfied as to the welfare of the woman he loved, Matthias gave
+himself up completely to the production of his play; and through the
+following four weeks lived in the theatre by day, dreamed of it by
+night, thought, talked, and wrote only in its singular terminology.
+
+Few facts unconnected with his own play penetrated his understanding, in
+all that period. But, dining with Wilbrow one night at the general table
+in the Players, he overheard Gloucester railing bitterly at the
+ill-fortune which had induced him to pledge himself to stage a modern
+satirical comedy for Arlington and to train for the leading part a raw
+and almost inexperienced stage-struck girl.
+
+He detailed his trials in vivid phrases:
+
+"As far as I know, she's never played in anything except a bum
+vaudeville sketch, and I had hell's own time making her fit to play
+_that_. And yet she's got the ineffable nerve to keep picking at my way
+of doing things on the general ground that it ain't Tom Wilbrow's. Seems
+he had the privilege of rehearsing her for a five-side part in that punk
+show of Jack Matthias', that went to pieces out on the Coast last
+Summer. If Wilbrow wasn't listening with all his ears, over there, I'd
+tell you what I said to the young woman the last time she threw him in
+my face.... What?... Oh, nobody you ever heard of. Calls herself
+Thursday--Joan Thursday.... Of course I rowed with Arlington about her,
+but he only shrugged and grinned and said she had to play it and I'd got
+to make her play it--offered to bet me a thousand over and above my fees
+I couldn't do it.... Sure, I took him up. Why not? I'll make her act it
+yet. I could make a Casino chorus boy act human if I wasn't so
+squeamish.... Oh, Marbridge--one of his discoveries. I saw him handing
+her gently into that big, brazen touring-car of his, in front of
+Rector's, night before last. Fragile's the word--'handle with care!'"
+
+Wilbrow, interrogated, supplied the context. Arlington had bought up,
+through a third party, Mrs. Cardrow's interest in "Mrs. Mixer," advising
+her to sell out because the play had already scored one failure and
+promising her another play in which she would stand better chance to win
+New York audiences. This was an old comedy from the French, revamped,
+and was even then being rehearsed with a scrub company and a scratch
+outfit of scenery, the production to be made on the same night that
+"Mrs. Mixer" was to tempt fate with Joan Thursday; the designated date
+being the twenty-fifth of October, a Wednesday.
+
+Matthias promptly dismissed the matter from his mind: he speculated a
+little, hazily about Marbridge, in his constitutional inability to
+understand that gentleman, felt more than ever sorry for Venetia and
+wondered how much longer she would stand it all--and plunged again into
+his preoccupation.
+
+"Tomorrow's People" was announced for production on Monday, October the
+twenty-third. But after the dress-rehearsal on Sunday certain changes
+recommended themselves as advisable to the judgment of the author, who
+persuaded the management to postpone the opening night until Wednesday.
+At ten minutes to twelve on that night the final curtain fell upon a
+successful representation; an audience in its wraps blocked the aisles
+until after midnight, applauding and demanding the author; who, however,
+was not in the theatre.
+
+He had, in fact, not been near it since the curtain, falling on the
+first act, had persuaded him of the general friendliness of an audience
+and the competency of the company. This culmination of a nerve-racking
+strain which had endured without respite for over a month found him
+without courage to await the verdict. He took to the streets and walked
+himself weary in vain effort to refrain from circling back toward the
+building whose walls housed his fate.
+
+At length, in desperation hoping to distract his thoughts from the
+supreme issue, he purchased a ticket of admission to another theatre,
+above whose entrance blazed the announcement "Mrs. Mixer," and stationed
+himself at the back of the orchestra to witness the last part of the
+performance.
+
+He saw the self-confidence of Gloucester supremely justified: the
+satiric farce marched steadily, scene by scene, to a success that was to
+keep it on Broadway through the winter and make the name of Joan
+Thursday a house-hold word throughout the Union. Her personal success
+was as unquestionable as her beauty; she played with grace, vivacity,
+charm, and distinction; and only to the initiate of the theatre was it
+apparent that Gloucester had found in her the perfect medium for the
+transmission of his art. Matthias could see, in company with a few of
+the more discriminating and stage-wise, that she employed not a gesture,
+intonation or bit of business which had not originated with Gloucester;
+she brought to her rôle on her part nothing but beauty and an unshakable
+self-confidence so thoroughly ingrained that it escaped suggesting
+self-consciousness. The triumph was, rightly, first Gloucester's, then
+the play's; but the public acclaimed the actress, and the one acidulated
+critic who hailed her, the following morning, as "at last!--the perfect
+human kinetophone record!" was listened to by none, least of all by the
+subject of his sarcasm. Marbridge, in a stage box, led the applause at
+the conclusion of each act; and at the end of the play Arlington came in
+person before the curtain, leading by the hand the gracefully reluctant
+Joan, and in a few suave sentences thanked the audience for its
+appreciation and a beneficent Providence for granting him this
+opportunity of fixing a new star in the theatrical firmament: the name
+of "this little girl," he promised (bowing to Joan) would appear in
+letters of fire over the theatre, the next night....
+
+Pausing in the lobby to light a cigarette before leaving, Matthias
+overheard one of Arlington's lieutenants confiding to another the news
+of the ruinous failure of the third initial production of that night.
+
+Half an hour later he met Wilbrow by appointment in a quiet,
+non-theatrical club, and received from him confirmation of rumours which
+had already reached him of his own triumph with "Tomorrow's People."
+
+"You're a made man now," Wilbrow told him with sincere good will and
+some little honest envy; "by tomorrow morning the pack will be at your
+heels, yapping for a chance to put on every old 'script in your trunk."
+
+"I suppose so," Matthias nodded soberly.
+
+"But there's one comfort about that," Wilbrow pursued cheerfully:
+"whatever the temptation, you won't give 'em anything but sound, sane,
+workmanlike stuff. You've proved yourself one of the two or three, at
+most, playwrights in this country who are able to think and to make an
+audience think without losing sight of the fact that, in the last
+analysis, 'the play's the thing.' We've got plenty of authors nowadays
+who can turn out first-chop melodrama, and we've got a respectable
+percentage of 'em who write plays so full of honest and intelligent
+thought that it gives the average manager a headache to look at the
+'script; but the men who can give us the sort of drama that not only
+makes you think but holds you on the front edge of your seat waiting to
+see what's coming next.... Well, they're few and far between, and you're
+one of 'em, and I'm proud to have had a hand in putting you before the
+public!"
+
+"You've got nothing on me, there," Matthias grinned: "I'm proud you had.
+And if I can get my own way after this--"
+
+"You don't need to join the I-Should-Worries on account of that!"
+
+"You'll be the only man who will ever produce one of my plays."
+
+Between one o'clock and two they parted. Matthias trudged home,
+completely fagged in body, but with a buoyant heart to sustain him.
+
+Venetia would be glad for him....
+
+He was ascending the steps of Number 289 when a heavy touring-car,
+coming from the direction of Longacre Square, swung in to the curb and
+stopped. Latch-key in hand, Matthias paused and looked back in some
+little surprise: the lodgers of Madame Duprat were a motley lot, but as
+far as he knew none of them were of the class that maintains expensive
+automobiles. But this car, upon inspection, proved to be tenanted by the
+chauffeur alone; who, leaving the motor purring, jumped smartly from his
+seat and ran up the steps.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, touching his cap, "but I'm looking
+for a gentleman named Matthias--"
+
+"I am Mr. Matthias."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I've been sent to fetch you. It's--er--important, I
+fancy," the man added, eyeing Matthias curiously.
+
+"You've been sent to fetch me? But who sent you?"
+
+"My employer, sir--Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"Marbridge!" Matthias echoed, startled. Without definite decision, he
+turned and ran down the steps in company with the chauffeur: Venetia in
+need of him, perhaps.... "What's happened?" he demanded. "Is Mrs.
+Marbridge--?"
+
+"If you'll just get in, sir," the man replied, "I'll tell you--as much
+as I know--on the way. It'll save time."
+
+He opened the door of the tonneau, but Matthias turned from it, walked
+round the car, and climbed into the seat beside the driver's. With a nod
+of satisfaction, the chauffeur joined him, threw in the power, and
+deftly swung the ponderous vehicle about.
+
+"Well?" Matthias asked as the machine shot across-town.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," the man replied after a moment--"but I'd rather not
+say anything, if it's all the same to you."
+
+"It isn't," Matthias insisted curtly. "I'm not on sufficiently friendly
+terms with Mr. Marbridge for him to send for me without explanation."
+
+"Yes, sir; but you see, part of my job is to keep my mouth shut."
+
+"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to forget that duty to some extent,
+or else stop the car and let me out."
+
+"Very good, sir. I don't suppose I can do any harm telling what little I
+know. After supper tonight, Mr. Marbridge told me to take the car to the
+garage and not to expect a call for it until sometime tomorrow morning;
+but when I got there, he was already wanting me on the telephone. He
+said there'd been an accident, and told me to find Mr. Arlington first
+and then you, and ask you to come immediately."
+
+"But why me?" Matthias asked, more of himself than of the driver.
+
+"He didn't say, sir."
+
+"Did he state what sort of an accident?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You found Mr. Arlington?"
+
+"No, sir; he wasn't in when I asked at his hotel. But I left a message
+before coming on for you."
+
+Matthias sat up with a start. Instead of turning up Broadway the man was
+steering his car straight across Longacre Square. Before he had time to
+comment on this fact they were speeding on toward Sixth Avenue.
+
+"Look here," he cried, "you're not taking me to Mr. Marbridge's home!"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Mr. Marbridge hadn't gone home when he telephoned me, sir."
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+"We'll be there in a minute, sir--an apartment house on Madison Avenue."
+
+"Oh!" said Matthias thoughtfully. "Was Mr. Marbridge--ah--alone when you
+left him tonight?"
+
+"I'd rather not say, sir, if you don't mind."
+
+Troubled by an inkling of the disaster, Matthias composed himself to
+patience.
+
+Turning south on Fifth Avenue, the car passed Thirty-fourth Street
+before swinging eastward again. It stopped, eventually, in the side
+street, just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, before a private
+entrance to a ground-floor apartment, such as physicians prefer. But
+Matthias could discern no physician's name-plate upon the door at which
+his guide knocked, or in either of the flanking windows.
+
+Opening, the door disclosed a panelled entry tenanted by a white-lipped
+woman in the black and white uniform of a lady's-maid. Her frightened
+eyes examined Matthias apprehensively as he entered, followed by the
+chauffeur.
+
+This last demanded briefly: "Doctor been?"
+
+The maid assented with a nervous nod: "Ten minutes ago, about. He's with
+the lady now--"
+
+"Lady!" the chauffeur echoed. "But I thought it was Mr. Marbridge--"
+
+"I mean the other lady," the maid explained--"the one what done the
+shooting. When Mr. Marbridge got the gun away from her, he locked her up
+in the bathroom, and then she had hysterics. The doctor's trying to make
+her hush, so's she won't disturb the other tenants, but.... You can hear
+yourself how she's carrying on."
+
+In a pause that followed, Matthias was conscious of the sound of
+high-pitched and incessant laughter, slightly muffled, emanating from
+some distant part of the flat.
+
+He asked abruptly: "Where is Mr. Marbridge?"
+
+The maid started and hesitated, looking to the chauffeur.
+
+"This is Mr. Matthias," that one explained. "Mr. Marbridge sent for
+him."
+
+"Oh, yes--excuse me, sir. This way, if you please."
+
+Opening a door on the right, the woman permitted Matthias to pass
+through, then closed it.
+
+He found himself in a dining-room of moderate proportions and handsomely
+furnished. Little of it was visible, however, outside the radius of
+illumination cast by an electric dome which, depending from the middle
+of the ceiling, focussed its rays upon a small round dining-table of
+mahogany. This table was quite bare save for a massive decanter of
+cut-glass standing at the edge of a puddle of spilt liquor: as if an
+uncertain hand had attempted to pour a drink. Near it lay a broken
+goblet.
+
+On the farther side of the table a woman with young and slender figure
+stood in a pose of arrested action, holding a goblet half-full of brandy
+and water. Her features were but indistinctly suggested in the penumbra
+of the dome, but beneath this her bare arms and shoulders, rising out of
+an elaborate evening gown, shone with a soft warm lustre. Matthias
+remembered that gown: Joan Thursday had worn it in the last act of "Mrs.
+Mixer." But she neither moved nor spoke, and for the time being he paid
+her no further heed, giving his attention entirely to Marbridge.
+
+Sitting low in a deeply upholstered wing-chair--out of place in the
+dining-room and evidently dragged in for the emergency--Marbridge
+breathed heavily, chin on his chest, his coarse mouth ajar, his face
+ghastly with a stricken pallor. His feet sprawled uncouthly. The dress
+coat and waistcoat he had worn lay in a heap on the floor, near the
+chair, and both shirt and undershirt had been ripped and cut away from
+his right shoulder, exposing his swarthy and hairy bosom and a sort of
+temporary bandage which, like his linen, was darkly stained. Closed when
+Matthias entered, his eyes opened almost instantly and fixed upon the
+man a heavy and lacklustre stare which at first failed to indicate
+recognition.
+
+Matthias heard himself crying out in a voice of horror: "Good God,
+Marbridge! How did this happen?"
+
+The man stirred, granted with pain, and made a deprecatory gesture with
+his left hand.
+
+"Needn't yell," he said thickly: "I've been shot ... done for...."
+
+His gaze shifted heavily to the woman. With effort he enunciated one
+word more: "Drink...."
+
+As though by that monosyllable freed from an enchaining spell, Joan
+started, moved quickly to his side and held the goblet to his lips.
+
+He drank noisily, gulping and slobbering; overflowing at either corner
+of his mouth, the liquor dripped twin streams upon his naked bosom.
+
+Mechanically Matthias put his hat down on the table.
+
+He experienced an incredulous sensation, as though he were struggling to
+cast off the terror and oppression of some particularly vivid and
+coherent nightmare.
+
+From the farther room that noise persisted of monotonous and awful
+laughter.
+
+Marbridge ceased to swallow and grunted. Joan removed the glass and drew
+away without looking at Matthias. At a cost of considerable will-power,
+apparently, the wounded man collected himself and levelled at Matthias
+his louring, but now less dull, regard.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said ungraciously. "Well, you'll do at a
+pinch.... I wanted Arlington ... but you if he couldn't be found."
+
+"Well," said Matthias stupidly, "I'm here.... The doctor's seen you, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes--did what he could for me--no use wasting effort--it's my cue to
+exit."
+
+"Oh, come! It's not as bad as that!"
+
+"The hell it ain't. The doctor knows--I know. Not that it matters. It
+was coming to me and I got it."
+
+"Where's the doctor?" Matthias insisted. "Why isn't he attending you
+now?"
+
+"He's in the other room ... trying to silence that crazy woman.... She
+plugged me and ... went into hysterics...."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Nella Cardrow.... Had the devil of a time with her before doctor
+came ... trying to keep her from rushing out and giving herself
+up ... all this in the papers.... But all right now: we'll hush it up."
+
+"Then that's what you want of me?"
+
+"Wait," Marbridge grunted. "Where's that girl?"
+
+Joan moved back to his side. "What can I do?" she said; and these were
+all the words Matthias heard her utter from first to last of that
+business.
+
+Marbridge nodded at her with a curling lip: "You can get out!"
+
+She turned sharply and left the room, banging the door.
+
+"That's the kind _she_ is," Marbridge commented. "You were lucky to get
+rid of her as easy as you did.... Give me more brandy, will you, like a
+good fellow--and be stingy with the water. I've got to ... hold out a
+couple of hours more."
+
+Matthias served him.
+
+"I presume Venetia knows nothing about this, yet?"
+
+Having drunk, Marbridge shook his head. "Not yet. Now, listen.... You
+guessed it: I want you to help hush this up, for Venetia's sake....
+Rotten mess--do no good if it gets in the papers--only humiliation for
+her. Will you--?"
+
+"What is it you want me to do?"
+
+"Help me home and keep your mouth shut.... You see, this is my place;
+I've had it years; very handy--private entrance--all that.... Nella used
+to meet me here. That's how she came to have a key. I'd forgotten....
+Well, I got tired of her, and she couldn't act, and Arlington was sore
+about that. So we planned to get rid of her. I guess you must've heard.
+It was a dirty business, all round.... And tonight, when her play went
+to pieces, just as we'd planned it should, she saw how she'd been bilked
+and lost her head.... Came here, let herself in quietly, without the
+maid's hearing her, and shot me when I came in with Joan. I managed to
+get the gun away before she could turn it on herself, and locked her up.
+Then--hysterics.... Well, I'm finished. I asked for it, and got it....
+No: no remorse bunk, no deathbed repentance, nothing like that! But I
+realize I've been a pretty rotten proposition, first and last. Never
+mind.... What I'm getting at's this: nobody need suffer but me. That's
+where _you_ come in. For Venetia's sake. You and Arlington and the
+doctor can cover it all up between you. Arlie can quiet that
+girl--Joan--and the doctor's all right; he'll want a pretty stiff cheque
+to fix the undertaker--and that's all right, too. Then you've got to
+scare Nella Cardrow so's she won't give herself away, and buy my
+chauffeur and that maid out there, Sara.... But first off, you'll have
+to help doctor get me home and in bed. I'm the sort that's got to die in
+the house."
+
+His chin dropped again.
+
+"Well ... I guess it's a good job ... at that...."
+
+He shivered.
+
+The hall-door opened and Arlington entered, followed by a lean man with
+worried eyes who proved to be the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Shortly before seven o'clock, that same morning, a limousine car pulled
+up quietly just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, and its occupant,
+with a word on alighting to his driver, addressed himself briskly to the
+door of the ground-floor flat.
+
+He was a handsome, well dressed, well-set-up and well-nourished animal
+of something more than middle-age: a fact which the pitilessly clear
+light of early morning betrayed, discovering lines and hollows in his
+clean-shaven countenance which would ordinarily have escaped notice.
+
+But he had passed that time of life when he could suffer a sleepless
+night of anxiety without visibly paying for it.
+
+His intention to announce himself by ringing the bell was promptly
+anticipated, the door opening before his finger could touch the button.
+He checked momentarily in obvious surprise, then jauntily lifted his hat
+as he stepped hurriedly inside.
+
+"Why, my dear!" he addressed the woman who held the door--"up so early!"
+
+"I haven't been to bed, of course, Mr. Arlington," Joan informed him.
+
+"Well," he observed, not without envy, "you don't look it."
+
+"I've been packing all night," she returned. "Of course--I can't stay
+here, after what's happened."
+
+"Of course not," he agreed sympathetically.
+
+Having closed the outside door, she moved before him into a small
+drawing-room which adjoined the entry-hall on the left, and when he had
+followed shut its door with particular care.
+
+"Sara's still packing," she explained, turning to Arlington. "Well?"
+
+He hesitated, looking her over with a doubtful eye. But she was, at
+least outwardly, quite cool and collected, her manner exhibiting no
+undue amount of anxiety.
+
+Still, a certain amount of make-believe would seem no more than
+decent....
+
+"Look here," he said almost sharply--"you're feeling all right, eh?"
+
+"Quite--only tired as a dog; and naturally--"
+
+"I understand," he interrupted. "But you'll be fit to go on tonight, you
+think?"
+
+"Don't worry about that," Joan advised him decidedly. "I'm hoping to get
+a nap before evening, but even if I don't, I know the first duty of an
+actress is always to her public."
+
+"Yes," Arlington agreed briefly, avoiding her eyes.... "Still, I must
+ask you to be prepared."
+
+Joan's figure stiffened slightly, and her dark eyes widened.
+
+"Dead?" she questioned in a low voice.
+
+Arlington nodded. "I'm sorry.... About half an hour after we got him
+home."
+
+The girl sat down suddenly and buried her face in her hands.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in a stifled voice--"how awful!"
+
+"There!" Arlington moved over and rested a hand familiarly on her
+shoulder. "Brace up. You'll forget all about this before long."
+
+"O no--never!" she moaned through her fingers.
+
+"But you will," he insisted, looking down at her with an odd expression.
+"To begin with, I'm going to make it my business to see that you forget.
+You must. You can't do justice to your--genius, if you keep harping on
+this accident. It wasn't your fault, you know. Just as soon as I've
+arranged a few details.... By the way, how's the Cardrow woman?"
+
+"Asleep," Joan answered. "She hasn't made a bit of trouble since the
+doctor gave her that dope--whatever it was."
+
+"Good. He'll be along presently with a nurse he can trust. And by that
+time I'll have you out of the way. I know just the place for you, a
+little flat uptown, on Fifty-ninth Street, overlooking the Park. You'll
+be very quiet and comfortable there, and near the theatre besides."
+
+"I'm glad of that. I was thinking, of course, I'd have to go to some
+hotel ... and I didn't want to."
+
+"And quite natural. You want to be alone until you feel yourself
+again.... I'll find you a good maid, and make everything smooth for you.
+You're not to fret about anything, and if you're troubled you must come
+right to me."
+
+"You're awf'ly kind."
+
+"Don't look at it that way, please."
+
+"How can I ever thank you?"
+
+"Oh, we'll talk that over some other time." Arlington removed his hand
+from her shoulder and went back to the table, upon which he had
+deposited a bundle of newspapers. "There's no doubt of your success," he
+pursued soothingly. "Your notices are the finest I've seen in years. I
+brought you the lot of them in case you care--"
+
+Joan uncovered her face and looked up quickly. "Oh, do let me see them!"
+
+Arlington placed the papers in her eager hands.
+
+"They're all folded with your reviews uppermost."
+
+"Oh, thank you ever so much!"
+
+But in the act of opening the bundle, Joan hesitated and let it fall
+into her lap.
+
+"There's nothing about--?" she questioned fearfully.
+
+"No, and won't be," he promised. "Besides, these were already on the
+presses by the time it happened.... You needn't worry," he resumed,
+moving to a window and looking abstractedly out, hands clasped behind
+him; "the affair will be kept perfectly quiet. Everybody's been seen
+and fixed, except the Cardrow, and the doctor has already given us a
+certificate of death under the knife--operation for appendicitis,
+imperatively required at an hour's notice.... By the way, I don't
+suppose you know, but--Marbridge didn't leave any papers or anything of
+that sort lying round here, did he?"
+
+There was no answer. He heard a paper rustle, and looking round saw the
+girl with her attention all absorbed by one of her notices.
+
+"Well," he said after a moment, "I'll go and have a talk with that maid,
+Sara."
+
+"All right," she returned abstractedly.
+
+"You're all ready to leave when I've fixed things up with her?"
+
+"Yes," she returned, without looking up.
+
+He hesitated a moment by the door, remarking the flush of colour that
+was deepening in her cheeks; then with a mystified shake of his head, he
+left the room very quietly.
+
+She remained alone for upwards of half an hour, in the course of which
+time she read all the reviews once and some of the more enthusiastic
+twice.
+
+Then carefully folding the papers, she put them aside and sat thinking.
+
+She thought for a long time without moving, her eyes shining as they
+looked ahead, out of the stupid and sordid turmoil of yesterday into the
+golden promise of tomorrow.
+
+She thought by no means clearly, with a brain confused by praise and
+sodden with fatigue; but above the welter of her thoughts, a single
+tremendous fact stood out, solid and unshakable, like a mountain
+towering about cloud-wrack:
+
+She was a Success.
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Joan Thursday, by Louis Joseph Vance,
+Illustrated by Oscar Cesare</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Joan Thursday</p>
+<p>Author: Louis Joseph Vance</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 23, 2011  [eBook #36502]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN THURSDAY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/American Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/joanthursday00vanciala">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/joanthursday00vanciala</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>JOAN THURSDAY</h1>
+
+<h3><i>A NOVEL</i></h3>
+
+<h2>BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE</h2>
+
+
+<h3>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br />
+OSCAR CESARE</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BOSTON<br />
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY<br />
+1913</h3>
+
+<h3><i>Copyright, 1913</i>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Louis Joseph Vance.</span></h3>
+
+<h3><i>All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign
+languages,<br /> including the Scandinavian.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>Published, September, 1913.<br />
+Reprinted, September, 1913.<br />
+Reprinted, December, 1913.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>TO<br />
+GRANT RICHARDS</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#I">I</a><br />
+<a href="#II">II</a><br />
+<a href="#III">III</a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV</a><br />
+<a href="#V">V</a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI</a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII</a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX</a><br />
+<a href="#X">X</a><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI</a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XV">XV</a><br />
+<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XVII">XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIX">XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XX">XX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXI">XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXII">XXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXV">XXV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXX">XXX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXV">XXXV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#illus1">"Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus2">"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded, hotly</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus3">"Miss Thursday&mdash;my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus4">The door slammed. He was gone</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>JOAN THURSDAY</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>She stood on the southeast corner of Broadway at Twenty-second Street,
+waiting for a northbound car with a vacant seat. She had been on her
+feet all day and was very tired, so tired that the prospect of being
+obliged to stand all the way uptown seemed quite intolerable. And so,
+though quick with impatience to get home and "have it over with," she
+chose to wait.</p>
+
+<p>Up out of the south, from lower Broadway and the sweatshop purlieus of
+Union Square, defiled an unending procession of surface cars, without
+exception dark with massed humanity. Pausing momentarily before the
+corner where the girl was waiting (as if mockingly submitting themselves
+to the appraisal of her alert eyes) one after another received the
+signal of the switchman beyond the northern crossing and ground
+sluggishly on. Not one but was crowded to the guards, affording the girl
+no excuse for leaving her position.</p>
+
+<p>She waited on, her growing impatience as imperceptible as her fatigue:
+neither of them discernible to those many transient stares which she
+received with a semblance of blank indifference that was, in reality,
+not devoid of consciousness. Youth will not be overlooked; reinforced by
+an abounding vitality, such as hers, it becomes imperious. This girl was
+as pretty as she was poor, and as young.</p>
+
+<p>Judged by her appearance, she might have been anywhere between sixteen
+and twenty years of age. She was, in fact, something over eighteen, and
+at heart more nearly a child than this age might be taken to imply&mdash;more
+a child than any who knew her suspected. She herself suspected it least
+of all.</p>
+
+<p>She looked what she liked to believe herself, a young woman of
+considerable experience with life. Simple, and even cheap, her garments
+still owned a certain distinction which she would without hesitation
+have termed "stylish": a quality of smartness which somehow contrived
+not incongruously to associate with inferior materials. Her shirtwaist
+was of opaque linen, pleated, and while not laundry-fresh was still
+presentable; her skirt fitted her hips snugly, and fell in graceful
+lines to a point something short of her low tan shoes, showing stockings
+of a texture at once coarse and sheer; to her hat, an ordinary straw
+simply trimmed with a band and <i>chou</i> of ribbon, she had lent some
+little factitious character by deftly twisting it a trifle out of the
+prevailing shape. Over one arm she carried a coat of the same material
+as her skirt, and in her hand a well-worn handbag of imitation leather,
+rather too large, and decorated with a monogram of two initials in
+German silver. The initials were J-T: her name was Joan Thursby.</p>
+
+<p>Uniform with a thousand sisters of the shop-counters, she was yet
+mysteriously different. Men looked twice in passing; after passing some
+turned to look again.</p>
+
+<p>Her face, tinted by the glow of the western sky, was by no means poor in
+native colour: a shade thin, its regular features held a promise, vague,
+fugitive, and provoking. Her hair was a brown which hardly escaped being
+ruddy, and her skin matched it, lacking alike the dusky warmth of the
+brune and the purity of the blonde. She was neither tall nor short, but
+seemed misleadingly smaller than she was in fact, thanks to the
+slightness of a body more stupidly nourished than under-nourished or
+immature. Her eyes were brown and large, and they were very beautiful
+indeed when divorced from the vacancy of weary thinking.</p>
+
+<p>It was only in this look of the unthinking toiler that unconsciously
+she confessed her immense fatigue. Her features were relaxed into lines
+and contours of apathy. She seemed neither to think nor even to be
+capable of much sustained thought. Yet she was thinking, and that very
+intensely if unconsciously. Her mind was not only active but was one of
+considerable latent capacity: something which she did not in the least
+suspect; indeed, it had never occurred to Joan to debate her mental
+limitations. Her thoughts were as a rule more emotional than psychical:
+as now, when she was intensely preoccupied with pondering how she was to
+explain at home the loss of her position, and what would be said to her,
+and how she would feel when all had been said ... and what she would
+then do....</p>
+
+<p>Daylight was slowly fading. Though it was only half-after six of an
+evening in June, the sun was already invisible, smudged out by a
+portentous bank of purplish cloud whose profile was edged with
+fire-of-gold against a sky of tarnished blue&mdash;a sky that seemed dimmed
+with the sweat of day-long heat and toil. The city air was close and
+moveless, and the cloud-bank was lifting very slowly from behind the
+Jersey hills; it might be several hours before the promised storm would
+break and bring relief to a parched and weary people.</p>
+
+<p>At length despairing of her desire, the girl moved out to the middle of
+the street and boarded the next open car of the Lexington Avenue line.</p>
+
+<p>She was able to find standing-room only between two seats toward the
+rear, where smoking was permitted. She stood just inside the
+running-board, grasping the back of the forward seat. Her hand rested
+between the shoulders of two men. She was the only woman in that
+section. Behind her were ten masculine knees in a row, before her five
+masculine heads: ten men crowding the two transverse benches, some
+smoking, all stolidly absorbed in newspapers and indifferent to the
+intrusion of a woman. None dreamed of offering the girl a seat; nor did
+she find this anything remarkable, in whom use had bred the habit of
+accepting without question such everyday phenomena. If she was weary, so
+were the men; if she desired the consideration due her sex, then must
+she enfranchise herself from the sexless struggle for a living wage....</p>
+
+<p>The car, swerving into Twenty-third Street, plunged on to and turned
+north on Lexington Avenue. Thereafter its progress consisted of a series
+of frantic leaps from street-corner to street-corner. When it was in
+motion, there was a grateful rush of air; when at pause, the heat was
+stifling and the fumes of cigarettes, pipes, and cheap cigars blended to
+manufacture a mephitic reek. A slight sweat dewed the face of the girl,
+and her colour faded to pallor. Her feet and legs were aching, her back
+ached with much lifting of boxes to and from shelves, her head
+ached&mdash;chiefly because of the inevitable malnutrition of a shop-girl's
+lunch.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time more passengers were taken on; a lesser number
+alighted: Joan found herself obliged to edge farther in between the rank
+of knees and the rigid back of the forward seat. By the time the car
+crossed Forty-second Street, she was at the inside guard-rail: ten
+persons, half of them standing, were occupying a space meant for five.</p>
+
+<p>It was then, or only a trifle later, that she became conscious of the
+knee which the man behind her was purposely pressing against her. Then
+for a minute or two she was let alone. But she was sick with
+apprehension....</p>
+
+
+<p>She stood it as long as she could. Then abruptly she twisted round and
+faced her persecutor.</p>
+
+<p>Before her eyes, half blinded by rage and disgust, his face swam like
+the mask of an incubus&mdash;a blur of red flesh fixed in an insolent smirk.</p>
+
+<p>She was dimly aware of curious glances lifting to the sound of her
+tremulous voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Must I leave this car? Or will you let me alone?"</p>
+
+<p>There was the pause of an instant; then she had her answer in a tone of
+truculent contempt:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, wha's the matter with you, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>She choked, stammering, and looked round in despair. But the man at her
+elbow was grinning with open amusement, and another, seated beside her
+tormentor, was pretending to notice nothing, his nose buried in a
+newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>"If y'u don't like the goin', sister, why doncha get off 'n' walk?"</p>
+
+<p>This from him who had compelled that frantic protest.</p>
+
+<p>With a lurch, the car stopped; and as it did so the girl turned
+impulsively, grasped the guard-rail, swung her lithe body between it and
+the floor of the car, and dropped to the cobbles between the tracks. She
+staggered a foot or two away, followed by an indistinguishable taunt
+amid derisive laughter. Fortunately there was no car bearing down on the
+southbound track to endanger her; while that which she had left flung
+away as, recovering, she ran to the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>She began to trudge northward. The first street lamp she encountered
+told her she had alighted at Forty-seventh Street, and had another mile
+and a half to walk. But with all her weariness, she no longer thought of
+riding; it was impossible ... she could never escape annoyance ... men
+just wouldn't let her alone....</p>
+
+<p><i>Men!...</i></p>
+
+<p>Shuddering imperceptibly, her eyes hot with tears of shame and
+indignation, she walked rapidly, anxious to gain the refuge of her home,
+to be secure, for a time at least, from Man....</p>
+
+<p>They called themselves <i>Men</i>! She despised them all&mdash;<i>all</i>! Beasts!...
+What had she ever done?... It wasn't as if this was the first time: they
+were always plaguing her: hardly a day passed.... Well, anyway, never a
+week.... It wasn't her fault if she was pretty: she never even so much
+as looked at them: but they kept on staring ... nudging.... She didn't
+believe there was a decent fellow living ... except, of course, That
+One....</p>
+
+<p>He was different; at least, he had been, somehow: like a perfect
+gentleman. He had come between her and a gang of tormentors, had knocked
+one down and thrown the rest into confusion with a lively play of fists,
+and then, whisking Joan into a convenient taxicab, had taken her to the
+corner nearest her home&mdash;never so much as asking her name, or if he
+might call.... She had expected him to&mdash;like in a book; but he didn't,
+nor had he (likewise contrary to her expectations) at any time
+thereafter been known to haunt her neighbourhood. To her the affair was
+like a dream of chivalry: she remembered him as very handsome (probably
+far more handsome than he really was) and <i>different</i>, with grand
+clothes and manners (the man had helped her out of the cab and lifted
+his hat in parting): all in all, vastly unlike any of the fellows whose
+rude attentions she somewhat loftily permitted in the streets after
+supper or at the home of some other girl.</p>
+
+<p>That One remained her dream-lord of romance. And in her heart of hearts
+she was sure that some day their paths would cross again. But it had all
+happened so long ago that she had grown a little faint with waiting.</p>
+
+<p>So, smothering her indignation with roseate fancies, she plodded her
+weary way to Seventy-sixth Street; where, turning eastward, she
+presently ascended a squat brown-stone stoop, entered the dingy
+vestibule of a dingier tenement, pressed the button below a mail-box
+labelled "Thursby," waited till the latch clicked its spasmodic welcome,
+and then began her weary climb to the topmost floor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>The five flights of steps were long and steep and covered with a
+compound of fabric, grease, and dirt which, today resembling a thin
+layer of decayed rubber, had once been bright linoleum. There was no
+light other than a dejected dusk filtering down the wall from a grimy
+sky-light in the roof, a twilight lacking little of the gloom of night.</p>
+
+<p>On each landing five doors opened&mdash;three toward the back, two toward the
+front of the building: most of them ajar, for purposes of ventilation
+and publicity. It was a question which was the louder, the clatter of
+tongues or the conflict of odours from things cooking and things that
+would doubtless have been the better for purification by fire.</p>
+
+<p>At the top conditions were a little more endurable: and when Joan had
+shut behind her the door giving access to her home, the clatter and
+squalling came from below, a familiar and not unpleasant blend of
+dissonances. And within the smells were individual: chiefly of boiled
+cabbage and fried pork, with a feebly contending flavour of cheap
+tobacco-smoke.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the dining-room of the Thursby flat. Behind it lay the
+kitchen; forward, three small cubicles successively denominated on the
+architect's plans as "bedchamber," "alcove," and "parlour." They were
+all, however, sleeping-rooms. The nearest was occupied by Joan's
+brother; the next, the alcove, contained a double-bed dedicated to Joan
+and her young sister; while the parlour held a curiosity called a
+folding-bed, which had long since ceased to fold, and on which slept
+Anthony Thursby and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Thursby was now in the kitchen, preparing dinner with the
+assistance of her fifteen-year-old daughter, Edna. "Butch," the son of
+the house, was not at home.</p>
+
+<p>Anthony Thursby sat at the dining-table, head bent over a ragged
+note-book and a well-thumbed collection of white and pink newspaper
+clippings.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sight of him that checked Joan in her explicit intention. She
+had meant to enter dramatically to her mother, blurt out the news, with
+the cause, of her misfortune, and abandon herself to the luxury of
+self-pity soothed by sympathy. But she had also meant to have it
+understood that nobody was to tell "the Old Man"&mdash;at least not until she
+should have established herself in a new job. In short, she had not
+thought to find Thursby at home.</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating beside the table, she removed the long pins from her hat
+while she stared with narrowed eyes at her father. She was wondering
+whether she hadn't better confess and have it out with him first as
+last. The only thing, indeed, that made her pause was the knowledge that
+there would be no living with him until she was once more "earning good
+money" behind a counter. And she was firmly determined not again to seek
+employment in a department store.</p>
+
+<p>Regarding fixedly the round but unpolished bald head with its neglected
+fringe of grey hair, she asked herself if the bitterness in her heart
+for her father were in truth hatred or mere premonitory resentment of
+the opposition he would unquestionably set against her plans for the
+future....</p>
+
+<p>He was a man of nearly fifty, who looked more, in spite of a tendency to
+genial corpulence. At thirty he had been a fair and handsome man; today
+his round red face was mottled, disfigured by a ragged grey moustache,
+discoloured by several days' growth of scrubby beard, and lined and
+seamed with the imprint of that consuming passion whose sign was also
+set in his grey, passionate, haunted eyes. Shabbily dressed in a soiled
+madras shirt and shoddy trousers, he wore neither tie nor collar: his
+unkempt chin hung in folds upon his chest. Fat and grimy forearms
+protruded from his rolled-up sleeves; fat and mottled hands trembled
+slightly but perceptibly as they rustled the pink and white clippings
+and with a stubby pencil scrawled mysterious hieroglyphics in the
+battered note-book.</p>
+
+<p>Thursby was intent upon what he, and indeed all his family, knew as his
+"dope": checking and re-checking selections for tomorrow's races. This
+pursuit, with its concomitants, its attendant tides of hope and
+disappointment, was his infatuation, at once the solace and the terror
+of his declining years.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again he muttered unintelligibly.</p>
+
+<p>There rose a sound of voices in the kitchen. Annoyed by the
+interruption, he started, looked up, and discovered Joan.</p>
+
+<p>She offered to his irritated gaze a face of calm, with unsmiling
+features.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" he growled. "How the h&mdash;how long've you been in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a few minutes, pa," the girl returned quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what're you standing there&mdash;staring!&mdash;for, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean anything: I was just taking off my hat."</p>
+
+<p>"Well"&mdash;his face was now purple with senseless anger&mdash;"cut along! Don't
+bother me. I'm busy."</p>
+
+<p>"I see."</p>
+
+<p>There was a damnable superciliousness in the tone of the girl as she
+turned away. Thursby meditated an explosion, but refrained at
+discretion: Joan had taught him that, unlike her browbeaten mother and
+timid sister and her sleek, loaferish brother, she could give as good as
+he could send. He bent again, grumbling, over his dope. Instantly it
+gripped him, obliterating all else in his cosmos. He frowned, moistened
+the pencil at his mouth, and scrawled another note in the greasy little
+book.</p>
+
+<p>Joan slipped quietly away to her bedroom. She found it stifling;
+ventilated solely from the parlour and the open door to Butch's kennel,
+it reeked with the smell of human flesh and cheap perfume. She noted
+resentfully the fact that her sister had neglected to make up the bed:
+its rumpled sheets and pillows, still retaining the impression of
+over-night, lent the cubicle the final effect of sordid poverty.</p>
+
+<p>Hanging up her hat and coat, she sat for a time on the edge of the bed,
+thinking profoundly.</p>
+
+<p>Such an existence, she felt, passed human endurance. And a gate of
+escape stood ajar to her, with a mundane paradise beyond, if only she
+had the courage to adventure....</p>
+
+<p>In any event, conditions as they were now with the Thursbys could not
+obtain much longer. If the Old Man continued to follow the races through
+the poolrooms, he would soon be forced out of his small business and his
+family dispossessed of their mean lodgings; and there was no longer any
+excuse for hope that he would ever shake off the bondage of his
+infatuation. As it was, he gave little enough toward the support of his
+family, and grudged that little; almost all his meagre profits went to
+the poolrooms; it was only when he won (or seldom otherwise) that he
+would spare his wife a few dollars. Furthermore, his business was
+heavily involved in an intricate meshing of debt.</p>
+
+<p>Thursby, at least, persisted in calling it a business; though Joan's
+lips shaped scornfully at mention of that mean and insignificant
+newspaper shop, crowded in between a saloon and a delicatessen shop, in
+the shadow of the Third Avenue Elevated Railway. In her understanding it
+was chiefly remarkable as the one place where one could be certain of
+not finding Thursby during the afternoon or Butch at night. They were
+seldom there together: it was as if father and son could not breathe the
+same atmosphere for long at a time.</p>
+
+<p>Nominally, Butch was his father's assistant; actually, he alone kept the
+business alive; had it not been for his supervision of the morning and
+evening paper deliveries, it would long since have wasted
+inconspicuously away. By way of compensation, Butch, shrewdly alive to
+signs of a winning day, would now and again wheedle a dollar or two out
+of the Old Man. Wages he neither received nor expected, being well
+content with a nominal employment which served to cover many an hour of
+unlicensed liberty; and he seemed to have access to some mysterious if
+occasionally scanty fund, for he was never without some little money in
+pocket. After dinner, if Butch elected to eat the evening meal at home,
+he invariably disappeared; and his return was a matter of his personal
+convenience. He had been known not to sleep at home at all; his
+favourite bedtime was between one and two in the morning&mdash;after the
+saloons had closed. Yet no one had ever seen him drunk.</p>
+
+<p>He was younger than Joan by a year. Born to the name of Edgar, he had
+been dubbed Butch in the public schools, and the name had stuck; even
+his mother and father employed it. And yet it could not be said to suit
+him; rather, the boy suggested a jocky. He was short, slender, and wiry;
+with a strong, emaciated nose flanked by small eyes sunk deep in sallow
+cheeks&mdash;his mouth set in a perpetually sardonic curve. He dressed
+neatly, whatever the straits and necessities of the family (to the
+mitigation of which he contributed nothing whatever) and had a failing
+for narrow red neckties and flashy waistcoats. His hard, thin lips were
+generally tight upon a cigarette; they were forever tight upon his
+personal affairs: if he opened them at home it was to "kid" the girls,
+which he did with a slangy, mordant wit, or to drop some casually
+affectionate word to his mother. His conversation with his father, whom
+he seemed always to be watching with a narrow, grim suspicion, was
+ordinarily confined to monosyllables of affirmation or negation.</p>
+
+<p>He went his secret ways, self-sufficient, wary, reserved; a perpetual
+subject of covert speculation to the women of his family.</p>
+
+<p>Joan had heard it whispered that he was a member of the "Car-barn Gang."
+But she never dared question Butch, though she trembled every time she
+came upon newspaper headlines advertising some fresh hooliganism on the
+part of the gang&mdash;a policeman "beaten up," a sober citizen "held up and
+frisked" in the small hours, or a member of some rival organization
+found stabbed and weltering on the sawdust floor of a grisly dive.</p>
+
+<p>Between this girl and her brother there existed a strange harmony of
+understanding, quite tacit and almost unrecognized by either. Joan's
+nearest approach to acknowledgment of it resided in infrequent
+admissions to friends that she could "get on with Butch," whereas "the
+rest of the bunch made her weary."</p>
+
+<p>Almost all the vigour and vitality of the mother seemed to have been
+surrendered to Butch and Joan; there had been little left for Edna. The
+girl was frail, anæmic, flat-chested, pretty in an appealing way: fit
+only for one of two things, tuberculosis or reconstruction in the
+country. As it was, in the busy seasons she found underpaid employment
+in the workrooms of Sixth Avenue dressmaking establishments; between
+whiles she drudged at housework to the limits of her small strength.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mrs. Thursby.... It was singularly difficult for Joan to realize
+her mother. There was about the woman something formless and intangible.
+She seemed to fail to make a definite impression even upon the retina of
+the physical eye. She had the faculty of effacing herself, seemed more a
+woman that had been than a woman who was. The four boundary walls of the
+flat comprehended her existence; she seldom left the house; she never
+changed her dress save for bed. It might have been thought that she
+would thus dominate her world: to the contrary, she haunted it, more a
+wraith than a body, a creature of functions rather than of faculties.
+She had a way of being in a room without attracting a glance, of passing
+through and from it without leaving an impression of her transit.</p>
+
+<p>When Joan made herself look directly at her mother, she was able to
+detect traces of ravaged beauty. A living shell in which its tenant lay
+dormant, her subjective will to live alone kept this woman going her
+sempiternal rounds of monotony. Capacity for affection she apparently
+had none; she regarded her children with as little interest as her
+husband. Nor had she the power to excite or sustain affection.</p>
+
+<p>Joan believed she loved her mother. She did not: she accepted her as a
+convention in which affection inhered through tradition alone....</p>
+
+<p>Seated on the edge of the bed, her face flushed with the heat of the
+smouldering evening, sombre eyes staring steadfastly at the threadbare
+carpet, the girl shook her head silently, in dreary wonder.</p>
+
+<p>She stood at crossroads. She could, of course, go on as she had
+gone&mdash;bartering youth and strength for a few dollars a week. But every
+fibre of her being, every instinct of her forlorn soul, was in vital
+mutiny against such servitude. In fact, doubt no longer existed in
+Joan's mind as to which way she would turn: dread of the inevitable
+rupture alone deterred her from the first steps.</p>
+
+<p>From the rear of the flat Edna called her fretfully: "Joan! Jo-an! Ain't
+you coming to eat?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan rose. She answered affirmatively in a strong voice. Her mind was
+now made up: she would tell them after supper&mdash;after the Old Man had
+gone back to the shop.</p>
+
+<p>She posed before a mirror, touching her hair with deft fingers while she
+stared curiously at the face falsified in the depths of the uneven sheet
+of glass.</p>
+
+<p>Then placing her hands on her hips, at the belt-line, thumbs to the
+back, she lifted her shoulders, at one and the same time smoothing out
+the wrinkles in her waist and settling her belt into place.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, as casually as if there had been any one to hear, "I
+guess I'll <i>do</i>, all right, all right!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>With a careless nod to her mother and sister, Joan slipped into her
+chair and helped herself mechanically but liberally to the remains of
+pork and cabbage. Her mother tilted a granite-ware pot over a cup and
+filled the latter with the decoction which, in the Thursby menu,
+masqueraded as coffee.</p>
+
+<p>Joan acknowledged the service with an outspoken "Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>At this Edna plucked up courage to say, with some animation: "Joan&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The mother interrupted with a sibilant warning, "<i>Hush!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Thursby lifted his head and raked the three faces with an angry glance.
+"In God's name!" he cried&mdash;"can't you women hold your tongues?"</p>
+
+<p>The girls made their resentment variously visible: Joan with a scowl and
+a toss of her head, Edna with a timid pout. The mother's face betrayed
+no emotion whatsoever. Thereafter, as far as they were concerned, the
+meal progressed in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Thursby bent low over his plate, in the intervals devoted to mastication
+intently studying the file of dope at his elbow. Now and again he would
+drop knife and fork to take up his pencil and check the name of a horse
+or jot additional memoranda in his note-book. Infrequently he spoke or,
+rather, grunted, to indicate a desire for some dish beyond his reach.
+Curiously enough (Joan remarked for the thousandth time) he was
+punctilious to say "please" and "thank you." The idiosyncrasy was all a
+piece (she thought) with the ease with which he employed knife, fork,
+and spoon: a careless grace which the girl considered "elegant" and did
+him the honour to imitate.</p>
+
+<p>Furtively throughout the meal she studied her father. These little
+peculiarities of his, these refinements which sat so strangely on his
+gross, neglected person and were so exotic to his circumstances, exerted
+a compelling fascination upon the nimble curiosity of the girl. She both
+feared and despised him, but none the less cherished a sneaking
+admiration for the man. Beyond the fact that their estate had not always
+been so sorry, she knew nothing of the history of her parents; but she
+liked to think of her father, that he had once been, in some unknown
+way, superior: that he was a man ruined by a marriage beneath his
+station. To think this flattered her own secret dreams of rising out of
+her environment: girls, she had heard, took after their fathers&mdash;and
+<i>vice-versa</i>: perhaps she had inherited some of Anthony Thursby's keener
+intelligence, adaptability, and sensitiveness&mdash;those qualities with
+which she chose to endow the man who had been Thursby before he became
+her father. Other circumstances lent colour to this theory: Butch, for
+instance, had unquestionably inherited his mother's physique and her
+reticence, while Joan had her father's vigorous constitution and a body
+like his for sturdiness and good proportion....</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly thrusting back his chair, Thursby rose, buttoned a soiled
+collar round his neck, shrugged a shabby coat upon his shoulders and,
+pocketing his dope, departed with neither word nor glance for his
+womenfolk.</p>
+
+<p>His heavy footsteps were pounding the second flight of steps before a
+voice broke the hush in the stuffy little room, a voice faint and
+toneless, dim and passionless. It was Mrs. Thursby's.</p>
+
+<p>"He's had a bad day, I guess...."</p>
+
+<p>Edna placed a tender hand over the scalded, listless one that rested on
+the oilcloth. Joan, abandoning her determination to air her personal
+grievances at the first available instant, said suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, ma. It ain't like he was a drinking man."</p>
+
+<p>The vacant eyes in the faded face of the mother were fathoming distances
+remote from the four walls of the slatternly room. Her thin and
+colourless lips trembled slightly; little more than a whisper escaped
+them:</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I wish he was&mdash;wish he had been. It'd 've been easier to
+stand&mdash;all this." A faltering gesture indicated vaguely the misery of
+their environment.</p>
+
+<p>Edna continued to pet the unresponsive hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, mother!" she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>The woman stirred, withdrew her hand, and slowly got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Edna. Le's get done with them dishes."</p>
+
+<p>With eyes hard and calculating, Joan watched the two drift into the
+kitchen. Their wretched state touched her less than the fact that she
+must continue forever to share it, or else try to better it in open
+defiance of her father's prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's got to be done for this family," she grumbled&mdash;"and I don't
+see anybody even thinking of doing anything but me!"</p>
+
+<p>She rose and strode angrily back to the cubicle she shared with Edna. In
+a fit of unreasoning rage, snatching her hat from its hook, she impaled
+it upon her hair with hatpins that stabbed viciously. It had grown too
+dark to see more than a vague white shape moving on the surface of the
+mirror. But she did not stop to light the gas to make sure she was
+armoured against the public eye. In another moment, bag in hand, coat
+over her arm, she was letting herself out into the hallway.</p>
+
+<p>Time enough tomorrow morning to fret her mother and sister with news of
+her misfortune: tonight she was in the humour to make a bold move toward
+freedom....</p>
+
+<p>But on the door-stoop she checked, a trifle dashed by apprehension of
+the impending storm, which she had quite forgotten. She drew back into
+the vestibule: she could hardly afford to subject her only decent waist
+and skirt to danger of a drenching.</p>
+
+<p>An atmosphere if anything more dense than that of the day blanketed
+heavily the city. Even the gutter-children seemed to feel its influence,
+and instead of making the evening hideous with screams and rioting,
+moved with an uncommon lethargy, or stood or squatted apart in little
+groups, their voices hushed and querulous. The roar of the trains on the
+nearby Elevated seemed muted, the clangour of the Third Avenue surface
+cars blunted, and Joan fancied that the street lamps burned with an
+added lustre. Wayfarers moved slowly if near home, otherwise briskly,
+with a spirit as unwilling as unwonted: one and all with frequent
+glances skyward.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead, a low-hung bosom of dusky vapour borrowed a dull blush from
+the fires of life that blazed beneath. In the west, beyond the
+silhouetted structure of the Elevated and the less distinct profile of
+buildings on the far side of Central Park, the clouds blazed luridly
+with their own dread fires&mdash;a fitful, sheeted play athwart gigantic
+curtains, to an accompaniment of dull and intermittent grumbles.</p>
+
+<p>A soft, warm breath sighed down the breathless street, and sighing,
+died. Another, more cool and brusque, swept sharp upon the heels of the
+first, played with the littered rubbish of the pavements, caressed with
+a grateful touch flesh still stinging with the heat of day, and drove
+on, preceded by a cloud of acrid dust. A few drops of lukewarm water
+maculated the sidewalks with spots as big as dollars. There followed a
+sharper play of fire, and one more near. Children ran shrieking to
+shelter, and men and women dodged into convenient doorways or scudded
+off clumsily. The wind freshened, grew more chill.... Then, so suddenly
+that there might as well have been no warning, on the wings of the
+howling blast, laced continually with empyrean fire, timed by the
+rolling detonations of heavy artillery now near, now far, a shining
+deluge sluiced the streets and made its gutters brawling rivulets.</p>
+
+<p>A lonely, huddled figure, standing back in the entry, well out of the
+spray from the spattering drops, Joan waited the passing of the storm
+with neither fascination nor fear. Self-absorbed, her mood almost
+altogether introspective, she weighed her reckless plans. The crisis
+bellowed overhead in a series of tremendous, shattering explosions,
+bathing the empty street in wave after wave of blinding violet light,
+without seriously disturbing the slow, steady processes of the girl's
+mentality.</p>
+
+<p>Then she became aware of a young man who had emerged from the darksome
+backwards of the tenement, so quietly that Joan had no notion how long
+he might have been standing there, regarding her with interest and
+amusement in his grey eyes and on his broad, good-humoured countenance.
+He had a long, strong body poised solidly on sturdy legs, short arms
+with large and efficient hands; and bore himself with a careless
+confidence that did much to dissemble the negligence of his mode of
+dress&mdash;the ill-fitting coat and trousers, the common striped "outing
+shirt," the rusty derby set aslant on his round, close-cropped head.
+Joan knew him as Ben Austin, one of the few admirers whose attentions
+she was wont to suffer: by occupation a stage-hand at the Hippodrome; a
+steady young man, who lived with his mother in one of the rear flats.</p>
+
+<p>He greeted her with a broadening grin and a "Hello, Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>She said with indifference: "Hello, Ben."</p>
+
+<p>"Waitin' for the rain to let up?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, foolish; I'm posing for a statue of Patience by a sculptor who's
+going to be born tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>This answer was brilliantly in accord with the humour of the day. Austin
+chuckled appreciatively.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought maybe you was waitin' for Jeems to bring around your
+limousine, Miss Thursby."</p>
+
+<p>"I was, but he won't be here till day before yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>The strain of such repartee proved too much for Austin; he felt himself
+outclassed and, shuffling to cover his discomfiture, sought another
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Whacha doing tonight, Joan? Anythin' special?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've got an engagement to pass remarks on the weather with the Dook de
+Bonehead," the girl returned with asperity. "He ain't late, either."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that was one off the griddle, all right," said Austin
+pensively. "Excuse me for livin'."</p>
+
+<p>There fell a pause, Joan contemptuously staring away through the
+glimmering rain-drops, Austin desperately casting about for a
+conversational opening less calculated than its predecessors to educe
+rebuffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Joan, lis'en&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Move on," the girl interrupted: "you're blocking the traffic."</p>
+
+<p>"Nah&mdash;serious': howja like to go to a show tonight?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned incredulous eyes to him. "What show?" she drawled.</p>
+
+<p>"I gotta pass for Ziegfield's Follies&mdash;N'Yawk Roof. Wanta go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quit your kidding," she replied after a brief pause devoted to analysis
+of his sincerity. "Y' know you've got to work."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' like that!" he insisted. "The Hip closed last Sat'dy and I got
+a coupla weeks lay-off while they're gettin' ready to rehearse the new
+show. On the level, now: will you go with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> I!" The girl drew a long, ecstatic breath. Then her face
+darkened as she glanced again at the street: "But we'll get all wet!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, we won't: I'll get an umbrella. Besides, it's lettin' up."</p>
+
+<p>With this Austin vanished, to return in a few minutes with a fairly
+presentable umbrella. The shower was, in fact, fast passing on over Long
+Island, leaving in its wake a slackening drizzle amid deep-throated
+growls at constantly lengthening intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Half-clothed children were seeping in swelling streams from the
+tenements as the two&mdash;Austin holding the umbrella, Joan with a hand on
+her escort's arm, her skirts gathered high about her trim
+ankles&mdash;splashed through lukewarm puddles toward Third Avenue. A faint
+and odorous vapour steamed up from wet and darkly lustrous asphalt.</p>
+
+<p>They hurried on in silence: Austin dumbly content with his conquest of
+the aloof tolerance which the girl had theretofore shown him, and
+planning bolder and more masterful steps; Joan all ecstatic with the
+prospect of seeing for the first time a "Broadway show"....</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes before nine they left the cross-town car at Broadway and
+Forty-second Street.</p>
+
+<p>Though she had lived all her young years within the boundaries of New
+York, never before had Joan experienced the sensation of being a unit of
+that roaring flood of life which nightly scours Longacre Square, with
+scarce a perceptible change in volume, winter or summer. Yet she
+accepted it with apparently implacable calm. She felt as if she
+had been born to this, as if she were coming tardily into her
+birthright&mdash;something of which each least detail would in time become
+most intimate to her.</p>
+
+<p>They were already late, and Austin hurried her. A brief, hasty walk
+brought them to the theatre, where Austin left her in a corner of the
+lobby with the promise that he would return in a very few minutes: he
+had to see a friend "round back," he explained in an undertone. But Joan
+remained a target for boldly enquiring glances for full ten minutes
+before he reappeared. Even then, with a nod to her to wait, Austin went
+to the box-office window. She was not deceived as to the general tenor
+of his fortunes there&mdash;saw him place a card on the ledge and confer
+inaudibly with the ticket-seller, and then reluctantly remove the card
+and substitute for it two one-dollar bills, for which he received two
+slips of pasteboard.</p>
+
+<p>"House 'most sold out," he muttered uncomfortably in her ear as an
+elevator carried them to the roof. "Best I could get was table seats."</p>
+
+<p>"They're just as good as any," she whispered, with a look of gratitude
+that temporarily turned his head.</p>
+
+<p>The elevator discharged them into a vast hall with walls and a roof of
+glass. Artificial wistaria festooned its beams and pillars of steel,
+palms and potted plants lined the walls. A myriad electric bulbs
+glimmered dimly throughout the auditorium, brilliantly upon the small
+stage. Deep banks of chairs radiated back from the footlights, to each
+its tenant staring greedily in one common direction.</p>
+
+<p>An usher waved the newcomers to the left. Ultimately they found seats at
+a small table in a far corner of the enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>Austin was disappointed, and made his disappointment known in a public
+grumble: the table was too far away; they couldn't see nothin'&mdash;might's
+well not've come. Joan smiled his ill-humour away, insisting that the
+seats were fine. Mollified, he summoned a waiter and ordered beer for
+himself, for Joan a glass of lemonade&mdash;a weirdly decorated and insipid
+concoction which, nevertheless, Joan absorbed with the keenest relish.</p>
+
+<p>In point of fact, the distance from their seats to the stage offered
+little obstacle to her complete enjoyment: her senses were all youthful
+and unimpaired; she saw and heard what many another missed of those in
+their neighbourhood. Furthermore, Joan brought to an entertainment of
+this character a point of view fresh, virginal, and innocent of the very
+meaning of ennui. She sat forward on the extreme edge of her chair,
+imperceptibly a-quiver with excitement, avid of every sight and sound.
+All that was tawdry, vulgar, and contemptible escaped her: she was
+sensitive only to the illusion of splendour and magnificence, and lived
+enraptured by dream-like music, exquisite wit, and the poetic beauty of
+femininity but half-clothed, or less, and viewed through a kaleidoscopic
+play of coloured light.</p>
+
+<p>During the intermission she bent an elbow on the sloppy table-top and
+chattered at Austin with a vivacity new in his knowledge of her, and for
+which he had no match....</p>
+
+<p>At one time during the second part of the performance, the auditorium
+was suddenly darkened, while attention was held to the stage by the
+antics of a pair of German comedians. But in the shadows that now
+surrounded them (quite unconscious that Austin had seized this
+opportunity to capture her warm young hand) Joan became aware of a
+number of figures issuing from a side-door to the stage. She saw them
+marshalled in ranks of two&mdash;a long double file, vaguely glimmering
+through the obscurity. And then the comedians darted into the wings, the
+lights blazed out at full strength all over the enclosure, and a roll of
+drums crescendo roused the audience to a tremendous and exhilarating
+novelty: a procession of chorus girls in hip-tights and hussar tunics
+who, each with a snare-drum at waist, had stolen down the aisle, into
+the heart of the auditorium.</p>
+
+<p>For a long moment they marked time, drumming skilfully, their leader
+with her polished baton standing beside Joan. Then the orchestra blared
+out an accompaniment, and they strode away, turning left and marching up
+the centre aisle to the stage.... Joan marked, with pulses that seemed
+to beat in tune to the drumming, the wistful beauty of many of the
+painted faces with their aloof eyes and fixed smiles of conscious
+self-possession, the richness of their uniforms, their bare powdered
+arms, the pretty legs in their silken casings. Oblivious to the
+libidinous glances of the goggling men they passed, she envied them one
+and all&mdash;the meanest and homeliest of them even as the most proud and
+beautiful&mdash;this chance of theirs <i>to act</i>, to be admired, to win the
+homage of the herd....</p>
+
+<p>She awoke as from idyllic dreams to find herself again in a Third Avenue
+car, homeward bound. But still her brain was drowsy with memories of the
+splendour and the glory; fragments of haunting melody ran through her
+thoughts; and visions haunted her, of herself commanding a similar meed
+of adoration....</p>
+
+<p>Austin's arm lay along the top of the seat behind her; his fingers
+rested lightly against the sleeve of her shirtwaist. She did not notice
+them. To his clumsily playful advances she returned indefinite,
+monosyllabic answers, accompanied by her charming smile of a grateful
+child....</p>
+
+<p>On the third landing of their tenement they paused to say good night,
+visible to one another only in a faint light reflected up from the
+gas-jet burning low in the hall below. The smell of humanity and its
+food hung in the clammy air they breathed. A hum of voices from the many
+cells of the hive buzzed in their ears. But Joan forgot them all.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, embarrassed with the difficulty of finding words adequate
+to express her thanks.</p>
+
+<p>Austin tried awkwardly to help her out: "Well, I guess it's good night,
+kid."</p>
+
+<p>She said, exclamatory: "O Ben! I've had <i>such</i> a good time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dja? Glad to hear it. Will you go again&mdash;next week? I guess I can work
+som'other show, all right."</p>
+
+<p>Compunction smote as memory reminded her. "But&mdash;Ben&mdash;didn't you have to
+pay for those tickets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right. I couldn't find the fella I was lookin' for,
+round back."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Gwan! It wasn't nothin'. Cheap at the price, if you liked it, little
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I liked it <i>awfully</i>! But I won't go again, unless you show me the pass
+first."</p>
+
+<p>"Wel-l, we'll see about that." He edged a pace nearer.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly self-conscious, Joan drew back and offered her hand. "Good
+night and&mdash;thank you so much, Ben."</p>
+
+<p>He took the hand, but retained it. "Ah, say! is this all I get? I
+thought you kinda liked me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Ben, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a kiss won't cost you nothin'. It's your turn now."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Ben&mdash;but, Ben&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, if that's the way you feel about it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He made as if to relinquish her hand. But to be thought lacking in
+generosity had stung her beyond endurance. Without stopping to
+think&mdash;blindly and quickly, so that she might not think&mdash;she gave
+herself to his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she breathed in a soft voice, "just one...."</p>
+
+<p>"Just one, eh?" He pressed his lips to hers. "Oh, I don't know about
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>He tightened his embrace. Her heart was hammering madly. His mouth hurt
+her lips, his beard rasped her tender skin. She wanted frantically to
+get away, to regain possession of herself; and wanted it the more
+because, dimly through the tumult of thought and emotion, she was
+conscious of the fact that she rather liked it.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan...." Austin murmured in a tone that, soft with the note of wooing,
+was yet vibrant with the elation of the conqueror, "Joan...."</p>
+
+<p>One arm shifted up from her waist and his big hand rested heavily over
+her heart.</p>
+
+<p>For a breath she seemed numb and helpless, suffocating with the tempest
+of her senses. Then like lightning there pierced her confusion the
+memory of the knee that had driven her from the car, only that
+afternoon: symbolic of the bedrock beastliness of man. With a quick
+twist and wrench she freed herself and reeled a pace or two away.</p>
+
+<p>"Ben!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anger. "You&mdash;you brute&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"What right had you to&mdash;to touch me like that?" she panted, retreating
+as he advanced.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, realizing that he had made a false move which bade fair to
+lose him his prey entirely. Only by elaborate diplomacy would he ever be
+able to reëstablish a footing of friendship; weeks must elapse now
+before he would gain the advantage of another kiss from her lips. He
+swore beneath his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean nothin'," he said in a surly voice. "I don't see as you
+got any call to make such a fuss."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you?... <i>Don't</i> you!" She felt as if she must choke if she
+continued to parley with him. "Well, I do!" she flashed; and turning,
+ran up the fourth flight of steps.</p>
+
+<p>He swung on his heel, muttering; and she heard him slam the door to his
+flat.</p>
+
+<p>She continued more slowly, panting and struggling to subdue the signs of
+her emotion. But she was poisoned to the deeps of her being with her
+reawakened loathing of Man. On the top landing she paused, blinking back
+her tears, digging her nails into her palms while she fought down a
+tendency to sob, then drew herself up, took a deep breath, and advancing
+to the dining-room, turned the knob with stealth, to avoid disturbing
+her family.</p>
+
+<p>To her surprise and dismay, as the first crack widened between the door
+and jamb, she saw that the room was lighted.</p>
+
+<p>Wondering, she walked boldly in.</p>
+
+<p>Her father was seated at the dining-table, a cheap pipe gripped between
+his teeth. Contrary to his custom, when he sat up late, he was not
+thumbing his dope. His fat, hairy arms were folded upon the oilcloth,
+his face turned squarely to the door. Instinctively Joan understood that
+he had waited up for her, that inexplicably a crisis was about to occur
+in her relations with her family.</p>
+
+<p>In a chair tilted back against the wall, near the window opening upon
+the air-shaft, Butch sat, his feet drawn up on the lower rung, purple
+lisle-thread socks luridly displayed, hands in his trouser-pockets, a
+cigarette drooping from his cynical mouth, a straw hat with brilliant
+ribbon tilted forward over his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Closing the door, Joan put her back to it, eyes questioning her parent.
+Butch did not move. Thursby sagged his chin lower on his chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been?" he demanded in deep accents, with the incisive
+and precise enunciation which she had learned to associate only with his
+phases of bad temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Where've I been?" she repeated, stammering. "Where.... Why&mdash;out
+walking&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Street-walking?" he suggested with an ugly snarl.</p>
+
+<p>She sank, a limp, frightened figure, into a chair near the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, pa&mdash;what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean I'm going to find out the why and wherefore of the way you're
+behaving yourself. You're my daughter, and not of age yet, and I have a
+right to know what you do and where you go. Keep still!" he snapped, as
+she started to interrupt. "Speak when you're spoken to.... I'm going to
+have a serious talk with you, young woman.... What's all this I hear
+about your losing your job and going on the stage?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>For a brief moment Joan sat agape, meeting incredulously the keen,
+contemptuous gaze of her father. Then she pulled herself together with
+determination to be neither browbeaten nor overborne.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you hear that about me?" she demanded ominously.</p>
+
+<p>Thursby shook his ponderous head: "It makes no difference&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It makes a lot of difference to me!" she cut in, sharply contentious.
+"You might's well tell me, because I won't talk to you if you don't."</p>
+
+<p>Butch brushed the brim of his hat an inch above his eyes and threw her a
+glance of approbation. Thursby hesitated, his large, mottled face sullen
+and dark in the bluish illumination provided by the single gas-jet
+wheezing above the table. Then reluctantly he gave in.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Inness was in the store this evening. He said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind what <i>he</i> said! I guess I know. Gussie's been shooting off
+her face about me at home. And of course old Inness hadn't nothing
+better to do than to run off and tell you everything he knew!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't deny it?" Thursby insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't have to. It's true. No, I don't deny it," she returned, aping
+his manner to exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"How'd you come to lose your job?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Winter insulted me&mdash;one of the floor-walkers&mdash;if you've got to
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Thursby's head wagged heavily while he weighed this information, and he
+regarded his daughter with a baleful, morose glare, his fat hands
+trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say to this man, Winter?" he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Told him I'd slap his face if he tried anything like that on me again.
+So he reported me up to the management&mdash;lied about me&mdash;and I got fired."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, through which Thursby pondered the matter, his
+thick lips moving inaudibly, while Joan sat upright, maintaining her
+attitude of independence and defiance, and Butch, grinning lazily, as if
+at some private jest, manufactured ring after ring of smoke in the
+still, close air.</p>
+
+<p>Before her father spoke again, Joan became cognizant of Edna and her
+mother, like twin ghosts in their night-dresses, stealing silently,
+barefooted, to listen just within the door of the adjoining bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you propose to do now?" asked Thursby at length, lifting
+his weary, haunted gaze to his daughter's face. "What's this about your
+going on the stage?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan set her jaw firmly. "That's what I'm going to do."</p>
+
+<p>Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you won't? Well, I'd like to know how you're going to stop me. I'm
+tired slaving behind a counter for a dog's wages&mdash;and that eaten up by
+fines because I won't go out with the floor-walkers. I'm going to do the
+best I can for myself. I'm going to be an actress, so's I can make a
+decent living for Edna and ma and myself."</p>
+
+<p>"A decent living!" Thursby mocked without mirth. "You're old enough to
+know better than that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm old enough to know which side my bread's buttered on," the girl
+flashed back angrily. "I'm through living in this dirty flat and giving
+up every dollar I make to keep us all from starving. God knows what we'd
+do if it wasn't for me with a steady job, and Edna working during the
+season. You don't do anything to help us out: all <i>you</i> get goes on the
+ponies. I don't see any reason why I got to consult you if I choose to
+better myself."</p>
+
+<p>She rose the better to end her tirade with a stamp of her foot. Thursby
+likewise got up, if more sluggishly, and moved round the table to
+confront her.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't go on the stage&mdash;no!" he said. "That's settled. Understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I get you," she replied, with a flirt of her head, "but I don't
+agree with you. I'm going down town first thing tomorrow to try for a
+job with&mdash;with," she hesitated, "Ziegfield's Follies!"</p>
+
+<p>"You will do nothing of the sort," he insisted fiercely, congested veins
+starting out upon his forehead. "You're my daughter, and those are my
+orders to you, and you'll obey 'em or I'll know the reason why. You...."
+He faltered as if choking. Then he flung out an arm, with a violent
+gesture indicating the shrinking woman in the doorway. "You&mdash;your mother
+was an actress when I married her and took her off the stage.
+She&mdash;she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare say a word against my mother!" Joan screamed
+passionately into his louring face. "Don't you dare! You hear me: don't
+you dare!"</p>
+
+<p>Her infuriated accents were echoed by a smothered gasp and a spasm of
+sobbing from the other room.</p>
+
+<p>Momentarily abashed by the sheer force of this defiance, the father fell
+back a pace. An expression of almost ludicrous disconcertion shadowed
+his discoloured features. Then slowly, as if thoughtfully, he lifted one
+hand and deliberately tore his collar from its fastening and cast it
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>At this, hastily jerking his cigarette into the air-shaft, Butch got up,
+removed his hat and carefully placed it on the mantel, out of harm's
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"You," said Thursby with apparent difficulty, breathing heavily
+between his words&mdash;"you shan't use that tone to me, young woman, and
+live in this house. More than that, you'll leave it this very
+night&mdash;now!&mdash;unless you promise to give up this fool's notion of the
+stage."</p>
+
+<p>"Tonight!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan paled; her lips tightened; but the glint in her eyes wasn't one of
+fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Tonight!" her father reiterated with malicious pleasure in what he
+thought to be evidences of consternation. "And what's more, you're going
+to apologize to me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Apologize to you!" Joan caught her breath sharply, and her next words
+came without premeditation; she was barely conscious, in her rage, that
+she employed them: "I'll be damned if I do!"</p>
+
+<p>With an inarticulate cry, maddened beyond reason, Thursby lifted a heavy
+hand and stepped toward her.</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneously Butch sprang forward, seized the menacing fist and
+dragged it down and back, with a movement so swift and deft that its
+purpose was accomplished and the hand pinned to the small of Thursby's
+back actually before he appreciated what was happening.</p>
+
+<p>Even Joan was slow to comprehend the fact of this amazing
+intervention....</p>
+
+<p>Nodding emphatically, "Beat it, kid," Butch counselled in a pleasant,
+unstrained tone&mdash;"beat it while the going's good.... Easy, now, guvner!"</p>
+
+<p>Speechless, Joan slipped out into the hall and slammed the door.
+Stumbling blindly in the murk, she was none the less quick to find the
+head of the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>On the ground floor, panting and sobbing, she paused to listen. There
+came from above no sound of pursuit to speed her on; yet on she went,
+out of the house, to scurry away through the midnight hush of the
+squalid street like a hunted thing.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sort of coherence in her thoughts, nothing but shreds and
+tatters of rage, fear, and despair, all clouded with a faint and vain
+regret. She gave no heed to the way she went: impulse controlled and
+blind instinct guided her. But at the corner of Park Avenue she was
+obliged to pause for breath, and took advantage of that pause to review
+her plight and plan her future.</p>
+
+<p>Her first concern must be to find a lodging for the night. Tomorrow
+could take care of itself....</p>
+
+<p>Uttering a low cry of dismay, the girl clutched at the handbag swinging
+by its strap from her wrist: its latch was broken, its wide jaws yawned.
+In a breath she had grasped the empty substance of her most dire
+apprehensions: the slender fold of bills, handed her when she left the
+store for the last time that evening, was gone. Whether some sneak-thief
+had robbed her on a surface-car or in the Broadway rabble, or whether
+the lock had been broken, releasing its poor treasure, during her
+struggle with Austin on the stairs&mdash;or afterwards or before&mdash;she could
+not guess. But she was swift to recognize in its bitter fulness the
+heart-rending futility of retracing her steps to search for the vanished
+money&mdash;even though it was all that had stood between her and the world,
+between a common room with food for a week or two and starvation
+and&mdash;the streets.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fact, established and irrefutable in her understanding, that
+she could never go back....</p>
+
+<p>Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of
+small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers&mdash;eighty-seven
+cents wherewith to face the world!</p>
+
+<p>Further rummaging educed a handful of odds and ends, from which, by the
+light of a corner lamp, she presently succeeded in sorting out a folded
+scrap of paper bearing a pencilled memorandum, faint almost to
+illegibility, so that only with some difficulty could Joan decipher its
+legend: "<i>Maizie Dean</i> (<i>Lizzie Fogarty</i>) 289 W. 45 St."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly conning the address with mute, moving lips, until she had it by
+heart, the girl trudged on to Madison Avenue and there signalled and
+boarded a southbound surface-car. It carried few passengers. She had a
+long seat all to herself, and about fifteen minutes wherein to debate
+ways and means....</p>
+
+<p>She reckoned it several years since Lizzie Fogarty (predecessor of
+faithless Gussie Inness, both at the stocking counter and in Joan's
+confidence) suddenly, and with no warning or explanation, had left the
+department store and for fully eight months thereafter had kept her
+where-abouts a mystery to her erstwhile associates&mdash;though rumours were
+not lacking in support of a shrewd suspicion that she had "gone on the
+stage." The truth only transpired when, one day, she drifted languidly
+up to the counter behind which she had once served, haughtily inspected
+and selected from goods offered her by a stupefied and indignant Gussie,
+and promptly broke down, confessing the truth amid giggles not guiltless
+of a suspicion of tears. Lizzie was in "vodeveal," partner in a
+"sister-act"&mdash;witness her card&mdash;"<i>The Dancing Deans, Maizie &amp; May</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Beyond shadow of doubt she had prospered. Not only was she amazingly and
+awfully arrayed, but there was in evidence an accomplishment believed to
+be singular to people of great wealth, an "English accent"&mdash;or what Joan
+and Gussie ingenuously accepted as such. As practised by Miss Maizie
+Dean this embellishment consisted merely in broadening every A in the
+language (when she didn't forget) and speaking rapidly in a high,
+strained voice. Its effect upon her former associates was to render the
+wake she ploughed through their ranks phosphorescent with envy.</p>
+
+<p>Departing in good time to spare the girls the censure of the
+floor-walker, she had left with Joan the pencilled address and this
+counsel: "If ever you <i>dream</i> of goin' into the business, my deah, don't
+do anythin' before you see <i>me</i>. That ad-dress will always make me, no
+mattah wheah 'm woikin': and I'd do <i>anythin'</i> in the woild for you. I
+know you'd make good <i>anywheres</i>&mdash;with that <i>shape</i> and them <i>eyes</i>!..."</p>
+
+<p>Of such stuff as this had Joan fashioned her dreams. Confident in the
+generosity of Lizzie Fogarty, she relied implicitly upon the willingness
+of Miss Maizie Dean to help her into the magic circle of "the
+profession." She had no more doubt that Maizie would make it her
+business, even at cost of personal inconvenience, to secure her an
+engagement, than she had that tomorrow's sun would rise upon a world
+tenanted by one Joan Thursby. Or if such doubt entered her mind by
+stealth, she fought it down and cast it forth with all the power of her
+will. For in Miss Dean, née Fogarty, now resided her sole immediate hope
+of friendly aid and advice....</p>
+
+<p>Alighting at Forty-fifth Street, Joan hastened westward, past Fifth
+Avenue and Sixth to Longacre Square. Here on the corner, she paused to
+don her coat; for the low-swinging draperies of the painted skies had
+begun to distil upon the city a gentle drizzle, soft and warm.</p>
+
+<p>Only two hours ago a vortex of vivid animation, the Square now presented
+a singular aspect of sleepy emptiness. With its high glittering walls of
+steel and glass, its polished black paving like moiré silk, its blushing
+canopy of cloud, its air filled with an infinity of globular atoms of
+moisture, swirling and weltering in a shimmer of incandescence: it was
+like a pool of limpid light, deep and still. Few moving things were
+visible: now and again a taxicab, infrequently a surface-car, here and
+there, singly, a few prowling women, a scattering of predacious men.</p>
+
+<p>Of these latter, one who had been skulking beneath the shelter of the
+New York Theatre fire-escapes strolled idly out toward Joan and
+addressed her in a whisper of loathly intimacy. Fortunately she did not
+hear what he said. Even as he spoke she slipped away from the curb and
+like a haunted shadow darted across the open space and into the kindly
+obscurity of the side-street.</p>
+
+<p>Number 289 reared its five-storey brown-stone front on the northern side
+of the street, hard upon Eighth Avenue. Joan inspected it doubtfully.
+Its three lower tiers of windows were all dark and lightless, but on the
+fourth floor a single oblong shone with gas-light, while on the fifth as
+many as three were dully aglow. The outer doors, at the top of the
+high, old-style stoop, were closed, and even the most hopeful vision
+could detect no definite illumination through the fan-light.</p>
+
+<p>Into the heart of Joan a wretched apprehension stole and there abode,
+cold and crawling. From something in the sedate aspect of the house she
+garnered grim and terrible forebodings.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she dared not lose grasp on hope. Mounting the stoop, she
+sought the bell-pull, and found it just below a small strip of paper
+glued to the stone; frayed and weatherbeaten, it published in letters in
+faded ink scrawled by an infirm hand the information: "<i>Rooms to let
+furnished</i>."</p>
+
+<p>For some reason which she did not stop to analyze, this announcement
+spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought lustily at the bell.</p>
+
+<p>It evoked no sound that she could hear. Trembling with expectancy, she
+waited several minutes, then pulled again, and once more waited while
+the cold of dread spread from her heart to chill and benumb her hands
+and feet. She heard never a sound. It was no use&mdash;she knew it&mdash;yet she
+rang again and again, frantically, with determination, in despair. And
+once she vainly tried the door.</p>
+
+<p>The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant
+upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.</p>
+
+<p>A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand
+relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. Only vaguely did she
+recognize in this the symptoms of immense physical fatigue added to
+those of intense emotional strain: she only knew that she was all
+a-weary for her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, hope and courage both deserted her. Tears filled her eyes:
+she was so lonely and forlorn, so helpless and so friendless. Huddled in
+the shallow recess of the doorway, she fought her emotions silently for
+a time, then broke down altogether and sobbed without restraint into
+her handkerchief. Moments passed uncounted, despair possessing her
+utterly.</p>
+
+<p>The street was all but empty. For some time none remarked the
+disconsolate girl. Then a man, with a handbag but without an umbrella,
+appeared from the direction of Longacre Square, walking with a
+deliberation which suggested that he was either indifferent to or
+unconscious of the rain. Turning up the steps of Number 289, he jingled
+absently a bunch of keys. Not until he had reached the platform of the
+stoop did he notice the woman in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Promptly he halted, lifting his brows and pursing his lips in a
+noiseless whistle&mdash;his head cocked critically to one side.</p>
+
+<p>Then through the waning tempest of her grief, Joan heard his voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I say! What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Gulping down a sob and dabbing hastily at her eyes with a sodden wad of
+handkerchief, she caught through a veil of tears a blurred impression of
+her interrogator. A man.... She ceased instantly to cry and shrank
+hastily out of his way, into the full swing of wind and rain. She said
+nothing, but eyed him with furtive distrust. He made no offer to move.</p>
+
+<p>"See here!" he expostulated. "You're in trouble. Anything I can do?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan felt that she was regaining control of herself. She dared to linger
+and hope rather than to yield to her primitive instinct toward flight.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she said with a catch in her voice&mdash;"only I&mdash;I wanted to see
+Miss Dean; but nobody answered the bell."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he said thoughtfully&mdash;"you wanted to see Miss Dean&mdash;yes!"&mdash;as
+though he considered this a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. "But
+Madame Duprat never does answer the door after twelve o'clock, you know.
+She says people have no right to call on us after midnight. There's a
+lot in that, too, you know." He wagged his head earnestly. "Really!" he
+concluded with animation.</p>
+
+<p>His voice was pleasant, his manner sympathetic if something original.
+Joan found courage to enquire:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think&mdash;perhaps&mdash;she might be in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she never leaves the house. At least, I've never seen her leave it.
+I fancy she thinks one of us might move it away if she got out of sight
+for a minute or so."</p>
+
+<p>Puzzled, Joan persisted: "You really think Miss Dean is in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dean? Oh, beg pardon! I was thinking of Madame Duprat. Ah ... Miss
+Dean ... now ... I infer you have urgent business with her&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, very!" the girl insisted eagerly. "If I could only see her ... I
+must see her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure she's in, then!" the man declared in accents of profound
+conviction. "Possibly asleep. But at home. O positively!" He inserted a
+key in the lock and pushed the door open. "If you don't mind coming
+in&mdash;out of the weather&mdash;I'll see."</p>
+
+<p>Joan eyed him doubtfully. The light was indifferent, a mere glimmer from
+the corner lamp at Eighth Avenue; but it enabled her to see that he was
+passably tall and quite slender. He wore a Panama hat with dark
+clothing. His attitude was more explicitly impersonal than that of any
+man with whom she had as yet come into contact: she could detect in it
+no least trace either of condescension or of an ingratiating spirit. He
+seemed at once quite self-possessed and indefinitely preoccupied,
+disinterested, and quite agreeable to be made use of. In short, he
+engaged her tremendously.</p>
+
+<p>But what more specifically prepossessed her in his favour, and what in
+the end influenced her to repose some slight confidence in the man, was
+a quality with which the girl herself endowed him: she chose to be
+reminded in some intangible, elusive fashion, of that flower of
+latter-day chivalry who had once whisked her out of persecution into
+his taxicab and to her home. In point of fact, the two were vastly
+different, and Joan knew it; but, at least, she argued, they were alike
+in this: both were <i>gentlemen</i>&mdash;rare visitants in her cosmos.</p>
+
+<p>It was mostly through fatigue and helpless bewilderment, however, that
+she at length yielded and consented to precede him into the vestibule.
+Here he opened the inner doors, ushering Joan into a hallway typical of
+an old order of dwelling, now happily obsolescent. The floor was of
+tiles, alternately black and white: a hideous checker-board arrangement.
+A huge hat-rack, black walnut framing a morbid mirror, towered on the
+one hand; on the other rose a high arched doorway, closed. And there was
+a vast and gloomy stairway with an upper landing lost in shadows
+impenetrable to the feeble illumination of the single small tongue of
+gas flickering in an old-fashioned bronze chandelier.</p>
+
+<p>Listening, Joan failed to detect in all the house any sounds other than
+those made by the young man and herself.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll be good enough to follow me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He led the way to the rear of the hall, where, in the shadow of the
+staircase, he unlocked a door and disappeared. The girl waited on the
+threshold of a cool and airy chamber, apparently occupying the entire
+rear half of the ground floor. At the back, long windows stood open to
+the night. The smell of rain was in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Half a minute: I'll make a light."</p>
+
+<p>He moved through the darkness with the assurance of one on old, familiar
+ground. In the middle of the room a match spluttered and blazed: with a
+slight <i>plup!</i> a gas drop-light with a green shade leapt magically out
+of the obscurity, discovering the silhouette of a tall, spare figure
+bending low to adjust the flame; which presently grew strong and even,
+diffusing a warm and steady glow below the green penumbra of its shade.</p>
+
+<p>The man turned back with his quaint air of deference. "Now, if you
+don't mind sitting down and waiting a minute, I'll ask Madame Duprat
+about Miss&mdash;ah&mdash;your friend&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dean&mdash;Maizie Dean."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>With this he left the girl, and presently she heard his footsteps on the
+staircase.</p>
+
+<p>She found a deeply cushioned arm-chair, and subsided into it with a
+sigh. The intensity of her weariness was indeed a very serious matter
+with her. Her very wits shirked the labour of grappling with the problem
+of what she should do if Maizie Dean were not at home....</p>
+
+<p>Wondering incoherently, she stared about her. The rich, subdued glow of
+the shaded lamp suggested more than it revealed, but she was impressed
+by the generous proportions of the room. The drop-light itself stood
+on a long, broad table littered with a few books and a great many
+papers, inkstands, pens, blotters, ash-trays, pipes: all in agreeable
+disorder. Beyond this table was one smaller, which supported a
+type-writing-machine. Against the nearer wall stood a luxurious, if
+worn, leather-covered couch. There were two immense black walnut
+bookcases. The windows at the back disclosed a section of iron-railed
+balcony.</p>
+
+<p>Joan grew sensitive to an anodynous atmosphere of quiet and comfort....</p>
+
+<p>Drowsily she heard a quiet knocking at some door upstairs; then a
+subdued murmur of voices, the closing of a door, footsteps returning
+down the long staircase. When these last sounded on the tiled flooring,
+the girl spurred her flagging senses and got up in a sudden flutter of
+doubt, anxiety, and embarrassment. The man entering the room found her
+so&mdash;poised in indecision.</p>
+
+<p>"Please do sit down," he said quietly, with a smile that carried
+reassurance; and, taking her compliance for something granted, passed on
+to another arm-chair near the long table.</p>
+
+<p>With a docility and total absence of distrust that later surprised her
+to remember, Joan sank back, eyes eloquent with the question unuttered
+by her parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>Her host, lounging, turned to her a face of which one half was in dense
+shadow: a keen, strongly modelled face with deep-set eyes at once
+whimsical and thoughtful, and a mouth thin-lipped but generously wide.
+He rested an elbow on the table and his head on a spare, sinewy hand,
+thrusting slender fingers up into hair straight, not long, and rather
+light in colour.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to have to report," he said gently, "that 'The Dancing Deans,
+Maizie and May,' are on the road. So I'm informed by Madame Duprat, at
+least. They're not expected back for several weeks.... I hope you aren't
+greatly disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, wide and dark with dismay, told him too plainly that she was.
+She made no effort to speak, but after an instant of dumb consternation,
+moved as if to rise.</p>
+
+<p>He detained her with a gesture. "Please don't hurry: you needn't, you
+know. Of course, if you must, I won't detain you: the door is open, your
+way clear to the street. But what are you going to do about a place to
+sleep tonight?"</p>
+
+<p>She stared in surprise and puzzled resentment. A warm wave of colour
+temporarily displaced her pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you so sure I've got no place to sleep?" she asked
+ungraciously.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his shoulders slightly and dropped his hand to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I was impertinent," he admitted. "I'm sorry.... But you
+haven't&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't," she said sharply. "But what's that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"As you quite reasonably imply, it's nothing to me," he interrupted
+suavely. "But I'd be sorry to think of you out there&mdash;alone&mdash;in the
+rain&mdash;when there's no reason why you need be."</p>
+
+<p>"No reason!" she echoed, wondering if she had misjudged him after all.</p>
+
+<p>Without warning the man tilted the green lamp-shade until a broad,
+strong glow flooded her face. A spark of indignation kindled in the girl
+while she endured his brief, impersonal, silent examination. Sheer
+fatigue alone prevented her from rising and walking out of the
+room&mdash;that, and curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>He replaced the shade, and got out of the chair with a swift movement
+that seemed not at all one of haste.</p>
+
+<p>"I see no reason," he announced coolly. "I've got to run along now&mdash;I
+merely dropped in to get a manuscript. I think you'll be quite
+comfortable here&mdash;and there's a good bolt on the door. Of course, it's
+very unconventional, but I hope you'll be kind enough to overlook that,
+considering the circumstances. And tomorrow, after a good rest, you can
+make up your mind whether it would be wiser to stick to your first plan
+or&mdash;go home."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled with a vague, disinterested geniality, and added a pleading
+"Now don't say no!" when he saw that the girl had likewise risen.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know I've left home?" she demanded hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well"&mdash;his smile broadened&mdash;"deductive faculty&mdash;Sherlock
+Holmes&mdash;Dupin&mdash;that sort of tommyrot, you know. But it wasn't such a bad
+guess&mdash;now was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you knew," she muttered sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>He ran his long fingers once or twice through his hair in a manner of
+great perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't quite tell, myself."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't my fault," she protested with a flash of passion. "I lost my
+job today, and because I said I wanted to go on the stage, my father put
+me out of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he agreed amiably; "they always do&mdash;don't they? I fancied it was
+something like that. But there isn't really any reason why you
+shouldn't go home tomorrow and patch it up&mdash;or is there?"</p>
+
+<p>She gulped convulsively: "You don't understand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably I don't," he conceded. "Still, things may look very much
+otherwise in the morning. They generally do, I notice. One goes to bed
+with reluctance and wakes up with a headache. All that sort of thing....
+But if you'll listen to me a moment&mdash;why, then if you want to go, I
+shan't detain you.... My name is John Matthias. My trade is writing
+things&mdash;plays, mostly: I know it sounds foolish, but then I hate
+exercise. I live&mdash;sleep, that is&mdash;ah&mdash;elsewhere&mdash;down the street. This
+is merely my work-room. So your stopping here won't inconvenience me in
+the least...."</p>
+
+<p>He snatched up a mass of papers from the table, folded them hastily and
+thrust them into a coat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"That manuscript I was after. Good night. I do hope you'll be
+comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Before the amazed girl could collect herself, he had his hat and handbag
+and was already in the hallway.</p>
+
+<p>She ran after him.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Matthias&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced hastily over his shoulder while fumbling with the
+night-latch.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't let you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you must&mdash;really, you know."</p>
+
+<p>He had the door open.</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you&mdash;how can you trust me with all your things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut!" he said reprovingly from the vestibule&mdash;"nothing there but play
+'scripts, and they're not worth anything. You can't get anybody to
+produce 'em. I know, because I've tried."</p>
+
+<p>He closed the inner door and banged the outer behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, on the point of pursuing to the street, paused in the vestibule,
+and for a moment stood doubting. Then, with a bewildered look, she
+returned slowly to the back room, shut herself in, and shot the bolt....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On the platform of the stoop, Mr. Matthias delayed long enough to turn
+up his coat-collar for the better protection of his linen, and surveyed
+with a wry grin the slashing rush of rain through which he now must
+needs paddle unprotected.</p>
+
+<p>"Queer thing for a fellow to do," he mused dispassionately....</p>
+
+<p>"Daresay I am a bit of an ass.... I might at least have borrowed my own
+umbrella.... But that would hardly have been consistent with the
+egregious insanity of the performance....</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why I do these awful things?... If I only knew, perhaps I
+could reform...."</p>
+
+<p>Running down the steps, he set out at a rapid pace for the Hotel Astor;
+which in due time received and harboured him for the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Awakening at a late hour in a small bedroom bright with sunlight, Mr.
+Matthias treated himself to a moment of incredulity. Such surroundings
+were strange to his drowsy perceptions, and his transitory emotions on
+finding himself so curiously embedded might be most aptly and tersely
+summed up in the exclamation of the old lady in the nursery rhyme:
+"Lack-a-mercy, can this be I?"</p>
+
+<p>Being, however, susceptible to a conviction of singular strength that he
+was himself and none other; and by dint of sheer will-power overcoming a
+tremendous disinclination to do anything but lie still and feel
+perfectly healthy, sound, and at peace with the world: he induced
+himself to roll over and fish for his watch in the pocket of the coat
+hanging on a nearby chair.</p>
+
+<p>The hour proved to be half-past ten.</p>
+
+<p>He fancied that he must have been uncommonly tired to have slept so
+late.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered.</p>
+
+<p>"One doesn't need to get drunk to be daft," was the conclusion he
+enunciated to his loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to goodness she doesn't go poking through my papers!"</p>
+
+<p>The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more
+promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he
+forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was
+knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again
+flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for
+the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her...."</p>
+
+<p>But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her
+personality. She remained a shadow&mdash;a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith
+of girlhood: more than that, nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He wagged his head seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Something about her!... <i>Must</i>'ve been good-looking ... or
+something...."</p>
+
+<p>With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie
+which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief
+homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he
+was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new
+play&mdash;something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.</p>
+
+<p>A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily
+lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely.
+He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall
+and burst unceremoniously into his room&mdash;not in the least disconcerted
+to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang.
+He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a
+sheet of paper into the carriage and ... sat back at leisure, his gaze
+wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of
+sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.</p>
+
+<p>A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop
+his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers
+closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.</p>
+
+<p>He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour elapsed before he was disturbed. Then someone knocked
+imperatively on the door. He recognized the knock; it was Madame
+Duprat's. Swinging round in his chair he said pleasantly: "Come in."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Duprat entered, filling the doorway. She shut the door and stood
+in front of it, subjecting it to an almost total eclipse. She was tall
+and portly, a grenadier of a woman, with a countenance the austerity of
+whose severely classic mould was somewhat moderated by a delicate, dark
+little moustache on her upper lip. Her mien was regal and portentous,
+sitting well upon the person of the widow of a great if unrecognized
+French tragedian; but her eyes were kindly; and Matthias had long since
+decided that it needed a body as big as Madame Duprat's to contain her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Bon jour, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"Bon jour, madame."</p>
+
+<p>This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of
+Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into
+English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face
+of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance
+from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will,
+when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within
+the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather
+electrical.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row?
+Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is
+behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles&mdash;that dachshund of
+Heaven!&mdash;turned suffragette&mdash;and proved it with pups?"</p>
+
+<p>"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the
+conduct of monsieur himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is
+it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room
+last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
+"But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please&mdash;at my age?" madame
+demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost
+immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not
+from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through
+the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?"
+The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with
+monsieur is that he left the young woman here <i>alone</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression:
+"I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is
+essentially Gallic."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look
+forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of
+my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and
+my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because
+monsieur has a heart of pity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as
+that. It's not likely to happen again ... and besides, the girl was a
+perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I
+wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.</p>
+
+<p>By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box
+of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of
+typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a
+formless, untrained hand:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Dear Sir</i>," he read with relief, "<i>thank you&mdash;Your friend, Joan
+Thursby</i>."</p>
+
+<p>He found the matches and used one before looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently
+respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her
+condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent
+opposition on the part of her father&mdash;a bigot of a man!&mdash;that she was
+obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite
+naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss
+Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I
+to turn her out to wander through the rain&mdash;at two o'clock in the
+morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the
+sort!"</p>
+
+<p>Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She
+hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a
+creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for
+more than he bargained.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday,
+you said?"</p>
+
+<p>He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"</p>
+
+<p>The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.</p>
+
+<p>With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's
+note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed
+her message and herself entirely from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only
+for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came
+a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young
+man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over
+again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of
+lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but
+the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and
+then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last
+quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust
+back his chair and groaned from his heart.</p>
+
+<p>He sat for a space, teetering on the rear legs of his chair, his lips
+pursed, forehead deeply creased from temple to temple. Then in a
+sepulchral tone uttering the single word "<i>Snagged!</i>" he rose and began
+to pace slowly to and fro between the door and the windows.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of an hour he was still patrolling this well-worn beat&mdash;his
+way of torment by day and by night, if the threadbare length of carpet
+were to be taken as a reliable witness. And there's no telling how long
+he might have continued the exercise had not Madame Duprat knocked once
+again at his door.</p>
+
+<p>Roused by that sound, he came suddenly out of profound speculations.
+Stopping short and bidding Madame enter, he waited with hands thrust
+deep in his trouser-pockets and shoulders hunched high toward his ears,
+a cloud of annoyance darkening his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Duprat came in with a "Pardon, monsieur," and a yellow envelope.
+Placing this last upon the table, she announced with simple dignity, "A
+telegram, if you please," and retired.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias strode to the table and with an air of some surprise and
+excitement tore open the message. He found its import unusual in more
+than one respect: it was not a "day-letter," and it had been written
+with a fine, careless extravagance of emotion that recked naught
+whatever of the ten-word limit.</p>
+
+<p>He conned its opening aloud: "'<i>Beast animal coward ingrate poltroon
+traitor beast</i>'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point he broke off to glance at the signature and observe
+thoughtfully: "If Helena's going in for this sort of thing, I really
+must buy her a thesaurus: she's used '<i>beast</i>' twice in two lines...."</p>
+
+<p>He continued: "'<i>How dared you run away last night? You promised. I was
+counting on you. I am disgusted with you and never want to see your face
+again. Return at once. Perhaps you won't be too late after all.
+Imperative. I insist that you return.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>The signature was simply: "<i>Helena</i>."</p>
+
+<p>He said with considerable animation: "But&mdash;damn it!&mdash;I don't <i>want</i> to
+get married yet! I don't see what I've done...."</p>
+
+<p>Throwing back his shoulders and lifting a defiant chin, he announced
+with invincible determination: "I won't go. That's all there is about
+it. I will&mdash;not&mdash;go!...</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he argued plaintively, "I couldn't travel like this&mdash;clothes
+all out of shape from that drenching last night&mdash;no time to change&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Consultation of his watch gave flat contradiction to this assertion.</p>
+
+<p>"And besides, I'm just getting this thing started nicely!" This with
+reference to the play.</p>
+
+<p>With another groan even more soulful than the first he sat down at the
+table, seized the telephone in a savage grasp, and in prematurely
+embittered accents detailed a suburban number to the inoffensive central
+operator. In the inevitable three minutes' wait for the connection to be
+put through he found ample opportunity to lash himself to a frenzy of
+exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" he roared suddenly. "Hel-lo, I say!... Who is this?... Oh, you,
+eh, Swinton? This is Mr. Matthias.... No&mdash;I say, no! Don't call Mrs.
+Tankerville. Haven't time.... Just tell her I'm coming down on the
+six-thirty.... Yes.... And send something to meet me at the station....
+Yes. Good-bye."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan's was an awakening of another order; like the thoroughly healthy
+animal she was, the moment her eyes opened she was vividly and keenly
+alive, completely acquainted with her situation, in full command of
+every faculty.</p>
+
+<p>With no means of determining the time save by instinct, she was none the
+less sure that the hour wasn't late: not late, at all events, for people
+who didn't have to be behind counters by half-past eight. So she lay
+still for many minutes, on the worn leather couch, listening intently.
+There was a great hush in the lodging-house: not a foot-fall, not a
+sound. Yet it was broad daylight&mdash;a clear and sunny morning.</p>
+
+<p>Her quick eyes, reviewing the room in this new light, realized the
+substance of a dream come true. She liked it all: the high and dusty
+ceiling, the immense and gloomy bookcases, the disorderly writing-table,
+the three sombre and yellowing steel engravings on the walls, the bare,
+beaten path that crossed the carpet diagonally from door to window, the
+roomy and dilapidated chairs, even the faint, intangible, ineradicable
+smell of tobacco that haunted the air, even the generous cushion beneath
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>Against this last she cuddled her cheek luxuriously, a shadowy smile
+softening her lips, her lashes low. She was enchanted by the novel
+atmosphere of this roomy chamber, an atmosphere of studiousness and
+clear thinking. And her thoughts focussed sharply upon her memories of
+the early morning hours, especially those involving the man who had put
+himself out to shelter her. She was consumed with curiosity about him
+and all that concerned him. In her inexperience she found it rather more
+than difficult to associate his courtesy, his solicitude and generosity
+with his aloofness, abstraction and detachment: the type was new and
+difficult to classify.</p>
+
+<p>Was it true, then, that Man&mdash;flesh-and-blood Man as differentiated from
+the romantic abstractions that swaggered through the chapters of the
+ten-cent weekly libraries&mdash;could be disinterested with Woman, content to
+serve rather than be served, to give rather than take?</p>
+
+<p>On the one side stood That One of the taxicab adventure, together with
+John Matthias: arrayed against these, a host composed of Ben Austins and
+Mr. Winters and men with knees&mdash;beasts of prey who stalked or lay in
+ambush along all the trails that webbed her social wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Were they truly different, Matthias and that other one? Or were they
+merely old enemies in new masks? How was one to know?...</p>
+
+<p>A noise in the basement, the rattle of a kitchen range being shaken
+clear of ashes, startled the girl to her feet in a twinkling. However
+sharp her inquisitiveness and her desire to see and to know more of this
+man, she entertained no idea of lingering to be found there by him....</p>
+
+<p>After bolting the door and before surrendering her tired body to the
+invitation of the couch, she had yielded to the temptation to make a
+brief tour of enquiry. The result had satisfied her that Matthias had
+lied in one particular, at least: unquestionably this was his work-room,
+but no less surely the man lived as well as worked in it, much if not
+all of the time. In its eastern wall Joan found a door opening into a
+small bedroom furnished with almost soldierly simplicity. And there were
+two large closets in the southern wall of the chamber; in one she found
+his wardrobe, a staggering array of garments, neatly arranged in sharp
+contrast to the confusion of his desk; the other was a bathroom
+completely equipped, a dazzling luxury in her eyes, with its white
+enamel, nickel-plate, glass and porcelain fittings.</p>
+
+<p>She refreshed herself there after rising&mdash;not without a guilty sensation
+of trespass&mdash;returning to the larger room to complete her dressing; no
+great matter, since she had merely laid aside skirt, coat, and
+shirtwaist, and loosened her corsets before lying down. In a very little
+time then, she was ready for the street; but with her hands on the
+doorknob and bolt, she hesitated, looking back, reluctant to go a
+thankless guest.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she moved back to the centre-table, touching with diffident
+fingers its jumble of manuscripts, typewriter-paper, memoranda, and
+correspondence. There were letters in plenty, a rack stuffed with them,
+others scattered like leaves hither and yon, one and all superscribed
+with the name of <i>John Matthias, Esq.</i>, many in the handwriting of
+women, a few scented, but very faintly. Joan wondered about these women
+and his relations with them. Was he greatly loved and by many? It would
+not be strange, she thought, if he were....</p>
+
+<p>Her temper curiously unsettled by these reflections, she stood for a
+long time, staring and thinking. Then a renewed disturbance in the lower
+regions of the house sent her packing&mdash;but not until she had left an
+inadequate scrawl of thanks, whose poverty and crudity she felt keenly.
+Why had she never learned to write a hand of delicately angular
+distinction to bear comparison with the hands that had addressed those
+impeccably "correct" notes?...</p>
+
+<p>The hallway was deserted. She let herself hastily out, believing she had
+escaped detection.</p>
+
+<p>Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering
+blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted
+up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those
+early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to
+shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In
+violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square
+on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had
+gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. A clock in the
+window of a delicatessen shop told her the hour was half-past seven,
+while the sight of the food unattractively displayed proved a sharper
+reminder of breakfast-time. She had no other concern in the world just
+then. It would be hours before she could accomplish anything toward
+establishing her independence; and what steps she was to take toward
+that consummation remained altogether nebulous in her understanding.</p>
+
+<p>She had not gone far before a dairy lunch settled the question as to
+where she was to breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small, shabby, dingy place, its walls plastered with white
+tiling and mirrors. Joan's order comprised a cup of brownish-yellow
+liquid, which was not coffee, and three weighty cakes known as
+"sinkers." These last might have been crude, childish models in putty of
+the popular American "hot biscuit," but were larger and slightly
+scorched on top and bottom, and when pried open revealed a composition
+resembling aerated clay. Joan anointed them generously with butter and
+consumed them with evident relish. Her powers of digestion were
+magnificent. The price of the meal was ten cents. She went away with a
+sense of repletion and seventy-two cents.</p>
+
+<p>She turned northward again. An empty day of arid hours confronted her
+perturbed and questioning imagination. She was still without definite
+plans or notion which way to turn for shelter. She knew only that
+everything must be settled before nightfall: she dared not trust to find
+another John Matthias, she could not sleep in the streets or parks, and
+return to East Seventy-sixth Street she would not. She had her own
+exertions to rely upon&mdash;and seventy-two cents: the one as woefully
+inadequate as the other.</p>
+
+<p>Near Columbus Circle she bought a copy of the <i>New York World</i> for the
+sake of its "Help Wanted" advertisements, and strolled on into Central
+Park.</p>
+
+<p>Here she found some suggestion of nature rising refreshed from its
+over-night bath to bask in sunlight. The grass was nowhere scorched, and
+in shadowed spots still sparkled with rain-drops. The air was still,
+steamy, and heady with fragrance of vegetation. Upon this artificial,
+rectangular oasis a sky of robin's-egg blue smiled benignly. A sense of
+peace and friendly fortunes impregnated the girl's being. Somehow she
+felt serenely sure that nothing untoward could happen to her. The world
+was all too beautiful and kindly....</p>
+
+<p>She discovered a remote bench and there unfolded her newspaper and ran
+hastily through its advertising columns, finding one reason or another
+for rejecting every opening that seemed to promise anything in the
+nature of such employment as she had theretofore known. There were no
+cards from theatrical firms in need of chorus-girls, and nothing else
+interested her. She was now obsessed by two fixed ideas, as they might
+have been the poles of her world: she was going on the stage; she was
+not going back behind a counter.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she must find a way to live until the stage should open its jealous
+doors to her....</p>
+
+<p>The morning hours ebbed slowly, with increasing heat. From time to time
+Joan, for one reason or another, would drift idly on to another bench.</p>
+
+<p>Once, as she sat dreaming with vacant eyes, she was roused by the quick
+beating of muffled hoofs, and looked up in time to see a woman on
+horseback pass swiftly along a bridle-path, closely pursued by a man,
+likewise mounted. The face of the horsewoman burned bright with pleasure
+and excitement and her eyes shone like stars as she glanced
+over-shoulder at her distanced escort. She rode well and looked very
+trim and well turned out in her habit of light-coloured linen. Joan
+thought her charming&mdash;and unspeakably blessed.</p>
+
+<p>Later they returned; but now their horses walked sedately side by side;
+and the woman was smiling softly, with her eyes downcast, as she
+listened to her companion, who bent eagerly close to her and spoke in a
+low and intimate voice.</p>
+
+<p>For hours afterwards Joan was haunted by the memory, and rent with
+envious longing. A hundred times she pictured herself in the place of
+the horsewoman; and the man at her side wore always the manner and the
+aspect of John Matthias....</p>
+
+<p>About two o'clock in the afternoon she lunched meagrely on
+crackers-and-milk at another dairy establishment on Columbus
+Avenue&mdash;reducing her capital to sixty-one cents. Then, recrossing the
+park, she made her way back through the sweltering side-streets toward
+her late home. She arrived in time to see her father's burly figure
+lumbering heavily up the street. His gaze was to the sidewalk, his mind
+upon the poolrooms, his thick, pendulous lower lip quivered with
+incessant, inaudible repetition of race-track names and records. He
+would not have recognized Joan had he looked directly at her. And he
+didn't look.</p>
+
+<p>She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be
+counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the
+street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway....</p>
+
+<p>Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the
+residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than
+ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she
+entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise
+not untouched by alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very
+suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of
+questions that was about to break.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a
+frightened breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly.
+"Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was
+gone?"</p>
+
+<p>Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to
+her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He
+won't hear of your coming back&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's
+my things. I've done enough for this family.... Now I'm going to look
+out for Number One."</p>
+
+<p>The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose
+bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal
+grievance.</p>
+
+<p>"I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously.</p>
+
+<p>Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all
+day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and
+try it: <i>I</i>'m sick and tired of it!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed
+but inquisitive.</p>
+
+<p>Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the
+accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting,
+in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in
+embittered silence, ignoring her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length.</p>
+
+<p>"With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" the other persisted.</p>
+
+<p>Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Maizie Dean, if you <i>got</i> to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at
+the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big
+money."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she going to get you a job?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;foolish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's she live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the number of the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to know for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you going back there?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shut down the lid of the suit-case and began to strap it. "Yes,"
+she said with a trace of reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>"I might wanta write to you," insisted Edna. "Anything might happen and
+you not know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, then," Joan admitted, with an air of extreme ennui, "the
+number's Two-eighty-nine. Catch that? Don't forget."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," Joan added, lifting her voice for the benefit of the listener
+in the dining-room, "you don't need to be so much in a rush to think I
+ain't ever coming back to see you. You got no right to think that of me,
+after the way I've turned in my pay week in and week out, right straight
+along. I don't know what makes you think I've turned mean. I'm going to
+come and see you and ma every week, and as soon's I begin to make money
+you'll get your share, all right, all right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Joan&mdash;" the younger girl whispered, drawing nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"They had a nawful row last night&mdash;ma and pa&mdash;after you went."</p>
+
+<p>"I bet he done all the rowing!"</p>
+
+<p>"He"&mdash;Edna's thin, pale cheeks coloured faintly with indignation&mdash;"he
+said rotten things to her&mdash;said it was because you took after her made
+you want to go on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"That's like him, the brute!" Joan commented between her teeth. "What'd
+she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. Then he lit into Butch, but Butch stood up to him and told him
+to shut his face or he'd knock his block off."</p>
+
+<p>"And he did shut his face, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>Edna nodded vigorously. "Yeh&mdash;but he rowed with ma for hours after
+they'd went to bed. I could hear him fussing and swearing. She never
+answered one word."</p>
+
+<p>Reminiscences of like experiences of her own, long white nights through
+which she had lain sleepless, listening to the endless,
+indistinguishable monologue of recrimination and abuse in the adjoining
+bedroom, softened Joan's mood.</p>
+
+<p>She returned to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother's head had fallen forward on arms folded amidst the odious
+disorder of unclean dishes. Through a long minute Joan regarded with
+sombre eyes that unlovely and pitiful head, with its scant covering of
+greyish hair stretched taut from nape to temple and brow and twisted
+into a ragged knot at the back, with its hollowed temples and sunken
+cheeks, its thin and stringy neck emerging from the collar of a cheap
+and soiled Mother Hubbard. With new intentness, as if seeing them for
+the first time, she studied the dejected curve of those toil-bent
+shoulders, and the lean red forearms with their gnarled and scalded
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Dull emotions troubled the girl, pity and apprehension entering into her
+mood to war with selfishness and obstinacy.</p>
+
+<p>This drudge that was her mother had once been a woman like herself,
+straight and strong and fashioned in clean, firm contours of wholesome
+flesh. To what was due this dreadful metamorphosis? To the stage? Or to
+Man? Or to both?... Must she in the end become as her mother was, a
+battered derelict of womanhood, hopeless of salvage?</p>
+
+<p>Slipping to her knees, she passed an arm across the thin, sharp
+shoulders of the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma ..." she said gently.</p>
+
+<p>The response was a whisper barely audible, her name breathed in a sigh:
+"Joan...."</p>
+
+<p>Beneath her warm, strong arm there was the faintest perceptible movement
+of the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me, ma: I ain't going to forget you and Edna. I am going to
+work hard and take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>The mother moved her head slightly, turning her face away from her
+daughter. Otherwise she was wholly unresponsive. Joan might have been
+talking to the deaf.</p>
+
+<p>She divined suddenly something of the tragedy and despair of this
+inarticulate creature whose body had borne her, who had once been as her
+daughter was now. Before her mental vision unfolded a vast and sordid
+tapestry&mdash;a patchwork-thing made up of hints, innuendoes and snatches of
+half-remembered conversations, heretofore meaningless, of a
+thousand-and-one insignificant circumstances, individually valueless,
+assembling into an almost intelligible whole: picturing in dim,
+distorted perspective the history of her mother, drab, pitiful,
+appalling....</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly, bending forward, Joan touched her lips to the sallow cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye," she said stiffly; "I got to go."</p>
+
+<p>She rose. Her mother did not move. Edna stared wonderingly, as though a
+bystander at a scene of whose meaning she was ignorant. Joan took up her
+suit-case and went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"S'long, kid," she saluted her sister lightly. "Take good care of ma
+while I'm away. See you before long."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated again in the open doorway, with her hand on the knob.</p>
+
+<p>"And tell Butch I said thanks."</p>
+
+<p>She was half-way down to the next landing before she became aware of
+Edna bending over the banisters.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl paused.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'most forgot: Butch said if you was to come in to tell you to drop
+around to the store th'safternoon. Said he had something to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" demanded Joan, incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno. He just said that this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>To eyes dazzled by ambition, the news-stand, shouldered on either side
+by a prosperous delicatessen shop and a more prosperous and ornate
+corner saloon, wore a look unusually hopeless and pitiful: it was so
+small, so narrow-chested, so shabby!</p>
+
+<p>Its plate-glass show-window, dim with the accumulated grime of years,
+bore in block letters of white enamel&mdash;with several letters missing&mdash;the
+legend:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A&nbsp; THUR BY<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Newsd&nbsp;&nbsp;ler &amp; Stationer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;igars &amp; Con&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;tionery<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Before the door stood a wooden newspaper stand, painted red and black,
+advertising the one-cent evening sheet which furnished it gratis. A few
+dusty stacks of papers ornamented it. The door was wide open, disclosing
+an interior furnished with dirt-smeared show-cases which housed a stock
+of cheap cigars and tobacco, boxes of villainous candy to be retailed by
+the cent's-worth, writing-paper in gaudy, fly-specked packages,
+magazines, and a handful of brittle toys, perennially unsold. The floor
+was seldom swept and had never been scrubbed in all the nine years that
+Thursby had been a tenant of the place.</p>
+
+<p>The establishment was, as Joan had anticipated, in sole charge of Butch,
+who occupied a tilted chair, his lean nose exploring the sporting pages
+of <i>The Evening Journal</i>. Inevitably, a half-consumed Sweet Caporal
+cigarette ornamented his cynic mouth. He greeted Joan with a flicker of
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lo, kid!" he said: and threw aside the paper. "What's doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Edna said you wanted to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeh: that's right." Butch yawned liberally and thrust his hat to the
+back of his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the girl sharply. "What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>Butch delayed his answer until he had inserted a fresh cigarette between
+his lips, lighted it from the old, and inhaled deeply. Interim he looked
+her over openly, with the eyes of one from whom humanity has no secrets.</p>
+
+<p>"Dja land that job?" he enquired at length, smoke trickling from his
+mouth and nostrils, a grim smile lurking about his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't tried yet."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're goin' to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"What line? Chorus girl or supe in the legit?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to try to do anything that turns up," Joan affirmed
+courageously.</p>
+
+<p>"Try anythin' once, eh?" murmured the boy with profound irony. "Well,
+where you goin' to hang out till you land?"</p>
+
+<p>The lie ran glibly off her tongue this time: "With Maizie
+Dean&mdash;Two-eighty-nine West Forty-fifth."</p>
+
+<p>"That where you stayed last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ..." she faltered, already beginning to repent and foresee unhappy
+complications in event Butch should try to find her at the address she
+had given.</p>
+
+<p>The boy got up suddenly and stood close to her, searching her face with
+his prematurely knowing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, kid!" he said roughly. "Hand it to me straight now: on the
+level, there ain't no man mixed up in this?"</p>
+
+<p>She was able to meet his gaze without a tremor: "On the dead level,
+Butch."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right then. Only...."</p>
+
+<p>"Only what?"</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be regular trouble for the guy, if I ever find out you've lied
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"What business&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, cut that!" snarled Butch. "You're my sister&mdash;see? And you're a
+damn' little fool, and somebody's got to look out for you. And that
+means me. You go ahead and try this stage thing all you like&mdash;but duck
+the men, duck 'em every time!"</p>
+
+<p>He eyed her momentarily from a vast and aloof coign of vantage. She was
+dumb with resentment, oppressed by amazement and a little in awe of the
+boy, her junior though he was.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, lis'en: got any money?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;yes&mdash;fifty cents," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't goin' to carry you far over the bumps. Who's goin' to put up
+for you while you're lookin' for this job-thing? Your frien' Maizie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I guess so&mdash;yes: I'm going to stay with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you won't last long if you don't come through with some coin
+every little while."</p>
+
+<p>Without warning Butch produced a small packet of bills from his
+trouser-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Djever see them before?" he enquired, with his mocking smile.</p>
+
+<p>Joan gasped: "My money&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh," Butch nodded. "Fell outa your bag when you side-stepped the
+Old Man and beat it, last night. He didn't see it, and I sneaked the
+bunch while he wasn't lookin'. G'wan&mdash;take it."</p>
+
+<p>He thrust the money into her fingers that closed convulsively upon it.
+For a moment she choked and gulped, on the verge of tears, so
+overpowering was the sense of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"O Butch&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, cut that out. It's your money, all right&mdash;ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>She began with trembling fingers to count the bills. Butch tilted his
+head to one side and regarded her with undisguised disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, you must have a swell opinion of me, kid, to think I'd hold out on
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>She stared bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"There's twenty-two dollars here, Butch!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand moved out as if offering to return the money. With an angry
+movement he slapped it back and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," he muttered sourly. "I slipped an extra ten in. I guess
+I gotta right to, ain't I? You're my sister, and you'll need it before
+you get through, all right."</p>
+
+<p>She lingered, stunned. "But, Butch ... I oughtn't to...."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, can that guff&mdash;and beat it. The Old Man's liable to be back any
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>Seizing her suit-case, he urged her none too gently toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awful' good of you, Butch&mdash;awful' good&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;all right. But can the gush-thing till next time."</p>
+
+<p>Overwhelmed, Joan permitted herself to be thrust out of the door; and
+then, recovering to some extent, masked her excitement as best she could
+and trudged away across-town, back toward Central Park.</p>
+
+<p>Blind instinct urged her to that refuge where she would have quiet and
+peace while she thought things out: a necessity which had not existed
+until within the last fifteen minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Before her interview with Butch she had been penniless and planless.
+But now she found herself in circumstances of comparative affluence and
+independence. Twenty-two dollars strictly economized surely ought to
+keep her fed and sheltered in decent lodgings for at least three weeks;
+within which time she would quite as surely find employment of some
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>It remained to decide how best to conserve her resources. On the face of
+the situation, she had nothing to do but seek the cheapest and meanest
+rooming-house in the city. But in her heart of hearts she had already
+determined to return to the establishment of Madame Duprat, beyond her
+means though it might be, ostensibly to await the return of the Dancing
+Deans, secretly that she might be under the same roof with John
+Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>And in the end it was to Number 289 that she turned. At half-past four
+she stood again on the brown-stone stoop, waiting an answer to her ring.</p>
+
+<p>And at the same moment, John Matthias, handsomely garbed in the best of
+his wardrobe but otherwise invested in a temper both indignant and
+rebellious, instituted a dash from room to train, handicapped by a
+time-limit ridiculously brief.</p>
+
+<p>As the front door slammed at his back, he pulled up smartly to escape
+collision with the girl on the stoop. He looked at and through her,
+barely conscious of her pretty, pallid face and the light of recognition
+in her eyes. Then, with a murmured apology, he dodged neatly round her,
+swung down the steps, and frantically hailed a passing taxicab.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, dashed and disappointed, saw the vehicle swing in to the curb and
+heard Matthias, as he clambered in, direct the driver to the
+Pennsylvania Station with all possible haste.</p>
+
+<p>She stared after the dwindling cab disconsolately. He hadn't even known
+her!</p>
+
+<p>In another minute she would have turned her back on the house and sought
+lodgings elsewhere, but the door abruptly opened a second time,
+revealing Madame Duprat, a forbidding but imperative figure, upon the
+threshold.</p>
+
+<p>Timidly in her confusion the girl made some semi-articulate enquiry as
+to the address of Miss Maizie Dean.</p>
+
+<p>To her astonishment and consternation, the landlady unbent and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she exclaimed with unction. "Mademoiselle is the friend of
+Monsieur Matthias, is it not? Very good. Will you not be pleased to
+enter? It is but this afternoon that the Sisters Dean have returned so
+altogether unexpectedly."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Alone in the body of a touring-car, Helena Tankerville, a slender and
+fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot
+and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly,
+and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious
+stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track
+debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength
+of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train.</p>
+
+<p>She was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were
+evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her
+manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except
+possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her
+while to be aware. None the less, she was conscious that she was
+visible. . . .</p>
+
+<p>A faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines.
+Immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the
+west. A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged
+from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a
+pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where,
+panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in
+beside the platform.</p>
+
+<p>Incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men
+in apparently comfortable circumstances, well dressed to the standards
+of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon,
+heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought
+accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, 'buses, surreys,
+smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, bending forward, overlooked them all with imperceptible disdain.
+The face she sought was not among those that swam in review beneath her.
+And presently encountering an overbold glance, she drew back with a
+little frown of annoyance. Already the throng was thinning; conveyances
+laden to the guards were drawing out of the rank and rattling and
+rumbling off through stifling drifts of dust; no more passengers were
+issuing from the coaches; and already the parlour-car porters were
+picking up their stools and preparing to swing back aboard the train.
+The conductor waved his final signal. The bell tolled its warning. The
+locomotive belched black smoke and cinders and amid stentorian puffings
+began to move, the coaches following to their tune of clanking
+couplings. No sign of her refractory nephew. And still Helena hesitated
+to give the order to drive home; John had telephoned; it wasn't like him
+to be delinquent in his promises.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the last car was passing her when she saw him. He appeared
+suddenly on the rearmost platform, with the startled expression and air
+of a Jack-in-the-box; dropped his suit-case over the rear rail; ran down
+the steps; delayed an instant to gauge distance and speed: and with nice
+calculation dropped lightly to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Pausing only to recover his luggage, he approached the motor-car with a
+sheepish smile for his handsome young aunt, who regarded him with an air
+of mingled bewilderment and despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Wel-l!" she exclaimed, as soon as he was near enough to hear&mdash;"of <i>all</i>
+things&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are!" he affirmed gravely, tossing his handbag into the car
+and following it. "Kick along, Davy," he added, with a nod to the
+chauffeur; and gracefully sank back upon the seat beside Helena.</p>
+
+<p>Purring, the car began to grope its way through the dust-fog. Matthias
+turned twinkling eyes to his aunt. She compressed her lips and shook her
+head helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Words inadequate, aunty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite!" she said. "<i>What</i> were you doing on that train, to come so near
+forgetting the station?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thinking," he explained: "wrapped in profound and exhaustive
+meditation. I say, how stunning you look!"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him up; or one inferred as much from her gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"You're impossible," she said in a tragic voice. "Thinking!... While <i>I</i>
+had to wait there and be ogled by all those odious men!"</p>
+
+<p>"You must've been ready to sink through the ground."</p>
+
+<p>She eyed him stonily. "You didn't care&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Even if I hadn't been preoccupied, it would never have entered my head
+that you seriously objected to being admired."</p>
+
+<p>She received this in injured silence. Matthias chuckled to himself and
+settled more comfortably into his seat. The motor-car turned off the
+main road from the station to the village of Port Madison, down which
+the greater number of its predecessors had clattered, and found
+unclouded air on a well-metalled lane bordered with aged oaks and
+maples. Through a funnel-like dip between hills, Matthias, looking past
+his aunt, caught a fleeting glimpse of the cluttered roofs of Port
+Madison, its shallow, land-locked harbour set with a little fleet of
+pleasure boats, and the ineffable, burning blue of the distant Sound....</p>
+
+<p>"I presume," Helena returned to the charge, disarmingly aggrieved, "you
+think I ought to be grateful for your condescending to return at all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he pleaded, not altogether insincerely; "I know it wasn't
+right of me to run away like that, but I couldn't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't help it!" she murmured despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just the way of it. I got to thinking about a play I wanted to
+write, yesterday afternoon, and&mdash;well, along about ten o'clock it got
+too strong for me. I just had to get back to my typewriter. You know how
+that is."</p>
+
+<p>"I? What do I know about your silly playwriting?"</p>
+
+<p>Laughing, he bent nearer and patted the gloved hand on the cushions
+beside him. "You know perfectly well, Helena dear, what it is to want to
+do something so bad you simply can't help yourself. It's the Matthias
+blood in both of us. That's why you ran off and married Tankerville
+against everybody's advice. Of course, it did turn out beautifully; but
+you didn't stop to wonder whether it would or not when you took it into
+your head to marry him. The same with me: you decide that it's high time
+for your delightful sister-in-law to get married, and you look round and
+fix on your dutiful nephew for the bridegroom-elect&mdash;wholly because you
+want it to be that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?" she demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>He took a moment to think this over. "I suppose I do," he admitted
+almost reluctantly. "But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're in love with her!" Helena declared with spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why," she begged in tones of moderate exasperation&mdash;"why do you
+object&mdash;hang fire&mdash;run away like a silly, frightened schoolboy as soon
+as I get everything arranged for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, you see, I'm not in a position to get married yet," he argued. "I
+haven't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How's that&mdash;'not in a position'?" she interrupted testily.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep forgetting I'm the family pauper, the poor relation, whereas
+Venetia has all the money there is, more or less."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are!" Helena turned her palms out expressively; folded them
+in resignation. "What more can you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something more nearly approaching an equal footing, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!"&mdash;she turned to him with a fine air of innocence&mdash;"how much money
+<i>have</i> you got, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty-six hundred per annum, as you know very well," he replied. "But,
+my dear, dear aunty (you're one of the most beautiful creatures alive
+and I'm awfully proud and fond of you) surely you must understand that
+no decent fellow wants to go to the girl he's in love with and make a
+proposition like this: 'I've got thirty-six hundred and you've got three
+hundred and sixty thousand; let's marry and divide.'"</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been writing plays?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ... several years."</p>
+
+<p>"And how many have you written?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a few."</p>
+
+<p>"And how much have you made at it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next to nothing, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why do you persist?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it's the thing I want to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't make any money at it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I may make a lot before long. Meanwhile, I like it."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you'd only listen to reason and let Tankerville&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"With all the best intentions in the world, dear Helena, Tankerville
+couldn't make me a successful business man. It isn't in me. Permit me to
+muddle along in my own, 'special, wrong-headed way, and the chances are
+I'll make good in the end. But, once and for all, I refuse positively to
+give up my trade and try to make sense of Wall Street methods."</p>
+
+<p>Helena moved her shoulders impatiently. For an instant she was silenced.
+Then: "But marriage needn't necessarily put an end to your playwriting.
+A good marriage&mdash;as with Venetia&mdash;ought even to help, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>"But you persist in forgetting I'm not a fortune hunter."</p>
+
+<p>"But," she countered smartly, "Marbridge is."</p>
+
+<p>He said: "Oh&mdash;Marbridge!" as if dumbfounded.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled quietly, a very wise and superior smile.</p>
+
+<p>To this point the car had been steadily ascending; the noise of the
+motor, together with the frequent stutterings of the exhaust with the
+muffler cut-out, had been sufficient to disguise the substance of their
+communication from the ears of the operator. Now, however, they
+surmounted the highest point and began the more gradual descent to the
+Tankerville estate. And with less noise there was consequently very
+little talking on the part of the two on the rear seat. For which
+Matthias wasn't altogether sorry. He wanted time to think&mdash;to think
+about Venetia Tankerville in the new light cast upon her by his aunt's
+concluding remark: as affected by her friendship with Vincent Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural swing of events, it would never have occurred to him to
+consider Marbridge's attentions seriously. Nobody ever took Marbridge
+seriously, he believed, aside from a few exceptionally foolish women....</p>
+
+<p>Noiselessly the car slipped down a mile-long avenue to the brow of a
+promontory. On either hand Tanglewood's long parked terraces fell away
+to the water: on the left the harbour of Port Madison, on the right,
+Long Island Sound.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias was barely conscious of these things; his mood was haunted by
+an extraordinarily clear vision of Vincent Marbridge: not tall, but by
+no means short; a trifle stout, but none the less a well-knit figure of
+a man, and tremendously alive; dark, with a broad, blunt, good-humoured
+face and seal-brown eyes that were exceedingly handsome and expressive;
+keen-witted and accomplished, knowing almost everybody and every place
+and thing worth knowing; hedonist and egoist, selfish, unscrupulous,
+magnetic, fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>Impressed, Matthias frowned. His aunt eyed him covertly, with a sly,
+semi-affectionate, semi-malicious smile shadowing her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Slackening its pace, the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and
+slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. Matthias pulled
+himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. They turned
+toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville's pretentious marble palace crowned the brow of the headland
+with an effect as exquisite as a dream of an ancient French château
+realized in snow. For this its owner had his wife to thank. Helena,
+unable to curb her husband's desire for the most expensive and
+ostentatious place obtainable, had at least guided his choice of design.
+It was too magnificent, it was overpowering, but it was beautiful; and
+it was more than ever beautiful at this hour, with its walls in part
+bathed in a rose-pink light of sunset, in part shadowed as with a wash
+of violet, and with all its admirable proportions stark against the
+dusky sapphire of the Sound.</p>
+
+<p>An unwonted stillness clung about the place. Matthias wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"It might be the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," he said. "Why this
+deadly and benumbing silence? What&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, simply that Tankerville decided this morning to take everybody down
+to Huntington for lunch. They got away quite early, in the Enchantress.
+Come out on the terrace; we'll look for them."</p>
+
+<p>They passed through a wide, cool, panelled hallway.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know I hate the water. Besides, I had a headache&mdash;at least, I had
+one until the Enchantress got under way; and furthermore I meant to stay
+at home and meet you and talk it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Venetia went, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;<i>and</i> Marbridge&mdash;and everybody!"</p>
+
+<p>He grunted thoughtfully. They descended to a terrace which jutted airily
+out over the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty
+feet to the beach.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, dropping languidly into a wicker chair, motioned Matthias to the
+broad marble balustrade.</p>
+
+<p>"Any sign of the Enchantress, O perturbed nephew?"</p>
+
+<p>He lingered there for an instant, marvelling with an inexhaustible
+wonder at the magnificent sweep of the view, then remembering, raked the
+waters until he discovered Tankerville's power-cruiser standing in
+toward the dock from the bottle-neck mouth of Port Madison harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, he reported, seated himself near his aunt, lighted a
+cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you ask him here anyway?" he demanded abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" she parried mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"Marbridge, of course," he admitted, sulking in the face of her manifest
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous, Jackie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;if you insist."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. "The most encouraging symptom you've yet betrayed!... I
+didn't ask him. Tankerville did. He likes him. The man's amusing, after
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"But you like him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He amuses me."</p>
+
+<p>"He's not precisely a tame cat...."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear boy!" she laughed again, "I didn't fetch you out here to worry
+about me. I'm fire-proof. Venetia's quite another pair of shoes. Fret
+about her as much as you like."</p>
+
+<p>"When does he go&mdash;Marbridge, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monday, I think. At least, I believe Tankerville asked him for a week
+only."</p>
+
+<p>"And that's why you asked me, this particular week?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you'd be a good counter-irritant; and hoped you'd come to
+your senses and secure Venetia against all Marbridges for all time to
+come. You gave me to understand you would."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon," he corrected a trifle stiffly: "I admitted to you in strict
+confidence that I was in love with Venetia. I never promised to ask her
+to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's what I understood you to mean. And anyway, you'd better.
+Neither Tankerville nor I can control the girl; she's her own mistress
+and headstrong enough to be a good match for any Matthias that ever
+lived. If Marbridge ever convinces her that she likes him...."</p>
+
+<p>She concluded with an eloquent ellipsis.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," mused Matthias after prolonged deliberation, "I'd have lost
+my head before this if it hadn't been so full of that play."</p>
+
+<p>Helena smiled indulgently. "It's not too late ... I hope."</p>
+
+<p>Troubled, he rose, walked to the balustrade, jerked his cigarette into
+space, and returned.</p>
+
+<p>"As between one fortune-hunter and another," he said gloomily, "I'm
+conceited enough to think myself the safer bet."</p>
+
+<p>His aunt smiled more openly: "See what Venetia thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"I will!" said Matthias with a fine air of inalterable determination.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Since it was her whim and the winds indulged, Helena had ordered that
+the rite of the late dinner be celebrated by candlelight alone. Ten
+shaded candles graced the places. In the centre of the table an ancient
+candelabrum of gold added the mellow illumination of its seven alabaster
+arms, whose small flames yearned upward ardently, with scarce a
+perceptible flicker, though every window was wide to the whispering
+night.</p>
+
+<p>One of these that faced Matthias framed a shimmering sky of stars and
+the still black shield of the Sound, on which the fixed and undeviating
+glare of a remote light-house was reflected darkly, a long unwavering
+way of light; he thought of a tall wax candle burning amid the
+sanctified shadows of some vast and dark and still cathedral....</p>
+
+<p>They were ten at table: from Helena's right, Pat Atherton (Tankerville's
+partner), a Mrs. Majendie, Marbridge, a Mrs. Cardrow, Tankerville at the
+head; on his right, Mrs. Pat Atherton, Matthias, Venetia Tankerville,
+Majendie. The latter and his wife were almost strangers to Matthias,
+having arrived only the previous afternoon: but he thought them as
+pleasant and handsome people as any of those with whom the Tankervilles
+liked to fill their house. The Athertons were old friends; he had known
+them well, long before Helena dreamed of marrying Tankerville. Marbridge
+was an indifferently familiar figure in the ways of his life; they
+frequented the same clubs, and of late he had begun to encounter the
+older man more and more frequently in his theatrical divagations.
+Remained Mrs. Cardrow, a widow, the acquaintance of a week's standing.
+Cardrow had been in some way connected with the enterprises of Messrs.
+Tankerville &amp; Atherton; how, Matthias didn't remember; a man of whom
+rumour said little that was good until it began to say <i>De mortuis</i>....
+He had killed himself for no accountable reason. His widow seemed to
+have survived bereavement with amazing grace.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias admired her greatly. Women, he knew&mdash;Helena in their
+number&mdash;mistrusted her for no cause perceptible to him. He liked her,
+thought her little less than absolutely charming. So, evidently, did
+Marbridge, whose attitude toward her this evening was a little more
+noticeably attentive than ever before. He seemed to exert himself to
+interest and divert. His black eyes snapped. As he talked his heavy body
+swayed slightly from the hips, lending an accent to his animation. His
+laugh was frequent and infectious.</p>
+
+<p>She was a woman who smiled more than she laughed. She smiled now,
+inscrutably, her beautiful, insolent eyes half veiled with demure
+lashes, her face turned to Marbridge, her chin a trifle high, bringing
+out the clear strong lines of her throat and shoulders, which had the
+texture, the pallor, and the firmness of fine ivory. Her eyes, when she
+chose to discover them, were brown, her eyebrows almost black, her hair
+dull gold, the gold of the candelabrum&mdash;the gold of artifice, on the
+word of Helena.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was to this odd colouring&mdash;ivory and brown, black and
+gold&mdash;that Mrs. Cardrow owed most of her strange and provoking quality.
+But there was something else, something one could not define: at once
+stimulating and elusive; less charm than allure; nameless; that
+attracted and repelled....</p>
+
+<p>These were thoughts set stirring by a dozen semi-curious glances at the
+woman, in pauses in his conversation with Venetia. Matthias was in fact
+indifferent to Mrs. Cardrow. But he was tremendously interested in
+Venetia. It could hardly be otherwise&mdash;since his talk with Helena. He
+was to marry Venetia. Amazing thought!</p>
+
+<p>She was adorable. Of the other women, none compared with Mrs. Cardrow:
+even Helena's beauty paled in contrast. But Venetia was to Mrs. Cardrow
+as dawn to noon. One looked at Venetia and thought of a still sea at
+daybreak, mobile to the young and fitful airs, radiant with sunlight,
+breathless with apprehension of the long, golden hours to come. One
+looked at Mrs. Cardrow and thought&mdash;of Woman. Venetia was dark, and the
+other fair; Venetia was by no means a child, Mrs. Cardrow not yet
+thirty. The gulf that set them apart was not so much of years as of
+caste: they lived and thought on different levels, mental if not social.
+Matthias liked to think Venetia of the higher order.</p>
+
+<p>He was to marry her. Incredible!</p>
+
+<p>And tonight her eyes were warm and kind for him, and all for him. He
+could not see that there was anything of self-interest in the infrequent
+glances she cast at those who sat opposite, playing their time-old game
+with such engaging candour. If she had thought much of Marbridge, surely
+she must have betrayed some little pique or chagrin. She was not blind;
+neither was she patient and prone to self-effacement. Matthias had known
+her long enough to have garnered vivid memories of her resentment of
+slights, whether real or fancied. She was unique and wonderful in many
+ways, but (he told himself in a catch-phrase of the hour) she was
+essentially human. He could not have cared for a woman without temper:
+he cared intensely for this girl-woman whose rare loveliness seemed
+almost exotic in its singular scheme, whose skin, fine of texture and
+colourless as milk-white satin, was splashed with lips of burning
+scarlet, whose eyes of deepest violet were luminous in the shadow of
+hair of the richness and lustre of burnished bronze ... luminous and
+kind to him: he dared to hope greatly of their sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Through dinner she had entertained him with a mirthful, inconsecutive
+narrative of the adventures of the day. Now, as ices were served, her
+interest swerved suddenly and found a new object in himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you run away last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"You really noticed it?"</p>
+
+<p>Light malice trembled on her lips: "Not till this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"You were so busy"&mdash;an imperceptible nod indicated Marbridge&mdash;"I felt
+myself becoming ornamental. Whereas, utility's my proudest attribute. So
+I left you dancing, and skipped by the light of the moon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not really?"</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Put out with me, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>He sought her eyes again and found them veiled and downcast. "Not the
+least in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, again, why&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to get back to work. Besides, I had a little business with a
+manager."</p>
+
+<p>And so he had; but until this moment he had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>"Play business?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I know no other."</p>
+
+<p>"Is something new to be produced?"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias nodded: "Goes into rehearsal in August. A melodrama I wrote
+some time ago&mdash;'The Jade God.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Who produces it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rideout."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A foolish actor: played a sketch of mine in vaudeville for a couple of
+years and, because that got over, thinks this piece must."</p>
+
+<p>"But it will, won't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so; but I'm glad it's not my money."</p>
+
+<p>"And where will you open?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven and the Shuberts only know. Rideout books through the Shuberts,
+you understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"The Shuberts are the Independents&mdash;the opposition to the Syndicate
+headed by Klaw and Erlanger. You see, the theatres of this country are
+practically all controlled by one or the other combination. If you want
+booking for your show, you've got to take sides&mdash;serve God or Mammon."</p>
+
+<p>"And which is which?"</p>
+
+<p>"The difference is imperceptible to the innocent bystander."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll let us know&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we open within motoring distance of Town&mdash;rather!"</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville, edging his plump little body forward on his chair,
+man&oelig;uvred his round and sun-scorched face in vain attempts to catch
+his wife's eye past the intervening candelabrum. Helena, however,
+divined his desire.</p>
+
+<p>"Coffee in the card-room, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please!" Tankerville bleated plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>There was a concerted movement from the table.</p>
+
+<p>Venetia lingered with Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>"It's auction, tonight. Shall you play?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Fraid I'll have to. So will you. Helena&mdash;you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. We must. Only"&mdash;she sighed, petulant&mdash;"I'd rather not. I'd
+rather talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Heroic measures!" he laughed. "But&mdash;consolation note!&mdash;we're two over
+two full tables. Therefore we'll have to cut in and out. That'll give us
+some time to ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she agreed: "but it'll be just our luck to be disengaged at
+different times."</p>
+
+<p>He paused in amused incredulity. "Do you really want to talk to me as
+badly as all that?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, curtaining her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much," she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>They entered the card-room and were summoned to different tables.
+Matthias cut and edged Mrs. Cardrow out by a single pip. How Venetia
+fared he did not learn, more than that she was to play while Marbridge
+was to stay out the first rubber.</p>
+
+<p>He played even less intelligently than usual, with a mind distracted.
+Venetia's new attitude, pleasant as had been all their association, was
+a development of disconcerting suddenness; or else he had been witless
+and blind beyond relief. And yet&mdash;how could he say? He was so frequently
+misled by faculties befogged with dreaming, that overlooked when they
+did not flatly deny the obvious: it was possible that Helena had been
+more wise than he.</p>
+
+<p>A sense of strain handicapped his judgment; whether atmospheric or bred
+of his own emotion, he could not tell. And yet, plumbing the deeps of
+his humour, he discovered nothing there more exacting than bewilderment,
+more exciting than hope. On the other hand, he could fix upon nothing in
+the bearing of these amiable people to lead him to believe that the
+feeling of tensity to which he was susceptible was not the creation of
+his own fancy. They played with a certain abandon of enjoyment, absorbed
+in their diversion....</p>
+
+<p>Looking past Venetia, at the other table&mdash;Venetia slim and tall and
+worshipful in a wonderful black gown that rendered dazzling the
+whiteness of her flesh&mdash;he could see Mrs. Cardrow and Marbridge at the
+piano in the drawing-room. The woman sat all but motionless, white arms
+alone moving graciously in the half-light as her deft hands wandered
+over the key-board. Marbridge, his arms folded, lounged over the piano,
+his back to the card-room. The eloquent movements of his round, dark
+head, its emphatic nods and argumentative waggings, seemed to indicate
+that he was bearing the burden of their talk; but the music, hushed
+though it was, covered his accents. The woman was looking up into his
+face with an expression of quick, pleased interest, her lips,
+half-parted, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to Matthias to wonder about the substance of their
+conversation. But for a sure clue to the intrigue of Venetia's
+heart&mdash;and his own&mdash;he would have given worlds.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing down his cards, Tankerville announced with satisfaction:
+"Game&mdash;rubber. Jack, you go out&mdash;praise the Saints! You've cost Mrs. Pat
+close onto fifteen dollars, more shame to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry!" Matthias smiled cheerfully, rising. "You would have me play."</p>
+
+<p>"Hearkening and repentance!" retorted Tankerville. "Next time I marry,
+you can bet your sweet life I'm going to pick out a family of
+sure-'nough bridgers.... Call Mrs. Cardrow, will you now, like a good
+fellow."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Cardrow had already left the piano. Matthias held a chair for
+her, and then, since the rubber at the other table was not yet decided,
+strolled to a window.</p>
+
+<p>The night tempted him. Almost unconsciously he stepped out upon the
+terrace and wandered to the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>Abstractedly he lighted a cigarette. When the tobacco was aglow he held
+the match from him at arm's-length over the abyss. Its flame burned as
+steadily as though protected, flickering out only when, released, it
+fell. No night ever more still than this: land and water alike
+spellbound in breathless calm; even on the brow of that high foreland
+where Tankerville had builded him his lordly pleasure home, no hint of
+movement in the air! And yet Matthias was conscious of nothing
+resembling oppression&mdash;exhilaration, rather. He smiled vaguely into the
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>From far below, echoing up from the placid waters of Port Madison as
+from a sounding-board, came the tinkle-tinkle of a banjo and the
+complaint of a harmonica. When these were silent the wailing of violins
+was clearly audible, bridging a distance of over a mile across the
+harbour, from the ball-room of the country club. Far out upon the Sound
+the night boat for Boston trudged along like a slow-winging firefly; and
+presently its wash swept inshore to rouse the beach below to sibilant
+and murmurous protest. In the east the vault of night was pallid, azure
+and silver, with the promise of the reluctant moon.</p>
+
+<p>A hand fell gently upon his arm: Venetia's. He had not been aware of her
+approach, yet he was not startled. He turned his head slowly, smiling.
+She said softly: "Don't say anything&mdash;wait till it rises."</p>
+
+<p>They waited in silence. Her hand lingered upon his arm; and that last,
+he knew, was trembling. The nearness of her person, the intimacy of her
+touch, weighed heavily upon his senses.</p>
+
+<p>An edge of golden light appeared where the skies came down to the sea;
+hesitated; increased. That wan and spectral light, waxing, lent emphasis
+to the rare and delicious wonder of her loveliness, to the impregnable
+mystery of her womanhood. He regarded her with something near awe, with
+keen perception of his unworthiness: as a spirit from Heaven had stooped
+to commune with him. She lived; breathed; the hand upon his arm was warm
+and strong.... Incredible!</p>
+
+<p>The gibbous disk swung clear of the horizon and like some strange
+misshapen acrobat climbed a low-lying lattice-work of clouds. The girl
+turned away to a huge willow basket-chair. Matthias found its fellow and
+drew near to her. He struggled to speak; he fancied that she waited for
+him to speak; but his mind refused to frame, his tongue to utter, aught
+but the stalest of banalities.</p>
+
+<p>"No dew tonight," he hazarded at length, shame-faced.</p>
+
+<p>After an instant of silence she laughed clearly and gently. "O romantic
+man!" she said. "Now that you have, shattered the spell&mdash;if you please,
+a cigarette."</p>
+
+<p>He supplied this need; held a match; delayed holding it when it had
+served its purpose, enraptured with the refulgent wonder of that cameo
+of sweet flesh and blood set against the melting shadows, silver and
+purple and blue.</p>
+
+<p>With a second low, light laugh, she bent forward and daintily
+extinguished the flame with a single puff.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wish to be stared at...."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon," he said mechanically, startled. "But ... why?"</p>
+
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'm afraid you may see too much...."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!" he declared with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"Odd as it may sound," she said in a mocking voice, "I have my secrets."</p>
+
+<p>Her back was to the moon, her face a pallid oval framed in ebony,
+illegible; but the moonlight was full upon his face, and she who would
+might read. His disadvantage was obvious. It wasn't fair....</p>
+
+<p>Lounging, she crossed her knees, puffed thrice and cast the cigarette
+into the gulf. Abruptly she sat forward, studying him intently. He was
+disturbed with a singular uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," said Venetia very quietly, "is it true that you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good lord!" he cried, sitting up.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true?"</p>
+
+<p>He blinked. His head was whirling. He said nothing; sank back; quite
+automatically puffed with such fury that in a trice he had reduced the
+cigarette to an inch of glowing coal; scorched his fingers and threw it
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gasped stupidly: "Venetia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true?"</p>
+
+<p>She had not moved. The question had the force of stubborn purpose
+through its very monotony, a monotony of inflexion no less than of
+repetition. Her accents were both serious and sincere. She was in
+earnest; she meant to know.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Venetia&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Or have you been just making believe, all this long time?"</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;I&mdash;why&mdash;of course it's true!" he stammered lamely.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why haven't you ever told me so?"</p>
+
+<p>There sounded reproach, not unkindly, but real. He shook his wits
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"How could I guess you'd care to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know me so little as to think I'd resent it, if I happened not
+to care?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;don't know&mdash;didn't think of it that way. In fact&mdash;you've knocked me
+silly!"</p>
+
+<p>"But why? Because I've been straightforward? Dear boy!"&mdash;she lifted a
+hand to him: he took it in trembling&mdash;"you're twenty-seven, I'm
+twenty-three. We know one another pretty well: we know ourselves&mdash;at
+least slightly. Why can't we face things&mdash;facts&mdash;as man and woman, not
+as children? What's the good of make-believe? If this thing lies between
+us, let's be frank about it!"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, doubting, searching her face. Her look was very sweet and
+kind. Of a sudden he cried "Venetia!" came to his knees beside her
+chair, snatched her hand and crushed it between his own, to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you&mdash;I've always loved you!..."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the velvet of her lips, her breath, upon his forehead; and made
+as if to clasp her to him. But she slipped back, straightening an arm to
+fend him off.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she whispered&mdash;"not now&mdash;not here. Dear boy, get up! Think&mdash;this
+moonlight&mdash;anybody might see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know and, dear, I'm glad&mdash;so glad! But&mdash;you made me ask you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help that, Venetia: I was&mdash;afraid; I hardly dared to
+dream&mdash;of this. You were&mdash;you are&mdash;above, beyond&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Gently her hand sealed his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, silly boy! Get up. If you won't, I must."</p>
+
+<p>Releasing her hand, he rose. His emotion shook him violently. At
+discretion, he dropped back into his chair. He looked about him a little
+wildly, his glance embracing all the weird fantasy of the night: the
+cold, inaccessible, glittering vault of stars, the malformed and
+sardonic moon, the silken bosom of the Sound, the lace and purple velvet
+draperies of the land. Down on the harbour the banjo and harmonica were
+ragging to tatters a sentimental ballad of the day. From the house came
+a burst of laughter&mdash;Tankerville exultant in some successful stratagem
+at cards.</p>
+
+<p>His gaze returned to Venetia. She sat without moving, wrapped in the
+exquisite mystery of her enigmatic heart, bewitching, bewildering,
+steadfastly reading him with eyes veiled and inscrutable in liquid
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Muttering&mdash;"Preposterous!"&mdash;he dropped his head between his hands. "I'm
+mad&mdash;mad!" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Without stirring, she demanded: "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head free. "To have&mdash;owned up&mdash;let this come to pass. I
+love you: but that's all I dare say to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it, maybe, enough for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean&mdash;I'm mad to marry you. But how can I ask you to have me? What
+have I to offer you? The position of wife to a poverty-stricken,
+half-grown playwright! It's out of reason...."</p>
+
+<p>"But possibly&mdash;am I not the one to judge of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: I won't have you marry a man unable to provide for you in the way
+to which you've been educated. It's a point of honour&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I have&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You must understand: I've got to be able&mdash;able!&mdash;to humour your every
+whim. With things that way&mdash;what of your own you choose to spend on
+yourself won't count. The issue is my ability to give you everything."</p>
+
+<p>"But that will come&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When? I can't promise&mdash;I hardly dare hope&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"This new play isn't your only hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Success or failure, you'll keep on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly...."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's only a question of time."</p>
+
+<p>"But you&mdash;how can I ask you to wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no necessity&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But it must be." He rose, unable to remain still. "Give me six months:
+I've got another piece of work under way&mdash;and others only waiting their
+turn. In six months I can&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>The monosyllable brought him up sharply. He stared. Her white arms,
+radiant in that clear, unearthly light, lifted toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want me, dear," she said in a voice tense with emotion&mdash;"it must
+be now&mdash;soon! To wait&mdash;six months&mdash;I&mdash;that's im&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful modulations of Helena Tankerville's voice interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>Standing in one of the windows to the card-room, she said simply: "An
+exquisite night."</p>
+
+<p>Then, coming out upon the terrace and seeing Venetia and Matthias, she
+moved toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there you are, Jack. You're wanted indoors."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias, unable quickly to regain his poise, said nothing. Venetia
+answered for him, calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"He can't come."</p>
+
+<p>"What, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say, he can't come, Helena. He's engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged!"</p>
+
+<p>Recovering, Helena bore down upon them with a little call of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Not really!... O my dears! I'm so glad!"</p>
+
+<p>She gathered Venetia into her arms.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Unremarked by any of these, Marbridge stepped out upon the terrace. He
+was light of foot like most men of his type; his voice, unctuous with
+the Southern drawl which he affected together with quaint Southern
+twists of speech, was the first warning they had of his approach.</p>
+
+<p>"This is surely one powerful' fine night. I don't wonder you-all like it
+better out here than&mdash;" He checked suddenly in both words and action:
+the women had started apart. "Why!" he added slowly, as though
+perplexed&mdash;"I hope I don't intrude...."</p>
+
+<p>His quick dark eyes shifted rapidly from Helena to Venetia, to Matthias,
+and again back to the women, during a momentary lull of embarrassment.
+Then Helena said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least. But this makes you the first to learn the news, Mr.
+Marbridge. Venetia and my nephew are engaged to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged&mdash;!" The man's chin slacked: his eyes widened; a cigarette fell
+unheeded from his fingers. He smiled a trace stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!"&mdash;he recollected himself almost instantaneously&mdash;"this certainly
+is some surprise, but I do congratulate you&mdash;both!"</p>
+
+<p>With a stride he seized the hand Venetia could not refuse him, and
+pressed it warmly. "You're the luckiest man I ever knew!" he declared,
+turning to clasp hands with Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively the latter met his powerful grasp with one as forceful.
+"Thank you," he said, smiling gravely into the other's eyes. Under his
+firm but pleasant regard they wavered and fell, then steadied with a
+glint of temper. Their hands fell apart. Marbridge stepped back.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I don't know you well enough, Mr. Matthias, to congratulate
+Miss Tankerville as heartily as I do you; but I'm persuaded she's not
+liable to make any serious mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias nodded thoughtfully. "I understand: your intentions are
+excellent. I'm sure we both thank you. Venetia&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marbridge is very amiable," said the girl, a hint of mirth
+modifying her composure. "But I'm afraid, Helena," she added
+quickly&mdash;"if you don't mind&mdash;I think I'll go to my room."</p>
+
+<p>To Marbridge she gave a quaint little bow that was half an old-fashioned
+courtesy, robbed of formality by her spirited smile: to Matthias her
+hand and a gentle "Good night!" Taking the arm of her sister-in-law, she
+drew her toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>Watching them until they disappeared, Marbridge chuckled quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Took my breath away!" he declared. "Why, I never suspected for an
+instant!..." He dropped heavily but with characteristic grace into a
+chair. "It takes you quiet boys to get away with the girls like
+Venetia&mdash;all fire and dash!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Matthias reflectively: "it does&mdash;doesn't it? Have another
+cigarette?" He offered his case. "You dropped yours...."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks.... She's a thoroughbred, all right. I reckon if I wasn't a mite
+too middle-aged, maybe I might've set you a pace that you'd've found
+lively going."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's be thankful nothing of that sort happened, at all events."</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge looked up over his match and lifted his brows; but if in
+reality a retort trembled on his lips, he thought better of it; and
+before either spoke again, Tankerville was on the terrace, brandishing
+pudgy arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, you!" he called fretfully. "Don't you know you're holding us all
+up? Come on in...."</p>
+
+<p>But the game held less attraction for Matthias than ever, and after
+another and final failure to establish himself in Tankerville's good
+graces, he pocketed his losses, relinquished his place to Marbridge
+and&mdash;with even less inclination for bed than for cards&mdash;took himself
+again out into the open night. But now the terrace was all too small to
+contain his spirits. The need of action&mdash;movement, freedom, space&mdash;was
+strong upon him. Striding away down the drive that wound like a broad
+band of whitewash through its dark bordering lawns and darker coppices,
+he found even the grounds of Tanglewood too constricted for the
+extravagant energy that animated him; and took to the broad highways,
+with all Long Island free to his tireless spirit.</p>
+
+<p>For several hours or more he trudged valiantly hither and yon, with
+little or no notion of whither he went&mdash;with his head in the stars and
+his feet in the dust and kicking up a famous smother of it&mdash;and in that
+time was wittingly as near to happiness as he had ever been in all his
+days. The faculty of coherent thought had passed from him utterly, but
+it passed unmourned: Venetia was his! This thought alone sufficed him.
+He had neither time nor inclination to entertain those doubts, those
+questionings and apprehensions which had beset him in saner humour
+theretofore. It mattered nothing now that he was poor and she wealthy,
+nothing that all his efforts to make something of himself had thus far
+proved vain and fruitless. She loved him: it was enough....</p>
+
+<p>He came to his senses, eventually, long enough to recognize anew the
+grounds of Tanglewood. Of a sudden his impetuosity had run out; remained
+the pleasant languor of a healthy body thoroughly exercised, the peace
+of a mind vexed by no insatiable desire. And still he was not sleepy.
+Purposefully he retarded his footsteps, approaching the house with
+stealth, eager to escape observation and gain his room, unhindered.
+Tomorrow would be soon enough to submit to the ordeal of
+congratulations....</p>
+
+<p>It was with a shock of amazement that he saw the house all quiet and
+dark. He pulled out his watch and studied its face by moonlight, finding
+its evidence difficult to credit: twenty minutes past one in the
+morning!</p>
+
+<p>Gingerly, keeping to the grass in order that the gravel of the drive
+might not, by its crunching underfoot, betray him or alarm some wakeful
+member of the house-hold, he approached the front door, wondering if he
+were locked out, and&mdash;not without amusement at his self-contrived
+predicament&mdash;what to do if he were. To his relief one-half of the double
+door stood a foot or two ajar&mdash;thanks, he had no doubt, to the
+thoughtfulness of Helena or Tankerville. Blessing both on general
+principles, he entered, shut the door and softly shot the bolt; turned
+in deep obscurity to grope his way to the foot of the stairs; but paused
+with a hand on the newel-post and his breath catching in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>In the hallway above a night-light was burning dim and low but
+sufficiently diffused to show him the figure of a woman silently
+descending the stairway. When he first became aware of her she was
+indeed almost within arm's length: a shape of shadow scarce three shades
+lighter than the encompassing gloom.... Venetia, possibly, having waited
+and watched for him from her windows overlooking the drive, stealing
+down to bid him that good night they had perforce foregone in the
+presence of Helena and Marbridge....</p>
+
+<p>That wild and extravagant surmise had no more than entered his mind when
+he found the woman in his arms. She gave herself into them with a
+gesture of abandonment, with a little sigh that escaped in broken
+measure, murmurous and fond. An arm that, lifting, flashed naked to the
+shoulder as the sleeve of her negligee fell back, encircled his neck and
+drew down his head to hers. And her mouth fastened to his with clinging
+lips....</p>
+
+<p>Half stunned by receipt of that mad caress, one thought shot like light
+through the turmoil of his senses: this was never Venetia!</p>
+
+<p>With an effort he straightened his neck against the pressure of the
+woman's arm. She strove to overcome his resistance, wooing him in
+accents hushed, shaking with passion:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Vincent ... sweetheart!...</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He interrupted hastily: "I beg pardon!" The inadequacy of that stilted
+form, disgusting him, he added: "I am John Matthias."</p>
+
+<p>Immediately the woman released him and, with a gasp, sank back against
+the newel-post. Her breath came gustily, with a sound like smothered
+sobbing. Pitifully he divined her shame and terror; and though he knew
+her very well, beyond mistake, he said evenly: "Don't worry&mdash;there isn't
+any light."</p>
+
+<p>In a stupefied voice she iterated: "No light&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's so confounded' dark," he complained: "I couldn't tell you from
+Eve. So perhaps you'd better run back to your room now...."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away deliberately. Behind him, after a pause of an instant,
+there rose a sound of soft rustling draperies, a swift and hushed patter
+of footsteps on the stairs. A moment or two later a latch clicked very
+gently in the corridor above.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly Matthias switched on a single light, returned to the door,
+unbolted and quickly opened it.</p>
+
+<p>He was not disappointed that this man&oelig;uvre surprised a shadow
+skulking in the penumbra of rose bushes that bordered the steps, the
+shadow of a man who drew back swiftly when he recognized Matthias. This
+last stepped out, turned in the direction of the fugitive shadow, and
+pursuing at leisure, hailed in a quiet and natural tone: "I
+say&mdash;Marbridge!&mdash;that you?"</p>
+
+<p>Immediately he came upon Marbridge at a standstill round the corner of
+the house, awaiting him in a curious posture of antagonism: his feet
+well apart, heavy body inclined a trifle forward, round dark head low
+between his shoulders, hands clenched, upon his face a cloud of anger.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias greeted him suavely: "I was afraid I'd locked you out."
+Ignoring his attitude even as he seemed to ignore the fact that
+Marbridge had changed from evening dress to a suit of dark flannels, he
+added: "Coming in now? It's a bit late."</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge pulled himself together. "Perhaps you're right," he assented
+surlily. But it was with patent effort that he mastered his resentment
+and accompanied Matthias back to the doors.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine night, what?" Matthias filled in the awkward silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Marbridge brusquely. "Too fine," he amended&mdash;"too fine to
+waste in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Sleepless, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Following him in, Matthias refastened the door. "Several of us seem
+troubled with the same indisposition," he observed coolly, swinging to
+face Marbridge. "That's why I bothered to call you in, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge scowled: "Perhaps I don't get you...."</p>
+
+<p>"She has gone back to bed," Matthias explained pleasantly. "I didn't
+like to think of you waiting out there, all alone."</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge choked on a retort, turned and began slowly to mount the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;going? Half a minute."</p>
+
+<p>The man paused, and in silence looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"I just happened to think perhaps you haven't a time-table in your
+room," said Matthias amiably. "There are several early trains tomorrow,
+you know. I fancy the eight-seven would suit you as well as any."</p>
+
+<p>He got no answer other than a grunt. Marbridge resumed his deliberate
+ascent, gained the upper floor, and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night!" Matthias called after him, softly; and turned out the
+light.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+
+<p>Monday afternoon found Mr. Matthias back at his desk and in a tolerably
+unhappy temper, tormented not only by that conscience-stricken sensation
+of secret guilt inseparable from a return to neglected work, but also by
+a less reasonable, in fact inexplicable (to him) feeling of discomfort;
+as though he were a trespasser upon the premises rather than their
+lawful tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had he felt less at home, never more ill at ease in the
+homely solitude of his workshop and lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>As for his work.... He found page 6 of that promising young first act in
+the typewriter carriage, precisely as it had been left on his receipt of
+Helena's peremptory telegram. Removing the sheet, he turned back to the
+first page, and read what had been written with such high and eager
+hope; and looked his dashed bewilderment. Knitting portentous brows,
+sedulously he reconsidered the manuscript at length; then with a groan
+put it aside, ran fingers through his hair till it rose rampant, and sat
+scowling darkly at the wall, groping blindly and vainly for the lost
+ends of that snapped thread of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The first flush of confidence vanished, what he had written owned
+heart-rending incoherence in his understanding.</p>
+
+<p>However (he assured himself) it would come back to him in time. Indeed,
+it was bound to. It wasn't the first time this sort of thing had
+happened to him, nor yet the second: he was no raw novice to cry despair
+over such an everyday set-back.</p>
+
+<p>But what the devil <i>was</i> the matter with him? All the way to Town he
+had been full of his theme, as keen-set for work as a schoolboy for a
+holiday, and hardly less for the well-worn comforts of his abode. And,
+lo! here sat he with his head as empty as his hands, and that misfit
+feeling badgering him to exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively he consulted a pipe and, through its atmosphere, the view
+from his windows: the never-failing, tried and true, enheartening
+monotony of that sun-scorched area of back-yards, grim and unlovely in
+the happiest weather, cat-haunted and melancholy in all its phases....
+But today he essayed vainly to distil from contemplation of it any of
+the rare glamour of yesterday's zeal and faith. It was all gone, all!
+and the erratic mind of him would persist in trailing off after errant
+thoughts of Venetia Tankerville.</p>
+
+<p>Surpassing inconsistency of the human heart! Three hours ago, in her
+company, he had been able to control and to behave himself, to
+anticipate with pleasure the prospect of returning to his desk after
+escorting her from the Pennsylvania to the Grand Central Station and
+putting her aboard the train for Greenwich, whither she was bound for a
+fortnight's visit. But now&mdash;he could think of nothing but Venetia:
+Venetia's eyes, her scarlet lips, her exquisite hands, her hair of
+bronze; her moods and whims, her laughter and her pensiveness, alike
+adorable; Venetia in evening dress on the moon-drenched terrace of
+Tanglewood; Venetia on the tennis-courts, all in white, glorified by
+sunlight, an amazingly spirited, victorious figure; Venetia with her
+hair blown across her eyes, at the wheel of one of Tankerville's racing
+motor-craft; Venetia in the gloom of the Grand Central Station,
+lingering to say good-bye to her betrothed....</p>
+
+<p>It required several days for this stupid gentleman to awaken to the fact
+that the name of his trouble was merely love; that an acknowledged lover
+is a person vastly different from a diffident and distant worshipper;
+that, in short, the muse of the creative fancy is a jealous mistress,
+prone to sulk and deny the light of her countenance to a suitor who
+thinks to share his addresses with another.</p>
+
+<p>But this illuminating discovery did little to allay his discontent:
+progress with his work alone could accomplish that; and the work dragged
+dolefully; he scored only dismal failures in his efforts to produce
+something to satisfy himself. And he had only six months to prove his
+worth. The date of their marriage had been fixed for February; every
+detail of their plans had been worked out under the masterful guidance
+of Helena; even the steamer upon which they were to sail for Egypt had
+been selected and their suite reserved.</p>
+
+<p>In short he positively <i>had</i> to win out within the allotted period of
+grace, who seemed able only to sit there, day in and out, beside his
+typewriter, with idle hands, or, with a vacant mind, to pace his trail
+of torment from door to window: getting nowhere, stripped of every
+vestige of his arduously acquired craftsmanship.... It was maddening.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, doggedly, savagely determined to overcome this
+sentimental handicap, he worked long hours: only to review the outcome
+of his labours with a sinking heart. For all his knowledge of the stage,
+for all that a long career of failures and half-hearted successes had
+taught him, the play that slowly took shape under his modelling lacked
+vitality&mdash;the living fire of drama. Technically he could find no
+disastrous fault with it; but in his soul he knew it to be as
+passionless as a proposition in Euclid.</p>
+
+<p>He was a dreamer, but not even the stuff of dreams could dull the clear
+perceptions of his critical intelligence....</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the superficial routine of work-a-day life went on much as it
+had ever since he had set up shop in the establishment of Madame Duprat.
+His breakfasts were served him in his rooms; for his other meals he
+foraged in neighbouring restaurants. A definite amount of exercise was
+required to keep him in working trim. In short, he was in and out of the
+house several times each day. Inevitably, then, he encountered fellow
+lodgers, either on the stoop or in the hallway; among them, and perhaps
+more often and less adventitiously than in other instances, one wistful
+young woman, shabbily dressed, in whose brown eyes lurked a hesitant
+appeal for recognition. He grew acquainted with the sight of her, but he
+was generally in haste and preoccupied, looked over her head if not
+through her, stepped civilly out of her way and went absently his own,
+and never once dreamed of identifying her with that dreary and damp
+creature of the rain-swept night whose necessity had turned him out of
+his lodgings for a single night.</p>
+
+<p>One day&mdash;the second Thursday following his return to Town&mdash;he found
+himself waiting in the lobby of the Knickerbocker, a trifle early for a
+luncheon engagement with Rideout and his producing manager, Wilbrow: a
+meeting arranged for the purpose of discussing the forthcoming
+production of "The Jade God." The day was seasonably insufferable with
+heat, but there was here a grateful drift of air through open doors and
+windows. Lounging in an arm-chair, he lazily consumed a cigarette and
+reviewed the listless ebb and flow of guests with a desultory interest
+which was presently, suddenly, and rudely quickened.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge, accompanied by a woman, was leaving the eastern dining-room.
+They passed so near to Matthias that by stretching forth his foot he
+could have touched the woman's skirt. But she did not see him; her face
+was averted as she looked up, faintly smiling, to the face of her
+companion. Marbridge, on his part, was attending her with that slightly
+exaggerated attitude of solicitude and devotion which was peculiarly his
+with all women. If he saw Matthias he made no sign. His dark and boyish
+eyes ogled his companion; his tone was pitched low to a key of
+intimacy; he rolled a trifle in his walk, with the insuppressible
+swagger of the amateur of gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>They passed on and out of the hotel; and Matthias saw the
+carriage-porter, at a sign from Marbridge, whistle in a taxicab.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>A moment or so later he looked up to find Marbridge standing over him
+and grinning impudently as he offered a hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, <i>how</i> do you do, Matthias, my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice, by no means subdued, echoed through the lobby and attracted
+curious glances.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias, ignoring the hand, lifted one of his own in a gesture
+deprecatory.</p>
+
+<p>"Softly!" he begged. "Somebody might hear you."</p>
+
+<p>Unabashed, Marbridge dropped into the chair beside him. "How's that? Why
+shouldn't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"They might make the mistake of inferring that I liked you," returned
+Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge, on the point of settling back, sat up with a start. A dull
+colour flushed his plump, dark cheeks. For an instant his hands twitched
+nervously and his full lips tightened on a retort which he presumably
+deemed inadvisable; for mastering his impulse, he sank back again, and
+put a period to the display with a brief but not uneasy chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all there with the acidulated repartee," he observed
+appreciatively. "Some class to your work, my boy!" To which, Matthias
+making no comment, he added with at least some effort toward an
+appearance of sincerity: "Sorry you feel that way about me."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Because I wouldn't act on your suggestion about that time-table, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because of the circumstances which moved me to drop that hint."</p>
+
+<p>A brief silence prefaced Marbridge's next remark:</p>
+
+<p>"But damn it! I couldn't. It would've made talk if I'd pulled out when
+you wanted me to."</p>
+
+<p>"There would have been no occasion for any talk whatever if you'd known
+how to comport yourself as the guest of decent people."</p>
+
+<p>And still Marbridge husbanded his resentment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well!" he said, aggrieved&mdash;"women!"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias threw away his cigarette and prepared to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on a bit," Marbridge checked him. "I want to ask a favour of
+you.... Of course, you're right; I am a bad actor, and all that. I'm
+sorry I forgot myself at Tanglewood&mdash;word of honour, I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" Matthias suggested with an unmoved face.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here...." Marbridge sat up eagerly. "I think you're a mighty good
+sort&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks!"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't blow about that business down there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't very well&mdash;could I?&mdash;with a woman involved!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you did the white thing: I'm not disputing that. But what I'm
+worried about now is whether you're as good a sport as you seem."</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge nodded significantly toward the sidewalk, where he had put his
+late companion into the cab. "About today: you won't find it necessary
+to&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"By God!" Matthias's indignation brimmed over. "If you're so solicitous
+of the woman's good name, why the devil do you allow her to be seen in
+your company?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that," Marbridge persisted, keeping himself well in hand.
+"After all, what's a lunch at the Knick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble is, she's supposed to be at Newport. Majendie doesn't
+know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You just can't help being a blackguard, can you, Marbridge?" Matthias
+enquired curiously. "You ought to have bitten off your tongue before you
+named a name in a public place like this." He rose, meeting with steady
+eyes the vicious glare of the other. "One word more: if I hear of your
+accepting another invitation to Tanglewood, I'll forget to be what you
+call 'a good sport'."</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge jumped up hotly. "Look here!" he said in accents that, though
+guarded, trembled, "I've been mighty patient with your insolence, and
+I'm certainly not going to forget myself here. But if you want to make a
+book on it, I'll lay you any odds you like that I'll be received at
+Tanglewood within the year, and you won't say one single damn' word. Do
+you make me?"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias looked him up and down, smiled quietly, swung on his heel, and
+moved across the lobby to greet Rideout and Wilbrow.</p>
+
+<p>His instinctive inclination to dismiss altogether from his mind a
+subject so distasteful was helped out by a conference which outlasted
+luncheon, involved dinner with the two men of the theatre, and was only
+concluded in Matthias's rooms shortly after midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Wilbrow, considering the play from the point of view of him upon whom
+devolved all responsibility for the manner of its presentation (the
+scene painting alone excepted) and gifted with that intuitive sense <i>du
+théâtre</i> singular to men of his vocation, who very nearly monopolize the
+intelligence concerned with the American stage today&mdash;Wilbrow had
+uncovered a slight, by no means damning, flaw in the construction of the
+third act, and had a remedy to suggest. This, adopted without opposition
+from the playwright, suggested further alterations which Matthias could
+not deny were calculated to strengthen the piece. In consequence, when
+at length they left him, he found himself committed to a virtual
+rewriting of the last two acts entire.</p>
+
+<p>Groaning in resignation, he resolved to accomplish the revision in one
+week of solid, uninterrupted labour, and went to bed, rising the next
+morning to deny himself his correspondence and the newspapers and to
+make arrangements with Madame Duprat to furnish all his meals until his
+task was finished. These matters settled, and his telephone temporarily
+silenced, he began work and, forgetful of the world, plodded faithfully
+on by day and night until late Thursday afternoon, when he drew the
+final page from his typewriter, thrust it with its forerunners into an
+envelope addressed to Rideout, entrusted this last to a messenger, and
+threw himself upon the couch to drop off instantly into profound
+slumbers of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock that night he was awakened and sat up, dazed and blinking
+in a sudden glare of gas-light.</p>
+
+<p>Stupidly, bemused with the slowly settling dust of dreams, he stared,
+incredulous of the company in which he found himself.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Duprat, having shown his callers in and made a light for them,
+was discreetly departing. George Tankerville, whose vigorous methods had
+roused Matthias, stood over him, with a look of deep and sympathetic
+anxiety clouding his round, commonplace, friendly countenance. Wearing a
+dinner jacket together with linen motor-cap and duster, oil-stained
+gauntlets on his hands, with an implacable impatience betrayed in his
+very pose, he cut a figure sufficiently striking instantly to engage
+attention&mdash;the unexpectedness of his call aside. Furthermore, he was
+accompanied by his wife: Helena, in a costume as unconventional as her
+husband's, stood at a little distance, regarding Matthias with much the
+same look of consternation and care.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Scott!" Matthias exclaimed, pulling his wits together. "You are a
+sudden pair of people!" With a shrug and a sour smile he deprecated his
+clothing, which consisted solely of a shirt, linen trousers, and a pair
+of antiquated slippers. "If you'd only given me some warning, I'd've
+tried to dress up to your elegance," he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn your clothes!" Tankerville exploded. He dropped a hand on
+Matthias's shoulder and swung him round to the light. "Tell us you're
+all right&mdash;that's all we want to know!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right?" Matthias looked from one to the other, deeply perplexed.
+"Why, of course I'm all right. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>With a little gasp of relief, Helena dropped into a chair. Tankerville
+removed his hand and leaned against the table, smiling foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, then," he said. "We tried to get you on the telephone
+all afternoon, failed, were afraid you'd done something foolish, and
+took a run in to town to make sure."</p>
+
+<p>"What the dickens are you driving at?" Matthias demanded. "I had my
+telephone cut off the other day because I was working and didn't want to
+be interrupted. I do that frequently. Why not? What's got into you two,
+anyway? Have you gone dotty?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Helena replied with a grim, pale smile; "We're sane enough&mdash;and
+thank Heaven you are! But Venetia&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Venetia!" Matthias cried. "What about Venetia?"</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville avoiding his eye, it devolved upon Helena to respond to
+Matthias's frantic and imperative look.</p>
+
+<p>"Venetia," she said reluctantly&mdash;"Venetia eloped with Marbridge day
+before yesterday&mdash;Tuesday. She came in town in the morning to do some
+shopping, met him and was married to him at the City Hall. They sailed
+on the Mauretania yesterday. The papers didn't get hold of it&mdash;<i>we</i> knew
+nothing!&mdash;till this afternoon. I was afraid she might have written you
+and you&mdash;in despair&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke.</p>
+
+<p>After a little, Matthias turned to a heap of unopened correspondence on
+a side table and ran rapidly through it, examining only the addresses.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said presently, in a level tone: "no&mdash;she didn't trouble to
+write me."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>For several days the girl had haunted the stairs, the hall, and
+door-step, alert to waylay Matthias, before suddenly she became aware
+that it was long since she had either caught a glimpse of him or heard
+the syncopated murmuring of the typewriter behind the closed door to his
+back-parlour.</p>
+
+<p>It required the lapse of another day or two before she found courage to
+question (with laboured indifference) the dilapidated chambermaid who
+sedulously neglected her room for lack of a tip. From this far from
+garrulous source she learned that Matthias had packed up and gone out of
+town very suddenly, without mentioning where he might be addressed
+during his absence.</p>
+
+<p>Alone at the window of her tiny cell, Joan stared down at the
+uninspiring vista of back-yards and disconsolately recapitulated her
+sorry fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>She was now close upon the end of the fortnight's residence in the hall
+bedroom; before long she would have to surrender another four dollars&mdash;a
+week's rent in advance. Of the twenty-two dollars she had received from
+Butch, eight remained in her purse. By dint of adhering to a diet
+largely vegetarian, she had managed without serious discomfort to keep
+within an expenditure of four dollars per week for food. And twice
+Maizie Dean had saved her the cost of an evening meal by inviting her to
+dine out&mdash;at the expense of friends in "the profession." But a
+continuance of such favours was not to be counted upon; and the problem
+of living a fourth week away from home was one serious and
+importunate&mdash;always assuming she should fail to secure work before her
+money ran out. She had no resources in any degree dependable: Butch,
+even if willing, would probably not be able to extend her another loan;
+she possessed nothing worth pawning; and Maizie Dean had taken prompt
+occasion to make it clear that, while she was willing to do anything
+inexpensive for a budding sister <i>artiste</i>, her tolerance would stop
+short of financial aid.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it from me, dear," she announced soon after their first meeting:
+"there ain't no people in the world quicker to slip you a live tip than
+folks in the business; but you gotta make up your mind to pay your own
+keep. They work too hard for their coin to give up any without a howl
+you could hear from here to Hollum; and anyway, everybody's always broke
+in the summer. If you don't land somewhere before your cash runs low,
+you might just's well make up your mind to slip back into the chain-gang
+behind the counter."</p>
+
+<p>She had developed&mdash;or changed&mdash;amazingly in the brief period of her
+public career. Joan experienced difficulty in recognizing in her the
+warm-hearted Irish girl who had initiated her into the duties of
+saleswoman in the stocking department. She had hardened more than
+superficially; she was now as artificial as her make-up, as the hue of
+her ashen hair. The world to her was a desert threaded by "circuits,"
+life an arid waste of "open time" punctuated with oases of "booking";
+and the fountainhead of temporal power was located in the innermost
+sanctum of the United Booking Offices.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting on the edge of the bed, she crossed her knees frankly, sucked
+thoughtfully at a cigarette, and waved an explanatory hand:</p>
+
+<p>"Here's me and Mame, thinking we was all fixed for the nex' six weeks,
+and then somethin' puts a crimp into our bookin' and we're out for Gawd
+knows how long&mdash;till next Fall, sure. That's unless we want to take a
+trip over the meal-ticket circuit&mdash;fillin' in between filums, yunno. And
+if we do that it's goin' to crab us with the Orpheum people, sure; we'd
+never get back into the real money class. So we gotta hold onto what
+little we got until we kin see more time headed our way...."</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, she had been liberal with sage and trustworthy
+counsel as to the best way to go about "breaking into the game." It was
+thanks to her that Joan was now able to enter a theatrical employment
+agency without fear and trembling, and to back her application for
+chorus work with a glib and unblushing statement that she had had
+experience "in summer stock out on the Coast." And to the Sisters Dean,
+likewise, Joan owed her growing acquaintance with the intricate
+geography of the theatrical districts of New York, her ability to
+discriminate between players "resting" and the average run of Broadway
+loungers who cluttered the shady side of that thoroughfare, from
+Twenty-fifth Street north to Forty-seventh, those shimmering summer
+afternoons, and her slowly widening circle of nodding acquaintances
+among the lesser peoples of the vaudeville world.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule she was awake before anybody else in the establishment of
+Madame Duprat; not yet could she slough the habit of early rising. Her
+breakfast she was accustomed to get at the same dairy restaurant which
+had supplied her first meal away from home, and at the same moderate
+expense&mdash;ten cents. By ten o'clock she would be on Broadway, beginning
+her round of the agencies: a courageous, shabby figure in the withering
+sun-blast, patient and indomitable through long hours of waiting in
+crowded anterooms, undiscouraged by the brevity and fruitlessness of the
+interviews with which her persistence was sometimes rewarded, ignoring
+disappointment with the same studied calm with which she had long since
+learned to ignore the advances of loafers of the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Her lunches she would purchase wherever she might happen to be at the
+noon hour&mdash;or go without. By five o'clock at the latest&mdash;frequently much
+earlier&mdash;she would turn back to West Forty-fifth Street. For dinner she
+sought again the establishment that provided her breakfast. Her idle
+hours, both day and evening, she grew accustomed to waste in the double
+bedroom ("second floor front") occupied by the Dancing Deans.</p>
+
+<p>At such times the <i>soi-disant</i> sisters were rarely without company. They
+were lively and agreeable creatures, by no means unattractive, and so
+thoroughly theatric in every effect of manner, speech, gesture, person,
+and thought, that the most case-hardened member of the profession could
+not but feel at home in their company. Consequently, they were popular
+with both sexes of their associates. Seldom did a day pass but they
+entertained several callers, with all of whom they seemed to be on terms
+of the most candid intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>So Joan grew accustomed to being hailed, whenever she opened the door of
+the sisters' room, with a formula that varied little with repetition:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if it <i>ain't</i> the kid! Hello, dearie&mdash;come right in and stop
+awhile. Say, lis'n: I want you to shake hands with my friend, Charlie
+Quard. I guess you know who Charlie is, all right; you must of seen him
+of'n&mdash;played leading juveniles with the Spangler Stock, I dunno how
+long. Charlie, this is my little friend, Miss Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"In the business, I trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' to be before long. Just lookin' round."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wish you luck, Miss Thursday. This is the rottenest season <i>I</i>
+ever struck. There's eighty people for every job that blooms. Why,
+yunno, Maizie, I was talking only yesterday to Percy Williams, and Percy
+said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At about this point Joan would ordinarily be forgotten, and the gossip
+would rattle on through a stifling cloud of cigarette smoke, while she
+sat and listened with grave, if not always comprehending, attention.</p>
+
+<p>And in this manner she met and grew familiar with the personalities of
+an astonishing crew of minor vaudeville folk, jugglers, dancers, patter
+comedians, balladists, coon shouters, performers on weird musical
+instruments, monologists, and an unclassified host of others, including
+a liberal sprinkling of plain actors and actresses, the pendulums of
+whose life alternated between small parts in popular-price stock
+companies and smaller parts in so-called dramatic sketches presented in
+vaudeville houses.</p>
+
+<p>To them all (if they remembered her at all) she was Joan Thursday. The
+translation from Thursby had been almost inevitable. Thursday was by far
+the easier word to remember; Joan soon grew tired of correcting the
+friends of the Dancing Deans; and accepted the change the more readily
+since it provided her with a real "stage name", and so, in some measure,
+identified her with the business to which her every aspiration was
+devoted.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the population of this new world, perhaps the most prominent in
+her eyes, aside from the saltatory sisters, was Mr. Quard; or, to give
+him the fullest benefit of the printed cards which (detaching them
+dexterously from the perforated edges by which they were held in an
+imitation-leather cover) he distributed regardless of expense:</p>
+
+<table width="50%">
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Mr. Chas. Harborough Quard</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+<table width="50%">
+<tr><td align="center">Spangler Stock Co.      </td><td align="center">Variety Artists Club</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">Brooklyn                   </td><td align="center">New York</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>He was a long, rangy animal, robustious, romantical; with a taste in the
+question of personal decoration that created compelling effects. His
+face was large, open, boldly featured, his smile genial, his laugh
+constant and unctuous. Something less than thirty, he had been on the
+stage since childhood; with the training of an actor of the old school,
+he combined immense vitality, an ample, dashing air, enviable
+self-sufficiency, the temperament of a tom-cat.</p>
+
+<p>Any competent stage-director could have made much of him; but in an age
+when managers cast their productions with types who "look" their parts
+in preference to players who can act them, he found few chances to
+demonstrate his ability outside the cheaper stock organizations; for
+the only character he was physically fitted to portray was that of an
+actor.</p>
+
+<p>An ill-starred impulse had led him to resign his latest stock connection
+in order to adventure in vaudeville with a one-act sketch written to his
+order by a hack manufacturer of such trash. Its "try-out week" in a
+provincial town had elicited no offers from other managers, and in the
+meantime his place in the stock company had been filled. At present he
+had a little money saved up, no immediate prospects of an engagement,
+good-humour, no illusions whatever.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no good," he informed Miss May Dean on the occasion of their first
+meeting: "I know where I get off, all right. I can play anything they
+slip me, but these Broadway guys can't see my kind of actor. Give me a
+part I can sink my teeth into, and I'll shake it until the house climbs
+on the seats and howls. But that ain't what they're after, these days."</p>
+
+<p>"The movies'll get you, if you don't watch out," May suggested
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right; and I'd be a knock-out in a film gang, too; I'm just
+their kind. That's what's become of all the old boys who still think
+Fourteenth Street's the Rialto, yunno. But me, I'm too strong for the
+noise an audience makes when they like you, or don't: I'd just as
+lief be hissed as get every hand in the house. Don't believe I could
+stand acting for a one-eyed box that didn't say anything but
+'<i>clickety-click</i>.' I'd rather travel with the Uncle Tommers&mdash;honest'."</p>
+
+<p>He was publicly morose for a moment or two. Then he roused: "Cheer up!
+The worst is yet to come. Maybe I can stick out till next spring, when
+Grady makes his next all-star revival. Wonder what he'll exhume this
+time? If it's only something like 'The Silver King,' or 'East Lynne,' I
+may yet cop out a chance to play to a two-dollar house.... Now, lis'n:
+I'm going down on the stoop and smoke a cigarette while you girls
+colour your maps for artificial light. The eats are on me tonight."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that take in my little friend?" demanded Maizie, with a nod toward
+Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Quard threw Joan a kindly glance: "Sure. Now, get a hustle on."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't," Joan protested. "I'm sorry&mdash;I'd love to&mdash;but I've got
+nothing fit to wear."</p>
+
+<p>"You look pretty good to me as you stand," returned Quard. "Forget it,
+kid, and kick in."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Maizie insisted. "Besides, I'll lend you a hat and a
+fresh fichu; you don't need any coat tonight, it's too rotten warm."</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway," Quard said over his shoulder as he left the room, "we ain't
+booked for Sherry's."</p>
+
+<p>In witness whereof, he introduced the girls to an obscure Italian
+boarding-house in Twenty-seventh Street, the proprietress of which
+admitted them only after examination through a grille in the front door.
+Quard explained to Joan that this precaution was necessary because the
+house served "red ink" with the meals and without benefit of a liquor
+license; hence, only friends could be admitted.</p>
+
+<p>They dined by gas-light in the back-yard, under an awning which served
+the double purpose of excluding observation from the neighbouring
+dwellings and compressing the heated air. Perhaps two dozen tables
+crowded the enclosure. The male guests by common consent removed their
+coats and hung them on nails in the fence. The ladies emulated by
+discarding hats and all conventionalities of a nature to impede free
+expression of their temperaments. Maizie Dean even did without her
+English accent.</p>
+
+<p>The meal was of a sort only to be consumed with impunity by optimists
+and Italians: a heavy soup, and all one could eat of it, spaghetti
+without end, a minute section of lukewarm blotting paper with a remote
+flavour of chicken, a salad, cheese and coffee, a half-bottle of
+atrocious red wine. Joan enjoyed it immensely; it has been said that her
+powers of digestion were exceptional.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Conversation was free between
+tables. Personalities were bandied back and forth amid intense glee.
+Quard, consuming enormous quantities of wine, proved himself a general
+favourite, a leading spirit. After dinner he called for a virulent green
+cordial (which Joan tasted but could not drink) and later returned to
+the wine. Before the end of the evening he became semi-maudlin, and on
+leaving exploited a highly humorous inability to walk a straight line.
+On the corner of Broadway he halted suddenly, bade the three women a
+slurred good night, and without other ceremony swung himself aboard a
+Broadway car.</p>
+
+<p>His rudeness excited no comment from the Dancing Deans. They walked all
+the way home with Joan, unescorted. Joan was surprised to see by the
+clock in the <i>Herald</i> building that it was almost eleven. She thought
+she had never known an evening to pass so quickly and so pleasantly.
+What little wine she had consumed seemed to have affected her not at
+all, beyond rendering her keenly appreciative of this novel experience.</p>
+
+<p>But she suffered the next morning from a slight and, to her,
+inexplicable headache.</p>
+
+<p>It was four or five days later before she saw Quard again. He called
+early in the evening&mdash;but after dinner&mdash;and sat chatting amiably with
+the women for upwards of an hour before the real purpose of his visit
+transpired.</p>
+
+<p>"I was talking to Reinhardt about an idea I got for a sketch, day before
+yesterday," he announced suddenly. "But he wanted fifty cash before he'd
+touch it, and seeing as it was him slipped me that other lemon, I told
+him merrily where he could go and went home and wrote it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't!" Maizie exclaimed admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet your life I did," the actor asseverated with conscious modesty.
+"Why not? It's no great stunt, writing; and besides it's all old junk
+I've done before, only hashed up a new way. All I had to do was to cop
+lines out of shows I've played in&mdash;sure-fire stuff, yunno&mdash;and write in
+names of characters. That's nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, nothin' at all!" commented May Dean from her perch on the
+window-sill. "What's an author, anyway? Eight to five, girls, he's got
+the 'script on him. Get ready to duck."</p>
+
+<p>"Wel-l!" Quard laughed&mdash;"you beat me to it, all right." He produced a
+sheaf of folded papers, smoothing them out upon his knee. "I just
+thought I'd see what you thought of it. If it's any good I'm going to
+read it to Schneider tomorrow and see what he'll offer me."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Schneider?" Maizie asked blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Agent for the film circuits," Quard replied.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean you're thinkin' of fallin' for the four-a-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try anything once; I'm not too proud to earn my bed and board in
+the dull season, anyhow. Besides, this thing would break into the
+Orpheum Circuit only over the dead body of Martin Beck. I'm no Georgie
+Cohan. But it oughta sandwich in between the pictures without anybody
+asking his ten cents back."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got your nerve with you," Maizie commented darkly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him rave," May advised, exhaling cigarette smoke voluminously.
+"Shoot!"</p>
+
+<p>Taking this for consent, Quard rattled the sheets of paper, tilted back
+his chair, and began to read.</p>
+
+<p>His voice was flexible and sonorous; instinctively he declaimed the
+lines, extracting from each its full value. Now and again he lent
+emphasis to a phrase with an eloquent hand. But to Joan the composition
+was quite incoherent. She attended with wonder and a feeling of
+impatience because of her inability to understand what Quard seemed to
+relish with so much enthusiasm. It was, in fact, a worthless farrago of
+nonsense. None the less the two dancers laughed at encouraging
+intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Flattered, Quard rose, removed his coat and began to act the lines,
+striding up and down the narrow space between the foot of the double-bed
+and the marble mantelpiece. The night was hot; a single gas-jet
+illumined the centre of the room; Quard perspired freely. For all that,
+his stenographic acting gave the thing some slight accent of humanity.
+It became a trifle, a mere trifle, more intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>Seated on the window-sill, <i>en profile</i> to the room, her slight, wiry
+body attired sketchily in a kimono and short skirt, May Dean swung her
+legs and stared out into the darkness, an ironic smile hovering round
+her thin lips. Maizie lounged on the bed, tracing a meaningless pattern
+on the counterpane with a thin and rouge-stained forefinger. Joan
+occupied the only chair other than that at the disposal of the actor.
+She was very tired, and her attention wandered, even though Quard
+managed to draw it back now and then by some vivid trick of elocution or
+gesture. Vaguely sensitive to the magnetism of the man, her thoughts
+were occupied more with indefinite speculations about his personality
+than with the semi-plagiaristic and wholly commonplace concoction of
+cheap sentiment and tried-and-true "gags" which he professed to have
+written.</p>
+
+<p>Physically he attracted her. Divested of his coat, his chest swelled
+impressively beneath a pink-striped silk shirt. When he lifted an arm,
+the clinging sleeve moulded itself to an admirable biceps. As he strode
+to and fro the stuff of his thin summer trousers shaped itself to legs
+that might have proved enviable to Sir Willoughby Patterne himself. His
+wide-lipped mouth disclosed an excellent outfit of large, white, strong
+teeth. His jet-black hair curled engagingly at his temples and over his
+generous pink ears. She liked his big, muscular, mobile hands....</p>
+
+<p>She started suddenly, to discover that he had concluded and was facing
+her with an expectant expression, and sat up and smiled faintly, with
+embarrassment, trying to remember what it had all been about.</p>
+
+<p>From the window, May Dean drawled languidly: "Is that the finish?"</p>
+
+<p>Quard waved an arm. "Curtain!" he said; and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"My Gawd!" observed May thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed uncomfortably: "As bad as all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It'd make a wonderful chaser," Maizie commented without lifting her
+eyes from the counterpane.</p>
+
+<p>Quard turned desperately back to Joan. "What do you think of it, Miss
+Thursday?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so too," she said with all the animation she could muster. The
+other women laughed aloud. She flushed and added: "I mean, I think it's
+wonderful. I don't know what a chaser is."</p>
+
+<p>"A chaser, dearie," Maizie explained in tones of acute commiseration,
+"is an act put on in the continuous houses to chase out the
+chair-warmers and make room for more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Quard, shuffling the manuscript, "I don't care if it is a
+chaser, so long as it stakes me to the eats till something else turns
+up."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>On that day when she discovered the disappearance of John Matthias, Joan
+left the house later than had been her wont, and returned earlier, after
+a faint-hearted and abortive attempt to interview the stage-manager of a
+new musical production then being assembled to rehearse against an early
+opening in the Autumn.</p>
+
+<p>The Deans were out. She had no place to go other than to her bare and
+lonely room, and she felt uncommonly hopeless and friendless.
+Subconsciously she had been holding in reserve, as a last hope, an
+appeal to the generosity of Matthias. He was a playwright, an intimate
+of managers: surely he would be able to suggest something, no matter how
+poorly paid or inconspicuous. Now, with the date of his return
+indefinite, she felt unjustly bereft of that last resource.</p>
+
+<p>She spent two weary, wretched hours on her bed, harassed by a singularly
+fresh and clear perception of her unfitness, for the first time made
+conscious that she had actually possessed no reasonable excuse for her
+determination to go on the stage. Her qualifications, which hitherto
+might have been expressed, according to her own estimate, by the
+algebraic X, now assumed a value only to be indicated by a cipher. She
+had a good strong voice, it's true, but no ear whatever for music; she
+didn't "know steps" (Maizie's term, denoting ability for eccentric
+dancing) and of the art of acting she was completely ignorant. In fact,
+her theatrical ambitions had been founded more upon need of money than
+upon any real or fancied passion for the stage. Other girls had done
+likewise and bettered themselves: Joan knew no reason why she should
+fall short of their enviable achievements; but she was innocent of
+dramatic feeling and even of any real yearning for applause. Only her
+looks, of which she was confident, were to be counted upon to carry her
+beyond the stage doors.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of her home, of her mother, her father, Edna and Butch, with
+a dull and temperate regret. Since that first afternoon she had never
+attempted to revisit them, and she felt now no inclination toward
+returning. Still, her thoughts yearned back to the miserable flat as to
+an assured shelter: there, at least, she had been safe from rude weather
+and positive hunger.</p>
+
+<p>As things were with her, another week would find her destitute, but
+there was still the chance that something would turn up within that
+week. She felt almost sure that something would turn up. In this
+incurable optimism resided almost her sole endowment for the career of
+an actress: this, and a certain dogged temper which wouldn't permit her
+to acknowledge defeat until every possible expedient had been
+explored....</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening she heard footsteps on the stairs. To her surprise they
+paused by her door, upon which fell a confident knock. Jumping up from
+her bed in a flurry, she answered to find Quard on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>No one had been farther from her thoughts. She stared, agape and
+speechless.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Miss Thursday!" said the actor genially. "Can I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>He entered, cast a comprehensive glance round the poor little room,
+deposited his hat upon the bed and himself beside it. Leaving the door
+open, and murmuring some inarticulate response, Joan turned back to her
+one chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope I don't intrude," Quard rattled on cheerfully. "The girl told me
+the Deans was out and you in, so I took a chance and said I'd come right
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'm sorry Maizie isn't home," stammered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't." Quard's eyes looked her over with open admiration. "I didn't
+want to see either of 'em, really. What I wanted was a little confab
+with you."</p>
+
+<p>"With <i>me</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Surest thing you know. I wanta talk business. I don't guess you've
+landed anything yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I got a little proposition to make you. Yunno that sketch I wrote
+and you liked so much the other night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I got hold of Schneider yesterday, and read it to him, and he
+says he can get me four or five weeks' booking at least, if I can put it
+over at the try-out. How does that strike you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;I'm glad," Joan faltered, still mystified. "It must be fine to get
+something to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I haven't got it yet; and of course, maybe I won't get it. One of
+the first things you gotta learn in this business is, never spend your
+pay envelope till you got it in your mitt. And in this case, a lot
+depends on you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't get you," Joan returned frankly. "What've I got to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>Quard smiled indulgently, offered her a cigarette, which she refused,
+and lighted one for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can't get you to play the woman's part," he said, spurting twin
+jets of smoke through his nostrils, "it's all up&mdash;unless I can hitch up
+with summonelse just like you."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;you want <i>me</i> to&mdash;to act&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right, the very first time outa the box! Yunno, it's this way with
+these cheap houses: they can't afford to pay much for a turn, even a
+good one&mdash;and this one of ours is going to be about as bum as any act
+that ever broke through: take that from me. So it's up to me to find
+somebody who'll work with me for little enough money to leave something
+for myself, after I've squared up with the agent and stage-hands, and
+all that. You make me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but I haven't any experience&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it: if you had, I couldn't afford you. But you gotta start
+sometime, and it won't do you no harm to get wise to what little I can
+teach you. Now the most I can count on dragging down for this act is
+sixty a week. I want twenty-five of that for myself. Fifteen, more will
+fix the agent and the rest. That leaves twenty for you. It ain't much,
+but it's a long sight better than nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;how do you know I can do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be all right. I know all about acting&mdash;anyway, I know enough to
+show you how to put across anything you'll have to do in this piece. Now
+how about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I'll be glad&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough. Now here: I've had this dope type-written, and here's your
+copy. Let's run through it now, and tonight you can start in learning.
+Tomorrow we'll have a rehearsal, and just as soon's we got our lines
+pat, we'll let Schneider have a pipe at it. Don't worry. It ain't going
+to be hard."</p>
+
+<p>Thus reassured, but still a trifle dubious, Joan accepted a duplicate of
+the manuscript, and composed herself to follow to the best of her
+ability Quard's second reading.</p>
+
+<p>This time he took less pains with his enunciation, scanned the lines
+more rapidly, and frequently interrupted himself in order to explain a
+trick of stage-craft or to detail with genuine gusto some bit of
+business which he counted upon to prove especially telling.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this exposition, Joan acquired a much clearer
+understanding of the nature of the sketch. It concerned two persons
+only: a remarkably successful stage dancer, to be played by Joan; her
+convict husband, fresh from the penitentiary, by Quard. <i>Scene</i>: the
+dressing-room of the dancer. <i>Time</i>: just after the dancer's "turn."
+Joan, discovered "on", informs the audience of her fortunate
+circumstances through the medium of a brief soliloquy. <i>Enter</i> Quard
+(shambling gait, convict pallor, etc.) to inform her that she has been
+living in the lap of luxury during the eight years that he has been
+serving time: "I'm goin' to have my share now!" Comedy business:
+humorously brutal attitude toward wife; slangy description of prison
+life. ("They'll simply eat that up!"&mdash;<i>Quard.</i>) More comedy business
+involving a gratuitous box of property cigars and a cuspidor. Suddenly
+and without shadow of excuse, husband accuses wife of infidelity.
+Indignant denials; wife exhibits portrait of child born after commitment
+of husband, and of whose existence he has heretofore been ignorant: "It
+was for him I fought my way to the top of the ladder: he has <i>your</i>
+eyes!" Incontinently husband experiences change of heart; kisses
+photograph; snuffles into cap crushed between hands; slavers over wife's
+hand; refuses her offer of assistance; announces he will go West to
+"make a <i>man</i> of myself!" before returning to claim his wife and child.
+And the <i>Curtain</i> falls upon him in the act of going out, all broken up.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Quard admitted, "it's bunk stuff, but we can put it across
+all right. I'm going to call it <i>The Convict's Return</i> and bill it as by
+<i>Charles D'Arcy and Company</i>. You'll be the company. I don't want to use
+my name, because it ain't going to do me any good to have it known I've
+taken to this graft, and if I'm lucky no one's going to spot me through
+my make-up."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly apprised by the failing light that the hour was growing late,
+he pocketed the manuscript and rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on out and eat&mdash;business dinner. We'll talk things over, and I'll
+fetch you home early, so's you can start getting up on your lines."</p>
+
+<p>They dined again at the Italian boarding-house. Quard drank but
+sparingly, considerably to the relief of Joan....</p>
+
+<p>She was home by half-past eight, her head buzzing with her efforts to
+remember all he had told her, and sat up till three in the morning,
+conning the inhuman speeches of her part until she had them by rote; no
+very wonderful accomplishment, considering that the sketch was to play
+less than fifteen minutes, and that two-thirds of its lines were to be
+delivered by Quard.</p>
+
+<p>But once with head on pillow, it was not her rôle that she remembered,
+but the man: his coarsely musical tones, his eloquent white hands, the
+overt admiration that shone in his eyes whenever he forgot his sketch
+and remembered momentarily Joan the woman. She felt sure he liked her.
+And she liked him well. Of the merits of his enterprise she knew
+nothing, but he had succeeded in inspiring her with confidence that he
+knew what he was about.</p>
+
+<p>She drifted off into sleep, comforted by the conviction that she had
+found a friend.</p>
+
+<p>By the time of her return from breakfast, the next morning, Quard was
+waiting for her at the lodging-house. He had already arranged with
+Madame Duprat for the use of the front parlour for rehearsals, pending
+its lease to some fortuitous tenant; and here he proceeded to work out
+the physical action of the sketch. His gratitude to Joan for knowing her
+part was almost affecting; he himself was by no means familiar with his
+own and her prompt response to cues he read from manuscript facilitated
+his task considerably. When they adjourned for luncheon he announced
+himself persuaded that they would be ready to "open" within a week.</p>
+
+<p>Within that period Joan learned many things. She was a tractable and
+docile student, keen-set to profit by the scraps of dramatic chicanery
+which formed the major part of Quard's stage intelligence. He himself
+had a very fair memory and had been drilled by more than one competent
+stage-director whose instructions had stuck in his mind, forming a
+valuable addition to his professional equipment. Joan soon learned to
+speak out clearly; to infuse some little semblance of human feeling into
+several of her turgid lines; to suffer herself to be dragged by one
+wrist round the room on her knees, by the romantical convict; to time
+her actions by mental counting; to "feed lines" to her partner in a
+rapid patter through the passages of putative comedy. She learned also
+to answer to "dearie" as to her given name, and to submit to being
+handled in a way she did not like but which, from all that she could
+observe, was considered neither familiar nor objectionable as between
+people of the stage. And she learned, furthermore, that May Dean's
+opinion of the venture was never to be drawn beyond a mildly derisive
+"My Gawd!" while Maizie's ran to the sense that it was all a chance and
+Joan a little fool if she didn't grab it&mdash;and anyway Joan was old enough
+to take care of herself with Charlie Quard or any man living!</p>
+
+<p>And it was Maizie who was responsible for insisting that Joan wheedle an
+advance of ten dollars from Quard, ostensibly toward the purchase of
+costume and make-up. But when this had been successfully negotiated, the
+dancers advised Joan to save it against an emergency, and between them
+provided her with an outfit composed of cast-offs: a black satin
+décolleté bodice, an accordion-pleated short skirt of the period of
+1890, wear-proof silk stockings, a pair of broken-down satin slippers
+with red heels, a japanned tin make-up box with a broken lock, and a
+generous supply of cheap grease-paint and cold cream.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's début occurred within the time-limit set by Quard and before an
+audience of two, not counting a few grinning stage-hands. The two were
+the agent Schneider, and the manager of a small moving-picture house in
+the Twenty-third Street shopping district; on the half-lighted stage of
+which their "try-out" took place at half-past ten of a rainy and
+disheartening morning. The judges sat in the darkened auditorium,
+staring apathetically and chewing large cigars. Joan, though a little
+self-conscious, was not at all nervous, and remembered her lines
+perfectly; better than this, she looked very fetching indeed in her
+makeshift costume. Quard forgot several of his speeches, floundered all
+over the stage, and in a frantic effort to redeem himself clowned his
+part outrageously. Nevertheless they were engaged.</p>
+
+<p>Convinced of their failure, Joan had only succeeded in removing her
+make-up and struggling into her shabby street clothing, when Quard
+knocked at the door of her dressing-room. He had played without make-up,
+and consequently had been able to catch the manager and agent before
+they could escape. Lounging in the doorway, he breathed a spirit of
+congratulation strongly tainted with fumes of whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>"We're on!" he declared exultantly. "What'd I <i>tell</i> you? You needn't
+have changed, because we're going to stick here, and open today. One of
+the turns on this week's bill fell down at the last minute, and so we
+cop this chance to fill in. We go on after the first films&mdash;about a
+quarter of one; and then at four-thirty, seven-thirty, ten-forty-five.
+Now whadda yunno about that?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan gulped and shook her head, her eyes a little misty. For the first
+time she began to perceive that she had counted desperately on success.</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;we're awful' lucky!" she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky nothing! I knew I could get away with it&mdash;always providing I had
+you to play up to."</p>
+
+<p>"Me!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. After we'd fixed things up I took Schneider down to the
+corner and bought him a drink. He said&mdash;I dunno as I ought to tell you
+this, but anyway&mdash;he said the sketch was punk (God knows it is) and
+never would've gone if it hadn't been for you. He said all the women
+would go crazy about you&mdash;you'd got the prettiest shape he'd seen in a
+month of Sundays. Yunno they get most of their afternoon houses from the
+women shoppers down here."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and after a moment added meditatively: "Of course, you can't
+<i>act</i> for shucks."</p>
+
+<p>Joan, looking down, said nothing. Quard dropped a hand intimately across
+her shoulder and infused a caressing note into his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I'm a bad little guesser&mdash;eh, dearie?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan stood motionless for an instant. His hand seemed as if afire, as if
+burning through her shirtwaist the flesh of her shoulder. And she
+resented passionately the intimacy of his tone. Of a sudden she shook
+his hand off and moved a pace or two away.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone," she said sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>Quard started and jerked out a "What?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said, let me alone," she repeated in the same manner, looking him
+steadily in the face.</p>
+
+<p>He coloured darkly, mumbled something indistinguishable, and flashed
+into a short-lived fit of temper.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded hotly.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded,
+hotly.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Nothing," she replied quietly; "only I don't want to be pawed."</p>
+
+<p>"No?" he exclaimed with sarcasm. "Is that straight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's straight&mdash;and so'm I!"</p>
+
+<p>Recollecting himself, Quard attempted to carry off his discomfiture with
+a shrug and a laugh: "Oh, all right. Don't get huffy. I didn't mean
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you didn't, but don't do it again."</p>
+
+<p>He turned out into the corridor; hesitated. "Well&mdash;let it go at that,
+can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she said sulkily: "<i>you</i> let it go at that."</p>
+
+<p>Quard tramped off without saying anything more, and, whatever his
+resentment and disappointment, schooled himself to control them, and met
+her half-way to a reconciliation when the approaching hour of their
+first public appearance brought them together in the wings.</p>
+
+<p>And by this time Joan had been sufficiently diverted by other
+experiences to have regained her normal poise. The dingy, stuffy, and
+evil-smelling dressing-room to which she had been assigned had suffered
+an invasion of three other women: two worn and haggard clog-dancers and
+a matronly ballad-singer who, having donned an excessively soiled but
+showy evening gown, had settled down calmly to her knitting: an
+occupation which had interfered not in the least with her flow of
+animated and not unkindly gossip. Joan gathered that her voice was the
+main support of a small family, consisting of a shiftless husband and
+three children, for the younger of whom the mother was knitting a pair
+of small, pink bootees. These last had immediately enlisted the
+sympathetic interest of the clog-dancers, one of whom boasted of the
+precocity of her only child, a boy of eight living with his grandmother
+in Omaha, while the other told simply of the death of two children, due
+to neglect on the part of those to whom she had been obliged to entrust
+them while on the road....</p>
+
+<p>Joan was the first to reach the entrance to the dingy "kitchen-set"
+which was to figure as a star dressing-room for the purposes of their
+sketch (and, for the purposes of subsequent offerings, as the
+drawing-room of a mansion on Fifth Avenue and the palm room of a
+fashionable hotel). About ten times the size of any dressing-room ever
+constructed, it was still atmospherically cheerless and depressing. She
+looked it over momentarily to make sure that the various simple
+properties were in place, and turned to find Quard approaching. Beneath
+the jaunty assurance which even his hang-dog make-up couldn't wholly
+disguise, she was able to detect traces of some uneasiness and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fact that he had grown a trifle afraid of her.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery impressed her as so absurd that she smiled; and instantly
+the man was himself again. He thrust out a hand, to which with covert
+reluctance she entrusted her own.</p>
+
+<p>"All right now?" he asked cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded: "All right."</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough. Let's see what kind of a house we've got."</p>
+
+<p>He found a peep-hole near the proscenium arch and peered intently
+through it for a moment or two; then beckoned Joan to take his place.
+But she could make but little of what seemed a dark well filled with
+flickering shadows. She turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a handful out there," Quard assured her. "It's too early for much
+of a crowd. No good getting nervous about this bunch."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," she asserted quietly.</p>
+
+<p>And she wasn't; no less to her own surprise than to Quard's, she was
+conscious of no trace of the stage-fright she had heard so much about.
+Indeed a singular feeling of indifference and disappointment oppressed
+her; it was all so unlike what she had looked forward to as the setting
+for her first appearance in public. The dreary and tawdry atmosphere
+behind the scenes of the dilapidated little theatre; the weary and
+subdued accents in which her dressing-room associates had discussed
+their offspring; the <i>tinkle-tankle-tinkle-whang</i> of a painfully
+automatic piano in the orchestra-pit; her own shabby second-hand
+costume; the brutal grotesqueness of Quard's painted countenance at
+close range&mdash;these owned little in common with those anticipations
+roused by the glitter and glamour of that fleshy show on the New York
+Theatre roof garden. She felt cheated; in perspective, even the
+stocking-counter seemed less uninviting....</p>
+
+<p>A muffled outbreak of laughter and brief murmur of applause filtered
+through the curtain. The piano stopped with a crash. Quard nodded and,
+touching her elbow, urged her toward the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Film's finished. Ready and steady, old girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right," she said sullenly. "Don't you worry about me."</p>
+
+<p>She heard the curtain rise with a rustling as of mighty wings penetrated
+by the shrill squeal of an ungreased block; held back a moment; and
+walked on, into a dazzling glare of footlights, conscious of no emotion
+whatever beyond desire to get finished with her part and return to the
+dressing-room. At the designated spot, near the centre of the stage, she
+paused, faced the audience with her trained smile and mouthed the
+opening lines with precisely the proper intonation....</p>
+
+<p>The curtain fell at length amid a few, scattering hand-claps that
+sounded much like faint-hearted firecrackers exploding at a distance.
+Joan rose from the chair in which she had been seated in a posture
+simulating abandonment to tears of joy, and walked soberly off the
+stage&mdash;barely anticipating a few stage-hands, who rushed on to make the
+changes necessary for the next act.</p>
+
+<p>Quard was waiting for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "it didn't go so bad, did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she agreed listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, they didn't throw things at us."</p>
+
+<p>"No." She endeavoured to smile, with indifferent success.</p>
+
+<p>"I got a lot more laughs with that spittoon business than I thought I
+would," he continued thoughtfully as they turned back toward the
+dressing-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Joan made no reply, but when she stopped at the door of her
+dressing-room, Quard added tentatively:</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, it beats clerking in a department store, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>With some hesitation she replied: "I don't know...."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Immediately after her second public appearance in "The Convict's
+Return," Joan removed her make-up, changed to street dress and scurried
+through the rain to a Child's restaurant, not far from the theatre. In
+her excitement she had forgotten lunch and she was now thoroughly
+hungry. But she lingered purposely over the meal and even for some time
+after she had finished, preoccupied with self-dissection.</p>
+
+<p>She was&mdash;at last!&mdash;an actress; but she was none the less singularly
+discontented. In a very brief time she had travelled a great way from
+the Joan Thursby of East Seventy-sixth Street; a world of emotion and
+experience already dissociated them; but she seemed to have profited
+little by the journey. She felt sure that she had started the wrong way
+to prove her ability to act. And foreseeing nothing better than her
+present circumstances, she questioned gravely an inscrutable future.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively she felt uneasy about this intimate, daily relationship
+with Quard. She wasn't afraid of him, but she was a little afraid of
+herself&mdash;because she liked him. Though still she dwelt in secret longing
+upon the image, half real, half fanciful, of a lover gentle and strong
+and fine&mdash;such an one as John Matthias might prove&mdash;for all that,
+Charlie Quard had the power to stir her pulses with a casual look of
+admiration, or with some careless note of tenderness in his accents.</p>
+
+<p>The shower slashed viciously at the restaurant windows. At that hour
+there were few other patrons in the establishment, no lights to relieve
+the dismal greyness of the afternoon, and no sounds other than an
+infrequent clash of crockery, the muffled shuffling of waitresses' feet,
+and their subdued voices, the melancholy and incessant crepitation of
+the downpour.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was sensible to the approach of an exquisite despondency; and in
+alarm, fearing to think too deeply, she arose, ran back to the theatre
+and on impulse paid her way in through the front, to watch the
+flickering phantasmagoria of the flying films and to sit in judgment on
+the antics of her fellows on the variety bill. She was in no hurry to
+return to the dressing-room, with its smells of grease-paint, scented
+powder, ordinary perfumes, sweat, stale cigarette-smoke, gin, and broken
+food. One of the clog-dancers claimed a tubercular tendency, for which
+she asserted gin to be a sovereign specific; but as the day ran on was
+even forgetting, at times, to cough by way of an overture to recourse to
+the bottle. The other, viewing this proceeding with public disfavour,
+had opened up an apparently inexhaustible and hopelessly monotonous
+store of reminiscence of the privations she had endured in consequence
+of "Fanny's weakness." Joan gathered that the two were forever being
+dropped from one bill after another because of Fanny's weakness.</p>
+
+<p>And of this she had five more days to anticipate and to endure....</p>
+
+<p>She crawled back to Forty-fifth Street at half-past eleven, that night,
+so dog-tired that she had neither the heart nor the strength to call on
+the Deans with her good news; this though there were sounds of discreet
+revelry audible through the door of the second-floor front....</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the week wore out without misadventure. Joan walked through her
+part with increasing confidence. Quard left her very much to herself
+when they were off the stage; indeed, he spent no more time in the
+theatre than was absolutely necessary. What he did out of it she did not
+know, but from the frequency with which he played his part with an
+alcoholic breath, she surmised that he was solacing himself in
+conventional manner for his degradation to "the four-a-day."</p>
+
+<p>On the third day the clog-dancers were dispensed with for the reason
+forecast, their place being taken by two female acrobats of a family
+troupe, who lolled about for eleven hours at a stretch in their grimy
+pink tights and had little to say either to Joan or to the matronly lady
+with the robust voice and the knitting. But the change was a wholesome
+one for the dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>The following week <i>Charles D'Arcy &amp; Company</i> played at another house of
+equal unpretentiousness, on the East Side, and the week after that was
+divided between two other theatres. And on Wednesday of the fourth
+week&mdash;they were then in Harlem&mdash;what Joan had vaguely foreseen and hoped
+against, happened.</p>
+
+<p>Quard turned up in the morning with red-rimmed eyes, a flushed face and
+a thick tongue blatantly advertising a night of sleepless drunkenness.
+By sheer force of an admirable physique and the instinct of a trained
+actor, he contrived to play the first turn without mishap, snatched a
+little sleep in his dressing-room, and seemed almost his everyday self
+at the next repetition. But after that he left the theatre to drug his
+jangling nerves with more whiskey; and appeared at the final repetition
+so stupefied that he would not have been permitted to go on the stage
+but for remissness on the part of the stage-manager. Before he had been
+five minutes on view he was hooted off and the curtain was rung down
+amid an uproar.</p>
+
+<p>Once back in her dressing-room (where she was alone, since their act was
+the last on the bill and the rest of the performers had already left the
+theatre) Joan gave way to a semi-hysterical tempest of tears. It was her
+first experience at close quarters with a man in hopeless intoxication,
+and while Quard's surrender was too abject to terrify, she was faint
+with disgust of him and incensed beyond measure with him for having
+subjected her to those terrible five minutes before a howling audience.
+With this, she was poignantly aware that henceforth their offering was
+"cold": by morning Quard's name would be upon the black-list and
+further booking impossible to secure. She might as well count herself
+once more out of work, and now in even less hopeful circumstances than
+when first she had struck out for herself; for then she had been buoyed
+up by the fatuous confidence of complete inexperience, and then she had
+been comparatively affluent in the possession of twenty-two dollars. Now
+she knew how desperately hard was the way she must climb, and she had
+less than five dollars. What little she had been able to set aside out
+of her weekly wage had gone to purchase some sorely needed supplements
+to her meagre wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before she could collect herself enough to dabble her
+swollen eyes with cold water, scrub off her make-up, and change for the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>She stole away presently across an empty and desolate stage and
+through the blind, black alley leading from the stage-door to
+One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street. She felt somewhat relieved and
+comforted by the clean night air and the multitude of lights&mdash;the sense
+of normal life fluent in its accustomed, orderly channels. It seemed, in
+her excited fancy, like escaping from the foul, choking atmosphere of a
+madhouse....</p>
+
+<p>The theatre was near Third Avenue, toward which Joan hurried, meaning to
+board a southbound car and transfer to Forty-second Street. But as she
+neared the corner she checked sharply, and (simple curiosity proving
+stronger than her impulse to fly across the street) went more
+slowly&mdash;only a few yards behind a figure that she knew too well&mdash;a
+swaying figure with weaving feet.</p>
+
+<p>Vastly different from the carefully overdressed, dandified person he had
+been at their first meeting, Quard stumbled on, his hands deep in
+pockets, head low between his shoulders, a straw hat jammed down over
+his eyes. Obviously he was without definite notion of either his
+where-abouts or his destination. Passers-by gave him a wide berth.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed so broken and helpless that pity replaced horror and
+indignation in the heart of the girl. After all, he hadn't been unkind
+to her; but for him she would long since have gone to the wall; and ever
+since their clash on the day of the try-out, he had treated her with a
+studied respect which had pleased her, apprehensive though she had
+remained of a renewal of his advances.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, and quite without premeditation, she darted forward and
+plucked Quard by the sleeve just as he was on the point of staggering
+through the swinging doors of a corner saloon. If her impulse had been
+at all articulate, she would have said that this was, in such extremity,
+the least she could do&mdash;to try to save him from himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie!" she cried. "No, Charlie&mdash;don't be a fool!"</p>
+
+<p>The man halted and, turning, reeled against the door-post. "Wasmasr?" he
+asked thickly. Then recognition stirred in his bemused brain. "Why, it's
+lil Joan Thursh'y...."</p>
+
+<p>"Come away," she insisted nervously. "Don't be a fool. Don't go in
+there. Go home."</p>
+
+<p>He moved his head waggishly. "Thash where 'm goin'&mdash;home&mdash;soon's I brace
+up a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Come away!" Joan repeated sharply, dragging at his cuff. "Do you hear?
+Come away. A walk'll straighten you out better'n anything else."</p>
+
+<p>"Walk, eh?" Quard lifted his chin and lurched away from the door-post.
+"Y' wanna take walk with me? All right"&mdash;indulgently&mdash;"<i>I</i>'ll walk with
+you, lil one, 's far's y' like."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, then!" she persisted. "Hurry&mdash;it's late."</p>
+
+<p>He yielded peaceably, with a sodden chuckle; but as he turned the lights
+of the saloon illumined his face vividly for an instant, and provided
+Joan with a fresh and appalling problem. The man had forgotten to remove
+his make-up; his mouth and jaws were plastered with a coat of
+bluish-grey paint, to suggest a week's growth of beard when viewed
+across footlights; there were wide blue rings round his eyes, and
+splashes of some silvery mixture on his dark hair. His face was a
+burlesque mask, so extravagant that it could not well escape observation
+in any steady light. It was impossible for Joan to be seen publicly with
+him&mdash;in a street-car, for instance. But now that she had taken charge of
+him, she couldn't gain her own consent to abandon the man to the
+potentially fatal whims of his condition. For a moment aghast and
+hesitant, in another she recognized how unavoidable was the necessity of
+adopting the suggestion his stupefied wits had twisted out of her
+pleadings: she would have to walk with him a little way, at least until
+he could recover to some slight extent.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, even had she desired to, she would probably have found it
+difficult to get rid of him just then; for in an attempt to steady
+himself, Quard grasped her arm just above the elbow; and this grip he
+maintained firmly without Joan's daring to resent it openly. She was to
+that extent afraid of his drunkenness, afraid of his uncertain temper.</p>
+
+<p>Submissively, then, she piloted him to the south side of the street,
+where with fewer lighted shop-windows there was consequently less
+publicity, and to Lexington Avenue, turning south and then west through
+the comparative obscurity of One-hundred-and-twenty-fourth Street.
+Neither spoke until they had traversed a considerable distance and
+turned south again on Lenox Avenue. The streets were quiet, peopled with
+few wayfarers; and these few hurried past them with brief, incurious
+glances if not with that blind indifference which is largely
+characteristic of the people of New York. Quard suffered himself to be
+led with a docility as grateful as it had been unexpected. It was
+apparent to the girl that he was making, subconsciously at least, a
+strong effort to control his erratic feet. He retained her arm, however,
+until they were near One-hundred-and-sixteenth Street: when, noticing
+the lights of a corner drug-store, the girl held back.</p>
+
+<p>A swift glance roundabout discovered nobody near.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your handkerchief, Charlie?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's whash? Whashmasser?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say," she repeated impatiently, "where's your handkerchief? Get it
+out and scrub some of that paint off your face. Do you hear? You look
+like a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"'M a fool," Quard admitted gravely, fumbling through his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I won't be seen with you looking like that. Hurry up!"</p>
+
+<p>Her peremptory accents roused him a little. He found his handkerchief
+and began laboriously and ineffectually to smear his face with it, with
+the sole result of spreading the colour instead of removing it. In this
+occupation, he released her arm. With a testy exclamation, Joan snatched
+the handkerchief from him and began to scour his cheeks and jaws,
+heedless whether he liked it or not. To this treatment he resigned
+himself without protest&mdash;with, in fact, almost ludicrous complaisance,
+lowering his head and thrusting it forward as if eager for the
+scrubbing.</p>
+
+<p>For all her willingness she could accomplish little without cold cream.
+When at length she gave it up, his jowls were only a few shades lighter.
+She shrugged with despair, and threw away the greasy handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use," she said. "It just <i>won't</i> come off! You'll have to go as
+you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Whash that? Go where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen, Charlie," she said imperatively: "see that drug-store on
+the corner? You go in there and ask the man to give you something to
+straighten you out."</p>
+
+<p>Quard nodded solemnly, fixed the lighted show-window with a steadfast
+glare, and repeated: "So'thin' to straighten m' out."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it. Go on, now. I'll wait here."</p>
+
+<p>He wagged a playful forefinger at her. "Min' y' do," he mumbled, and
+wandered off.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;Charlie!&mdash;get him to let you wash your face," she called after the
+man.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting in the friendly shadow of a tree, she watched him anxiously
+through the window; saw him turn to the soda-fountain and make his wants
+known to the clerk, who with a nod of comprehension and a smile of
+contempt began at once to juggle bottles and a glass.</p>
+
+<p>Singularly enough, it never occurred to the girl to seize this chance to
+escape. She was now accepting the situation without question or
+resentment. Quard seemed to her little better than an overgrown,
+irresponsible child, requiring no less care. Somebody had to serve him
+instead of his aberrant wits. To leave him to himself would be sheer
+inhumanity.... But she reasoned about his case far less than she felt,
+and for the most part acted in obedience to simple instinct.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him drain a long draught of some whitish, foaming mixture, pay
+and reel out of the store. He had, of course, forgotten (if he had
+heard) her plea to remove the remainder of his make-up. She was angry
+with him on that account, as angry as she might have been with a
+heedless youngster. But she did not let this appear. She moved quickly
+to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," she said quietly, turning southward; "you've got to walk a
+lot more."</p>
+
+<p>He checked, mumbled inarticulately, staring at her with glazed eyes, but
+in the end yielded passively. In silence they continued to
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street, Joan watching him furtively but narrowly.
+The drug worked more slowly than she had hoped. Primarily, in fact, it
+seemed only to thicken the cloud that befogged his wits. But by the time
+they had gained the last-named street, she noticed that he was beginning
+to walk with some little more confidence.</p>
+
+<p>He now seemed quite ignorant of her company&mdash;strode on without a word
+or glance aside. They crossed to Central Park and, entering, began to
+thread a winding path up the wooded rises of its northwestern face.
+Momentarily, now, there was an increasing assurance apparent in the
+movements of the man. He trudged along steadily, but with evident
+effort, like one embarrassed by a heavy weariness. His breathing was
+quick and stertorous.</p>
+
+<p>The park seemed very quiet. Joan wondered at this, until she remembered
+that it must have been nearly midnight when they stopped at the
+drug-store. She had noticed idly that the clerk had interrupted
+preparations to close in order to wait on Quard.</p>
+
+<p>They met nobody afoot, not even a policeman; but here and there, upon
+benches protected by umbrageous foliage, figures were vaguely
+discernible; men and women, a pair to a bench, sitting very near to one
+another when not locked in bold embraces. Joan heard their voices,
+gentle, murmurous, fond. These sights and sounds, the intimations they
+distilled, would at a previous time have moved the girl either to
+derision or to envy; now she felt only a profoundly sympathetic
+compassion, new and strange to her, quite inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>Near the top of the hill they found a bench set in the stark glare of an
+arc-light, and therefore unoccupied. Upon this Quard threw himself as if
+exhausted. He said nothing, seemed wholly oblivious of his companion.
+Immediately he was seated his chin dropped forward on his chest, his hat
+fell off, his arms and legs dangled inertly. He appeared to sink at once
+into impregnable slumber; yet Joan was somehow intuitively aware that he
+wasn't asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She herself was very weary, but she couldn't leave him now, at the mercy
+of any prowling vagabond of the park. Picking up his hat, she sat down
+beside him with it in her lap, glad of the chance to rest. She was at
+once and incongruously not sleepy and thoughtless. Convinced that Quard
+was coming to himself, she was no longer troubled by solicitude; her
+wits wandered in a vast vacuity, sensitive only to dull impressions. She
+felt the immense hush that brooded over the park, a hush that was
+rendered emphatic by the muffled but audible and fast drumming of the
+man's over-stimulated heart, straining its utmost to pump and cleanse
+away the toxic stuff in his blood; the infrequent rumble and grinding of
+a surface-car on Central Park West seemed a little noise in comparison.
+Now and again a long thin line of glimmering car-windows would wind
+snakily round the lofty curve of the Elevated structure at
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street. Beyond, the great bulk of the unfinished
+cathedral on Morningside Heights loomed black against a broken sky of
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>At one time a policeman passed them, strolling lazily, helmet in hand
+while he mopped his brow. His stare was curious for the two silent and
+ill-assorted figures on the bench. Joan returned it with insolent and
+aggressive interest, as if to demand what business it was of his. He
+grinned indulgently, and passed on.</p>
+
+<p>She had lost track of time entirely when Quard stirred, sighed, lifted
+his head and sat up with a gesture of deep despondency. The movement
+roused her from a dull, lethargic, waking dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Feeling better, Charlie?" she asked with assumed lightness.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded and groaned, without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Able to go home yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a minute," he said drearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you live?" she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>He waved a hand indifferently westward. "Over there&mdash;Ninety-sixth
+Street."</p>
+
+<p>"Think you'll be able to walk it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm all right now." He groaned again, and leaned forward, elbow on
+knee, forehead in his hand. "I feel like hell," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"The best thing for you is to get to bed and get some sleep," said the
+girl, stirring restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>He snapped crossly: "Wait a minute, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>She subsided.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you know I've gummed this thing all up, don't you?" he asked at
+length.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I guess you have," she replied, listless.</p>
+
+<p>"And, of course"&mdash;bitterly&mdash;"it's all <i>my</i> fault...."</p>
+
+<p>To this she answered nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sorry," he pursued in a sullen voice. "I guess I can't say
+any more'n that."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed: "I guess it can't be helped."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned back again, explored a pocket, brought to light a roll of
+money, with shaking hands stripped off four bills. "Well, anyway,
+there's your bit."</p>
+
+<p>Taking the bills, she examined them carefully. "That's a whole week,"
+she said, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"All right; it's coming to you."</p>
+
+<p>With neither thanks nor further protest, she put the money away in her
+pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>"You've acted like a brick to me," he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's talk about that now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you should think I don't appreciate it. If it hadn't been
+for you, I don't know when I'd've got home&mdash;chances are, not till
+tomorrow night, anyway. The old woman'd've been half crazy."</p>
+
+<p>Joan kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother," he amended, with a sidelong glance. "There's only the two
+of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the girl rising, "if that's so, you'd better get home to
+her; she won't be any too happy until she sees you&mdash;and not then."</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly he got to his feet. "She thinks I'm a great actor," he
+observed bitterly; "and I'm nothing but a damn' drunken&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Joan interrupted roughly: "Ah, can that bunk: it'll keep till
+tomorrow&mdash;and maybe you'll mean it then."</p>
+
+<p>He subsided into silence, whether offended or penitent she neither knew
+nor cared. She gave him his hat, avoiding his look, and without further
+speech they found their way out to the gate at One-hundred-and-third
+Street. Here Joan paused to await an Eighth Avenue car.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better walk all the way home, even if you don't feel like it,"
+she advised Quard brusquely. "It won't do you any harm, and that mop of
+yours is a sight."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he assented. He moved tentatively a foot or so away,
+checked, turned back. "I suppose this is good-bye&mdash;?" he said, offering
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it is," she agreed without emotion. Barely touching his clammy
+and tremulous fingers, she hastily withdrew her own.</p>
+
+<p>A southbound car was swinging down to them, not a block distant. Quard
+eyed it with morose disfavour.</p>
+
+<p>"At that," he said suddenly, "maybe this wouldn't've happened if you
+hadn't been so stand-offish. I only wanted to be friends&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In her exasperation Joan gave an excellent imitation of Miss May Dean's
+favourite ejaculation. "My Gawd!" she said scornfully&mdash;"if you can't
+think of any better excuse for being a souse than to blame it on me....
+Good <i>night</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The car pulled up for her. She climbed aboard&mdash;left him staring.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't,
+as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had
+no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this
+knowledge with a thrilling heart.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone,
+as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She
+paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a
+typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been
+anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He
+might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of
+him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the
+formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie
+Quard.</p>
+
+<p>But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure
+that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late,
+behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than
+ever before.</p>
+
+<p>It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so
+easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to
+let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of
+her memory.</p>
+
+<p>By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in
+her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness
+of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without
+approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she
+was very anxious to make him realize her again.</p>
+
+<p>But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as
+different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying
+that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The
+Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an
+engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed
+up and departed, all in an afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The
+bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and
+lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of
+social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met
+there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained,
+kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once
+again removed from her reach.</p>
+
+<p>She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully
+through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant
+which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the
+dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls
+and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of
+inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women
+than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and
+predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women....</p>
+
+<p>Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes
+than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience.
+Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the
+broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would
+never go far without influence.</p>
+
+<p>The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe
+to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed,
+did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from
+dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had
+taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and
+a fresh shirtwaist&mdash;both recent purchases.</p>
+
+<p>In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the
+stoop.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes
+were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the
+moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away,
+she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing
+consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran
+lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the
+words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative
+movement to rise was barely perceptible&mdash;a start, a sinking back. So
+that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression
+that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever <i>she</i> might be) and
+lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed
+past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily
+closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then
+promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before
+she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.</p>
+
+<p>He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar
+unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring
+blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Matthias&mdash;" Joan began with a slight, determined nod.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;good evening," he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in
+some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a
+cool smile.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head slowly: "So sorry&mdash;I've got a shocking memory. It'll
+come back to me in a minute. Won't you&mdash;ah&mdash;come in?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday,"
+she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday&mdash;of course! Won't you sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she
+accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue
+to the identity of Joan Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said,
+choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious
+taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to
+go, and you let me stay here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now.
+Joan Thursday&mdash;to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've
+often wondered what became of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before
+this, if that's the case."</p>
+
+<p>"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at
+ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him
+through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full
+justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."</p>
+
+<p>"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that
+could have happened&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor
+me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of
+the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women
+friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the
+same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted
+something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could
+be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously
+interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did
+you? At least, I seem to remember you&mdash;ah&mdash;weren't in very good form,
+financially, that night we met."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the
+next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know
+where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs&mdash;the Deans,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You
+did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any&mdash;the
+Deans didn't&mdash;at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a
+fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's splendid!" said Matthias, affecting an enthusiasm which he
+hardly felt. "And&mdash;you made good&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well"&mdash;she laughed a little consciously&mdash;"I guess I did make good. But
+he didn't. He was a boozer, and they threw us out of the bill last
+Wednesday."</p>
+
+<p>"That's too bad," said Matthias sympathetically. "I see."</p>
+
+<p>And truly he did begin to see: she was out of a job and wanted
+assistance to another. It wasn't the first time&mdash;nor yet merely the
+hundredth&mdash;that he had been approached on a similar errand. People
+seemed to think that&mdash;simply because he wrote plays which, if produced
+at all, scored nothing more than indifferent successes at best!&mdash;he
+could wheedle managers into providing berths for every sorry incompetent
+who caught the footlight fever. It was very annoying. Not that he
+wouldn't be glad to place them all, given time and influence; but he
+had neither.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, watching him closely, saw his face darken, guessed cunningly the
+cause. And suddenly the buoyant assurance which had been hers up to this
+stage in their interview deserted her utterly. No longer enheartened by
+faith in the potency of her good looks and the appeal of her necessity,
+she became again the constrained and timid girl of unreasonable and
+inarticulate demands.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief silence, Matthias looked up with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose you have anything else in sight?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"And you need a job pretty hard&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I do!" she cried. "I haven't hardly any money, and the Deans have
+gone away, and the agencies won't pay any attention to me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," he interrupted. "Half a minute: I'll try to think of
+something."</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously he began to pace the way his feet had worn from door to
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>She started and instinctively lied: "Twenty...."</p>
+
+<p>His surprise was unconcealed: "Really?"</p>
+
+<p>She faltered unconvincing amendment: "Nearly."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," he said briskly. "It comes to the same thing: you're under
+twenty. The stage is no place for girls of your age. Don't you think
+you'd better chuck it&mdash;go home?"</p>
+
+<p>Not trusting herself to speak, she shook her head, her eyes misty with
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, you're too good looking...."</p>
+
+<p>Struck by her unresponsiveness, he paused to glance at her, and noted
+with consternation the glimmer of tears in her lashes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say! Don't cry&mdash;we'll find something for you, never fear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I&mdash;I didn't mean to.... Only, I can't go home,
+and I must find something to do, and you'd been so kind to me, once, I
+thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I will!" he asserted heartily. "I'm only trying to advise you.... I
+don't want to preach about the immorality of the theatre. A sensible
+girl is as safe on the legitimate stage as she would be in a business
+office&mdash;safer! But theatrical work has other effects on one's moral
+fibre, just as disastrous, in a way. It's lazy work; barring rehearsals,
+you won't find yourself driven very hard&mdash;unless ambition drives you,
+and you've got uncommon ability and mean to get to the top. Otherwise,
+you won't have much to do, even if constantly engaged. You'll get
+average small parts; you may be on in one act out of three or four. But
+even if you appear in every act, you'll only be in the theatre three
+hours or so a day. The rest of it you'll waste, nine chances out of ten.
+You'll lie abed late, and once up it won't seem worth while starting
+anything before it's time to show up at the theatre. That's the real
+evil of stage life: to every hard-working actor it turns out a
+hundred&mdash;five hundred&mdash;too lazy even to act their best, of no real use
+either to themselves or to the world."</p>
+
+<p>He checked and laughed in a deprecatory manner. "I didn't mean to
+speechify like this, but I do know what I'm talking about."</p>
+
+<p>Joan had listened, admiring Matthias intensely, but thoroughly sceptical
+of his counsel, to the tenor of which she paid just sufficient heed to
+perceive that doubts admitted would condemn her cause.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to succeed," she said in an earnest voice: "I mean to work hard,
+and I do believe I'll make good, if I ever get a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Then that's settled!" assented Matthias promptly. "The thing to do now
+is to find out what you can do with a chance."</p>
+
+<p>He pawed the litter of papers on the table, and presently brought to
+light a typed manuscript in blue paper covers.</p>
+
+<p>"This," he said, rustling the leaves, "is the first act of a play we're
+going to put on early in September. It goes into rehearsal in a week or
+ten days. There's a small part in the first act&mdash;a stenographer in a law
+office&mdash;a slangy, self-sufficient girl&mdash;you might be able to play. As I
+say, it's small; but it's quite important. It's the fashion nowadays,
+you know, to write pieces with small casts and no parts that aren't
+vital to the action. If you should bungle, it would ruin the first act
+and might kill the play. But I'm willing to try you out at
+rehearsals&mdash;with the distinct understanding that if you don't fit
+precisely you'll be released and somebody else engaged who we're sure
+can play it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all I ask," said the girl. "You&mdash;you're awful' kind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense: I'd rather have you than anyone else I can think of just now,
+because you're pretty, and pretty women help a play a lot; and the man
+who's putting this piece on would rather have you because he'll get you
+for less money than he'd have to pay an actress of experience. So, if
+you make good, all hands will be pleased."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I begin to study now?" Joan asked, offering to take the
+manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessary. Your part will be given you when the first rehearsal is
+called. I merely want to refresh my memory, to see how much you'll have
+to do."</p>
+
+<p>He ran hastily through the pages.</p>
+
+<p>"As I thought: you are on at the opening for about ten minutes, and near
+the end of the act for a two-minute scene. Twelve minutes' work a day
+for, say, twenty-five dollars a week: that isn't bad. You'll be out of
+the theatre by half-past nine every night.... You see the point I've
+been trying to make?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Joan assented. "It seems very easy. I hope I can do it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you can," said Matthias. "But&mdash;how are you going to live
+between now and the opening?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan's eyes were blank.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any money?" he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"A very little," she faltered&mdash;"eighteen dollars&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't get pay for rehearsals; and they'll last three weeks; after
+we open it will be another week before the ghost walks. That's&mdash;say&mdash;six
+weeks you've got to scrape through somehow. Eighteen dollars won't cover
+that. Perhaps you'd better go back to your old job until we start."</p>
+
+<p>"I was fired from the last, and it would take more than two weeks for me
+to find anything like it, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"And there you are!"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias tossed the manuscript back to the table, waved his hands
+eloquently and threw himself into a chair, regarding her with his
+whimsical, semi-apologetic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid," he added after a minute, "I've reached the end of my
+string. Further suggestions will have to come from you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said the girl doubtfully. "Maybe I can think of
+something&mdash;maybe something will turn up."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. Perhaps even I may invent something. If I do, I'll let you
+know, Miss Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>He arose, his manner an invitation to go, to which she couldn't be
+blind.</p>
+
+<p>She got up, moved slowly toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I haven't bothered you much&mdash;put you out of your writing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted insincerely.</p>
+
+<p>"And you have been awful' good to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't think of it that way."</p>
+
+<p>He was holding the door for her, but on the threshold she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless," she ventured half-heartedly&mdash;"unless I could help you some way
+with your work."</p>
+
+<p>"Help me?" he exclaimed, at once amazed and amused.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, copying&mdash;if you ever have any."</p>
+
+<p>"Type-writing?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, with a flush of hope. "When I was a kid&mdash;I mean, before I
+left school&mdash;I studied a while at a business college&mdash;nights, you know.
+They taught me type-writing by the touch system, but I couldn't seem to
+get the hang of shorthand, and so had to give it up and go to work in a
+store."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that <i>is</i> a helpful thought!" he cried, turning back into the room.
+"Wait a minute. There may be something in this. Let me think."</p>
+
+<p>But his deliberation was very brief.</p>
+
+<p>"It can be done!" he announced in another moment. "I have got a lot of
+stuff to be copied. You see, about a month ago I...."</p>
+
+<p>He checked, his eyes clouding without cause apparent to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" he went on with a nervous laugh&mdash;"I didn't feel much like work.
+Guess I must've done too much of it, for a while. Anyway, I found I had
+to quit, and went out of town for a while. Of course I couldn't stop
+work really&mdash;a man can't, if he likes his job&mdash;and so I took some
+manuscripts along and revised them in long-hand. Now they ought to be
+copied&mdash;I'd been thinking of sending them out to some public
+stenographer&mdash;but if you want the work, it's yours."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Never had any of her difficulties been adjusted in a manner more
+satisfactory to Joan. She rose at once from an abyss of discouragement
+to sunlit peaks of happiness. Installing a rented type-writing machine
+in the room adjoining her own (temporarily without a tenant and
+willingly loaned by Madame Duprat) she tapped away industriously from
+early morning till late at night, sedulously transcribing into clean
+type-script the mangled manuscripts given her by Matthias. By no means a
+rapid worker, after renewing acquaintance with the machine she made up
+for slowness by diligence and long hours. And the work interested her:
+she thought the plays magnificent; and a novel which Matthias gave her
+when his stock of old plays ran low she considered superb. It was his
+first and only book, and had not as yet been submitted to the mercies of
+a publisher. But to Joan it was something more than a book; it was a
+revelation, her primal introduction to the world of the intellect. From
+poring over its pages, she grew hungry for more, thrilled by the
+discovery that she could find interest and pleasure in reading.</p>
+
+<p>She began to borrow extensively from the circulation branch of the
+Public Library in Forty-second Street, and to read late into the night,
+defying the prejudices of Madame Duprat on the question of gas
+consumption....</p>
+
+<p>Refusing an offer of public stenographer rates, she had asked for ten
+dollars a week. This Matthias paid her, under protest that the work was
+worth more to him. The arrangement was, however, a fortunate one; for
+though at first Joan earned more than she received, after rehearsals of
+"The Jade God" had started she was seldom able to give more than two or
+three hours a day to the copying.</p>
+
+<p>These rehearsals furnished her with impressions vastly different from
+those garnered through her experience with "The Convict's Return."</p>
+
+<p>The company assembled for the first time on a mid-August morning, in the
+author's study. There were present eight men, aside from Matthias and
+the manager, his producing director and his press agent, and four women,
+including Joan. After brief introductions, the gathering disposed itself
+to attention, and Matthias, rocking nervously in his revolving
+desk-chair, read the play aloud. To most of those present the work was
+new and unfamiliar; they listened with intense interest, keenly alive to
+the possibilities of the various parts for which they had been cast.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan was not of these; she had typed all the parts and knew not only
+the story but her own slight though significant rôle (as she would have
+said) "backwards." Sitting in a shadowed corner, she devoted herself to
+studying those with whom her lines were to be cast.</p>
+
+<p>The leading lady was an actress who, after several attempts to star at
+the head of her own company, was reduced to playing second to the young
+and handsome matinée hero of several seasons ago, planning to return in
+triumph to the stage after an unsuccessful effort to retire from it into
+the contented estate of well-financed matrimony. Through their widely
+published photographs Joan was familiar with the features of both.</p>
+
+<p>She thought the star charming; good-humoured, good-looking,
+well-mannered, slight and graceful, he had all the assurance of a
+Charlie Quard and none of his vain swagger.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan decided on sight to detest the leading woman. She was a pale,
+ashen blonde, with a skin as colourless as snow, level dark brows,
+sharp blue eyes set close to the bridge of her pointed nose, and a
+thin-lipped, violent mouth. The first impression she conveyed was one of
+dangerous temper; the second, that she had been happy in her choice of
+photographers. Throughout the reading, she sat negligently on the arm of
+a chair, swinging a foot and staring out of the window with an air of
+immitigable disdain.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other women, one was a grey-haired, sweet-faced lady of perhaps
+fifty years, whose eyes softened winningly whenever they encountered
+Joan's, the other an unlovely creature of middle-age and long stage
+experience, who seemed to have no interest in life aside from her
+unfolding part. The remainder of the company, of a caste hall-marked by
+the theatre, offered nothing novel to Joan's eyes&mdash;aside from a fat,
+red-faced lump of a youth who was to act a thick-witted, sentimental
+office-boy, in love with the stenographer (Joan). This one she decided
+to tolerate on suspicion; he resembled a type which she had found
+difficult, apt to impertinence and annoying attentions.</p>
+
+<p>Rideout, the man financially responsible for the production, was an
+English actor of reputation and considerable ability. Carrying his
+stoutish body with an ease that almost suggested slenderness: with his
+plump, blowsy face, twinkling eyes and fat nose of a comedian: the
+insuppressible staginess of his gesture would have betrayed his calling
+anywhere. Now and again Joan surprised an anxious expression lurking
+beneath his humorous smile; she had inferred from some casual remark
+made by Matthias that Rideout was staking all he possessed on the
+success of this play.</p>
+
+<p>The producing manager, Wilbrow, was a short, lean-bodied American, with
+lantern jaws, large intent eyes, and a nervous frown. Joan was impressed
+with the aloof pleasantness of his manner: she was to know him better.</p>
+
+<p>The reading over, the company was dismissed with instructions to report
+at ten the next morning at an obscure dance-hall masquerading under the
+name of an opera house, situate in the immediate neighbourhood, between
+Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several lingered to affix signatures to
+contracts&mdash;Joan of their number; and when these were gone, there
+remained in conference the star, the leading woman, Matthias, Rideout,
+and Wilbrow.</p>
+
+<p>Going out to dinner that night, Joan passed Matthias bidding good-bye to
+the leading woman in the hallway. He seemed tired and wore a harassed
+look; and later, when the girl delivered the outcome of her day's
+copying, he had a manner new to her, of weary brusqueness.</p>
+
+<p>The first rehearsal proper was held in a stuffy and ill-ventilated room,
+so dark that it was necessary to use the electric lights even at high
+noon. The day was fortunately cool, otherwise the place had been
+insufferable. There was little attempt at acting; the company devoted
+itself, under Wilbrow's patient direction, to blocking in the action.
+They had no stage&mdash;simply that bare, four-square room. Half a dozen
+chairs and a few long benches were dragged about to indicate entrances
+and properties. Nobody pretended to know his part&mdash;not even Joan, who
+knew hers perfectly. The example of the others, who merely mumbled from
+the manuscripts in their hands, made the girl fear to betray
+amateurishness by discovering too great an initial familiarity with her
+lines. So she, too, carried her "'script," and read from it. When not
+thus engaged, she sat watching and noting down what was going on with
+eager attention.</p>
+
+<p>But she took away with her a depressing sense of having engaged in
+something formless and incoherent.</p>
+
+<p>But succeeding rehearsals&mdash;beginning with the second&mdash;corrected this
+misapprehension. That afternoon developed Wilbrow suddenly into a
+mild-mannered, semi-apologetic, and humorous tyrant. He discovered an
+individual comprehension of what was required for the right development
+of the play, and an invincible determination to get it. He never lost
+either temper or patience, neither swore nor lifted his voice; but
+having indicated his desire, wrought patiently with its subject,
+sometimes for as long as an hour, until he had succeeded in satisfying
+it. He worked coatless, with his long black hair straggling down over
+his forehead and across his glasses: an incredibly thin, energetic, and
+efficient figure, dominated by a penetrating and masterful intelligence.
+Not infrequently, taking the typed part from the hands of one of his
+puppets, he would himself give a vivid sketch of its requirements
+through the medium of intonation, gesture, and action. And to Joan,
+at least, the effects he created by these means were as striking
+in the feminine rôles as in the masculine. Utterly devoid of
+self-consciousness, he had the faculty of seeming for the moment
+actually to be what he sought to suggest: one forgot the man, saw only
+what he had in mind.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing that surprised the girl more than a little was the
+docility with which her associates submitted to his dictation and even
+invited it. She had heard of actors "creating" rôles; but in this
+company no one but the producer seemed to be creating anything. The
+others came to rehearsals with minds so open that they seemed vacuous;
+not one, whether the star, his leading woman, or any of their supporting
+players, indicated the least comprehension of what they were required to
+portray or the slightest symptom of original conception. What Wilbrow
+told them and then showed them how to do, they performed with varying
+degrees of success. So that Joan at last came to believe the best actors
+those most susceptible to domination, least capable of independent
+thought. As he gradually became acquainted with his lines and the
+business Wilbrow mapped out for him, the star began to give more
+compelling impersonations at each rehearsal; but to the girl he never
+seemed more than a carbon filament of a man, burning bright with
+incandescence only when impregnated with the fluid genius of a superior
+mentality. So, likewise, with the leading woman....</p>
+
+<p>As for herself, Joan was hardly happy in her endeavour to please. Having
+unwisely formed her own premature conception of her part, and lacking
+totally the technical ability to express it, she ran constantly afoul of
+Wilbrow's notions. She was called upon first to erase her own
+personality, next to forget the personality which she had meant to
+delineate, and finally to substitute for both these one which Wilbrow
+alone seemed able to see and understand. She strove patiently and
+without complaint, but in a stupefying welter of confusion. While on the
+pretended stage she was constantly terrified by Wilbrow's mild but
+predominant regard, which rendered her only awkward, witless, and
+ill-at-ease. Then, too, her attempts to imitate his brilliant and
+colourful acting were received with amusement, not always wholly silent,
+by the rest of the company. She seemed quite unable to follow his lead;
+and toward the end of the first week, throughout the whole of which (she
+was aware from the calm resignation of Wilbrow's attitude) she had
+improved not one whit, she began to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily
+excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this
+extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of
+earning her weekly stipend.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed,
+there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow,
+Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a
+change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the
+release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now
+from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought
+and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the
+balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she
+was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals
+would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the
+stage of a Broadway theatre.</p>
+
+<p>She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair.
+Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout
+was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could
+purchase&mdash;and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably
+protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal
+now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in
+a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she
+earned as typist&mdash;and she had been engaged with the understanding,
+implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to
+occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of
+"The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The
+admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself
+out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of
+propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And
+from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow
+upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached
+interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as
+a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His
+thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she
+could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very
+refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested
+him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of
+a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She
+worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content
+with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through
+his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would
+seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work
+and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress
+of recognized ability!...</p>
+
+<p>It was a truism in her conception of life that the estate of actress was
+a loadstone for the hearts of men.</p>
+
+<p>If success were to be denied her!...</p>
+
+<p>In her bedroom, behind a locked door, she hurried to her pillow and to
+tears. She had known many an hour darkened by the fugitive despairs of
+youth; but never until this day had she been so despondently sorry for
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Later, the banal ticking of her tin alarm-clock penetrated her
+consciousness, and she remembered that she had work to do&mdash;to be
+finished before evening, if her promise to Matthias were to be kept. She
+rose, splashed face and eyes with cold water, and went to her typewriter
+in the adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>She had really very little to do in order to complete her task&mdash;only a
+few pages of scored and interlined manuscript to reduce to clean copy;
+but her mind was not with her work. Time and again she found herself
+sitting with idle hands, thoughts far errant; and now and then she had
+to dry her eyes before she could proceed: so stubbornly did she cling to
+the sorry indulgence of self-pity! Once, even, she was so overcome by
+contemplation of her sufferings that she bowed her head upon the table
+where the manuscript lay, and wept without restraint for several
+minutes&mdash;without restraint and, toward the last, with kindling interest
+in the discovery that her tears were bedewing a freshly typed page.</p>
+
+<p>If Matthias were to notice, would he understand? And, understanding,
+what would he think?...</p>
+
+<p>With shame-faced reluctance she destroyed the blotched page and typed it
+anew.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark before she finished; and she was glad of this when she
+gathered up the manuscript to take to her employer. With no light in his
+room other than that of the reading-lamp with the green shade, her
+stained and flushed cheeks and swollen eyes would escape detection. It
+was not that she wouldn't have welcomed sympathetic interest, but a
+glance in the mirror showed her she had wept too unrestrainedly not to
+have depreciated the chiefest asset of her charm&mdash;her prettiness.</p>
+
+<p>However, she could not well avoid the meeting: the work must be
+delivered; but if she were lucky she would find him in one of his
+frequent moods of abstraction, and their interview need only be of the
+briefest. Nevertheless, she would have sent the work to him by the
+chambermaid if her week's wage had not been due that night.</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment, listening at the door to the back-parlour; but
+there was no sound of voices within; and reassured, she knocked.</p>
+
+<p>His response&mdash;"Come in!"&mdash;followed with unexpected promptness. She
+obeyed, though with misgivings amply justified as soon as she found
+herself in the room, which was for once well-lighted, two gas-jets on
+the chandelier supplementing the green-shaded lamp.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias was bending over a kit-bag on the couch, hastily packing enough
+clothing to tide him over Sunday. He threw her an indifferent glance and
+greeting over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Miss Thursday! I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten
+me. I'm going to run down to Port Madison until Monday morning&mdash;last
+chance I'll have for a day in the country for some time, probably.
+Chances are, Wilbrow will keep us at work next Sunday. Got that 'script
+all ready?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, depositing it on the table, murmured an affirmative in a voice
+uncontrollably unsteady. Before entering she had been quite sure of her
+ability to carry off the short interview without betraying her harrowed
+emotions. But to find the man about whom they centred packing to leave
+town&mdash;to leave her!&mdash;added the final touch of misery to her mood. And
+the inflection of her response could not have failed to strike oddly on
+his hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Uttering a wondering "<i>Hello!</i>" he straightened up and swung round to
+look at her. And a glance sufficed: his smile faded, was replaced by a
+pucker of sympathy between his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan averted her face. "N-nothing," she faltered. Her lip trembled, her
+eyes filled anew. She dabbed at them with a wadded handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias hesitated. He drew down the corners of his mouth, elevated his
+brows, and scratched a temple slowly with a meditative forefinger. Then
+he nodded sharply and, crossing to the door, closed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about it," he said, coming back to the girl. "Things not going
+to suit you, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, looking away. "I&mdash;I&mdash;!" she stammered&mdash;"<i>I</i> can't
+act!"</p>
+
+<p>"O nonsense!" he interrupted with kindly impatience. "You mustn't get
+discouraged so easily. Naturally it comes hard at first, but you'll
+catch on. Everything of this sort takes time. I was saying the same
+thing to Wilbrow today."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she mumbled, gulping&mdash;"I&mdash;I know. I was watching you. H-he and
+Mr. Rideout wanted to fire me, didn't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"What? Oh, no, no!" Matthias lied unconvincingly. "They&mdash;they were just
+wondering.... I assured them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you hadn't any right to!" the girl broke in passionately. "I can't
+act and&mdash;and I know it, and you know it, as well as they do. I can't&mdash;I
+just can't! It's no use.... I'm no good...."</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden she flopped into a chair, rested her head on arms folded on
+the table, and sobbed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias shook his head and (since she could not see him) permitted
+himself a gesture of impotent exasperation. This was really the devil of
+a note! Women were incomprehensible: you couldn't bank on 'em, ever.
+Here was he preparing to catch a train, and not too much time at
+that....</p>
+
+<p>But a glance at the clock reassured him slightly; he had still a little
+leeway. All the same, he didn't much relish the prospect of being
+compelled to invest his spare minutes in attempting to comfort a silly,
+emotional girl. And, besides, somebody in the hallway might hear her
+sobbing....</p>
+
+<p>This last consideration took him somewhat reluctantly to her side.
+"There, there!" he pleaded, intensely irritated by that feeling of
+helplessness which always afflicts man in the presence of a weeping
+woman, whether or not he has the right to comfort her. "There&mdash;don't
+cry, please, Miss&mdash;ah&mdash;Thursday. You're all right&mdash;really, you are.
+You&mdash;you're&mdash;ah&mdash;doing all this quite needlessly, I give you my word."</p>
+
+<p>He might as well have attempted to stem a mountain torrent.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could make you understand this is all quite unnecessary," he
+groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'm so mis'able!" came a wail from the huddled figure.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably&mdash;"awfully sorry, truly. But you&mdash;I'm
+not afraid you won't make good, and I don't intend to let you go until
+you've had every chance in the world. That's a promise."</p>
+
+<p>He ventured to give her quaking shoulder a light, encouraging pat or
+two, and rested his hand upon the corner of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now&mdash;brace up&mdash;please. I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a strangled sob Joan sat up, caught his hand and carried it to her
+lips. Before he could recover from his astonishment it was damp with her
+tears and kisses.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he snatched it away.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you're so good to me!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias, horrified, stepped back a pace or two, as if to insure himself
+against a repetition of her offence, and quite mechanically dried his
+hand with a handkerchief. And then, in a flash, he lost his temper.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil do you mean by doing that to me?" he demanded harshly.
+"Look here&mdash;you stop this nonsense. I won't have it. I&mdash;why&mdash;it's
+outrageous! What right have you got to&mdash;to do anything like that?"</p>
+
+<p>The shock of his anger brought the girl to her senses. Her tears ceased
+in an instant, as if automatically. She rose, mopping her face with her
+handkerchief, swallowed one last sob, and moved sullenly toward the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I&mdash;you've been very kind to me&mdash;I forgot
+myself. I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well ..." he said grudgingly, in his irritation. "But don't let it
+happen again."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no chance of that," the girl retorted with a brief-lived flash
+of spirit. "Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," he returned.</p>
+
+<p>She was gone before he recovered; and then compunction smote him, and he
+followed her as far as the hallway.</p>
+
+<p>In the half-light of the flickering gas-jet, he saw her only as a shadow
+slowly mounting the staircase. And a glance toward the front door
+discovered indistinct shapes of lodgers on the stoop.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursday!" he called in a guarded voice.</p>
+
+<p>She heard, hesitated a single instant, then with quickened steps resumed
+the ascent.</p>
+
+<p>He called once again, but she refused to listen, and he returned to his
+study in a state of insensate rage; which, however, had this time
+himself for its sole object&mdash;Joan's transgression quite lost sight of in
+remorse for his brutality. He could not remember ever having spoken to
+any woman in such wise: no man had any right to speak to any woman in
+such a manner, for any cause, however exasperating.</p>
+
+<p>Tremendously disgusted with himself, and ashamed, he tramped the floor
+so long, trying to quiet his conscience, and made so many futile
+attempts to apologize to the girl by word of hand&mdash;one and all either
+too abject or too constrained&mdash;that he had lost his train before he
+produced the lame and halting effort with which he was at length fain to
+be content.</p>
+
+<p>A later train was bearing him under the East River to Long Island when
+Joan read his message.</p>
+
+<p>A servant had taken it to the girl's room and, knocking without
+receiving an answer, concluded that Joan was out and slipped it under
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>When the descending footsteps were no longer audible, Joan rose from the
+bed, lighted the gas, and with blurred vision deciphered the lines:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Miss Thursday</span>:&mdash;Please forgive me for my unmannerly
+exhibition of temper. I regret exceedingly my inability to make
+you understand how sorry I am to have hurt your feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"And do please understand that there is no grave
+dissatisfaction with your work at rehearsals. Remember that you
+have two weeks more in which to show what you can do.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall hope that you are not too deeply offended to overlook
+my loss of temper and to continue typing my book; if possible
+I'd like to have another chapter by Monday night.</p>
+
+<p>"Sincerely yours,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">John Matthias</span>."</p>
+
+<p>"P. S.&mdash;I enclose&mdash;what I'd completely forgotten&mdash;the regular
+weekly amount&mdash;$10."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>She fell asleep, at length, with this note crushed between her pillow
+and her cheek.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Her work proved invaluable distraction for the greater part of that long
+and lonely Sunday. When not at her typewriter she was tormented by
+alternate fits of burning chagrin and of equally ardent gratitude toward
+Matthias. Had this last been in town and chanced to meet her, she must
+either have quitted him definitely or have betrayed her passion
+unmistakably even to the purblind eyes of a dreaming dramatist. As it
+was, the girl had time to calm down, to recognize at once his
+disinterestedness and her own folly. If her infatuation did but deepen
+in contemplation of his generosity, she none the less regained poise
+before bedtime and with it her determination to succeed in spite of her
+stupidity, if only to justify his kindness.</p>
+
+<p>But the morning that took her back to rehearsals found her in a mood of
+dire misgivings. She would have forfeited much&mdash;anything other than
+their further association&mdash;to have been spared the impending encounter
+with Matthias. And although the author was not present when she reached
+the theatre, her embarrassment hampered her to a degree that rendered
+her attempts to act more than ever farcical.</p>
+
+<p>Wilbrow, seated in a chair on the "apron" of the stage, his back to the
+lifeless footlights, did not interrupt her once; but despair was patent
+in his attitude, and despair informed his eyes, and not long after her
+scene was finished the producer for the first time betrayed indications
+of temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Blaine!" he said abruptly in a chilling voice to one of the minor
+actors&mdash;"don't you <i>know</i> there's a window over there&mdash;up left centre?"</p>
+
+<p>The player thus addressed, who had been idling purposelessly near the
+centre of the stage, looked up with a face of blank surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," he said&mdash;"sure I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's something, at least!" Wilbrow commented acidly. "I'm glad you
+remember it. If I'm not mistaken, I've reminded you of that window twice
+every day since Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed the other with a look of painful concentration; "I guess
+that's right, too."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you can't remember what I've told you just as often&mdash;that I
+want you to be up there, looking out of the window, when <i>Sylvia</i>
+enters!"</p>
+
+<p>The actor turned out expostulatory palms. "But, Mr. Wilbrow, what for? I
+don't see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," the producer interrupted incisively, "the stage directions
+indicate it; because the significance of this scene requires you
+to be there, looking out, unaware of <i>Sylvia's</i> entrance; because
+you look better there; because it dresses the stage; because you're
+in the way anywhere else; because I&mdash;God help me!&mdash;because
+<i>I&mdash;want&mdash;you&mdash;to&mdash;be&mdash;there</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>A smothered giggle broke from a group of players technically off-stage.
+Wilbrow glared icily toward that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," Blaine agreed intelligently. "But how do I <i>get</i> there?"</p>
+
+<p>The front legs of Wilbrow's chair rapped the boards smartly as he jumped
+up. In silence, he grasped Blaine's arm and with a slightly exaggerated
+melodramatic stride propelled him to the indicated spot, released him,
+and stood back.</p>
+
+<p>"Walk!" he announced with an inimitable gesture of tolerant contempt;
+and went back to his chair. Not a line of his face had changed. He sat
+down, nodded to the leading woman.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Mary," he said; and to another actor: "Now, the cue for
+<i>Sylvia</i>, please!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shivered a little.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias did not come in until after the girl had finished her part in
+the afternoon rehearsal. She caught sight of him in the darkened
+auditorium just as she went off; and hurried from the house in tremulous
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>But a meeting was inevitable; and that evening, just before the dinner
+hour, found her reluctantly knuckling the door of the back-parlour. The
+voice of Matthias bade her enter, and she drew upon all her scant store
+of courage as she turned the knob. To her immense relief he was not
+alone. Rideout and Moran, the scene painter, were in consultation with
+Matthias over two small model stages set with painted pasteboard
+scenery.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias greeted her with a preoccupied smile and nod.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good evening, Miss Thursday. More 'script, eh? Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>Silently Joan gave him the manuscript and left the room. But the door
+had no sooner closed than it was re-opened and again closed. She turned
+to face this dreaded crisis.</p>
+
+<p>His smile was friendly and pleasant if a trace uncertain. He made as if
+to offer his hand, and thought better of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Thursday.... I sent you a note...."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, timid eyes avoiding his.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I forgiven?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;if you'll forgive me&mdash;" she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Then that's all right!" he cried heartily. "I'm glad," he added with
+unquestionable sincerity&mdash;"and sorry I was such a brute. I ought to have
+understood what a strain you'd been under. Shall we say no more about
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded again: "Please...."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" He offered his hand frankly, subjected hers to a firm, cool
+pressure, and moved back to his study door. "Good night."</p>
+
+<p>She whispered her response, and ran upstairs to her room, almost beside
+herself with delight.</p>
+
+<p>It was all right!</p>
+
+<p>Best of all, the advances had come from him; he it was who had sued for
+pardon where the fault was hers&mdash;clear proof that he thought enough of
+her to wish to retain her friendship!</p>
+
+<p>With a glad and comforted heart she settled down to attack anew the
+vexatious problem of her rôle in "The Jade God."</p>
+
+<p>But for all her worry and good will, the next morning's rehearsal of her
+scenes passed off in the same terrible silence as had marked Monday's.
+And in the same afternoon the storm broke.</p>
+
+<p>After plodding through her first scene, Joan was about to go off when
+Wilbrow called her.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursday," he said quietly, "one of three things has got to
+happen&mdash;<i>now</i>: either you'll follow my instructions, or you'll quit, or
+I will. I've told you what I want so many times that I'm tired repeating
+myself. Now we're going to go over that scene again and again, if it
+takes all afternoon to get what I'm after. <i>But</i>, before we start, I
+will ask you to bear one thing in mind: this isn't an ingénue part;
+there's no excuse for acting it like a petulant school-girl. Even pretty
+stenographers are business-like in real life&mdash;sometimes&mdash;and we're
+trying to secure some semblance of real life in this production. In
+other words, I want you to forget Billie Burke and try to act like a
+human being who's a little sore on her job and her employer, but not
+sore enough to chuck it just yet. Now, if you please&mdash;begin right at the
+beginning."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Joan stood hesitant, on the verge of refusing. There
+seemed to be no satisfying this man: he either didn't or wouldn't
+understand; she tried desperately to please him&mdash;and her sole reward was
+to be held up to the derision of the entire company! It was
+intolerable! And of a sudden she hated Wilbrow with every atom of her
+being. But ... if she were to talk back or refuse to go on, Matthias
+would be forfeited from her life.</p>
+
+<p>She choked down her chagrin, resisted the temptation to wither Wilbrow
+with a glare, and sulkily resumed her place in the chair beside another
+chair that was politely presumed to be her typewriter desk.</p>
+
+<p>At once the fat boy whom she detested crossed the indefinite line
+dividing the scene from "off-stage," and leering insolently, spoke the
+opening line of the play. Seething with indignation, the girl looked up
+and in cutting accents shot her reply at him. She was pleased to
+surprise a look of dumb amazement in his eyes. At all events, she had
+succeeded in letting <i>him</i> know just how she felt toward him! And this
+success inspired her to further efforts. She rattled through the
+remainder of the scene with the manner of a youthful termagant.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished, Wilbrow said nothing beyond: "Again, please."</p>
+
+<p>The demand served only to deepen her resentment, and the second
+repetition differed not materially from the first.</p>
+
+<p>Ceasing to speak, she flounced away, but Wilbrow's voice brought her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, Miss Thursday," he said mildly&mdash;"very good indeed. But
+why&mdash;in the name of Mike!&mdash;if you <i>could</i> do it&mdash;why wouldn't you until
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," Joan stammered&mdash;"because&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>But she didn't dare say what she wished to, and checked her tongue in a
+fit of sulks more eloquent than any words she could have found.</p>
+
+<p>Wilbrow waited an instant, then laughed quite cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"The usual reason, eh? I might have guessed you had a sure-'nough one
+concealed about you.... That's all for today. Tomorrow morning at nine."</p>
+
+<p>Privately pondering this experience, Joan surprised its secret, and
+drew from it a conclusion that was to have an important influence upon
+her professional future: in order to act convincingly, she must herself
+feel the emotions accredited to her part. As applied to her individual
+temperament, at that stage of its development, this rule had all the
+inflexibility of an axiom. Others might&mdash;as others do&mdash;act in obedience
+to the admonitions of their intelligence: Joan could at that stage act
+only according to the promptings of her emotional self.</p>
+
+<p>So she encouraged herself to hate Wilbrow with all her heart, to despise
+him without ceasing night or day; no charitable thought of the manager
+was suffered to gain access to her humour at any hour. And so admirably
+did she succeed in impregnating her mind with virulent dislike of the
+man, that she afforded him no end of amusement. She made a point of
+coming to the rehearsals early enough to infuriate herself with
+contemplation of him in the flesh; and of walking up and down, before
+and between her scenes, thinking evil of him. The twinkle with which his
+eyes followed her, in place of their erstwhile calm indifference or
+resignation, worked only to intensify her rancour. Curiously enough, a
+clear comprehension of the illogical absurdity of it all made her temper
+even more bitter.</p>
+
+<p>One day just before the final rehearsals, Wilbrow, meeting her at the
+stage-door, planted his slender body squarely in her way.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning!" he said cheerfully, with a semi-malicious smile. "My
+congratulations, Miss Thursday! You're doing nobly."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," Joan said curtly, pausing perforce.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be very grateful to me. Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what you'd do under the direction of a man you happened to
+like?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know." Joan gave him a sullen look. "Will you please let me
+pass."</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted." He moved aside with mocking courtesy. "I ask only one thing
+of you: don't fall in love with me before our first night. I haven't got
+time to sour another sweet young thing's amiable disposition.... Keep on
+hating me as hard as you like&mdash;and we'll make at least a half-portion
+actress of you yet...."</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the second week, Joan began to notice that Rideout was
+growing less assiduous in attendance. At first inclined to lay this to
+his satisfaction with the progress&mdash;to her the production seemed to be
+taking on form and colour in a way to wonder at&mdash;she later overheard a
+chance remark of one of her associates, to the effect that Rideout was
+himself rehearsing with another company.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," someone commented, "if it was my coin back of this show, I'd
+stick by it if I had to play the office-boy."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess," was the reply, "Rideout ain't got any too much outside what
+he's sunk in this production. Shouldn't wonder if he needs what he's to
+get with Minnie Aspen."</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe. He's a good trouper. What does he drag down, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four hundred a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Nix with those Lambs' Club figures. I mean regular money."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, two hundred and fifty, sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you've said something...."</p>
+
+<p>During the third week it was announced that "The Jade God" would open in
+Altoona on the following Monday. And at the same time Joan discovered
+that she was expected to provide her own costume, a simple affair but
+unhappily beyond the resources of either her wardrobe or her
+pocket-book. In despair she took the advice of Mrs. Arnold (the
+sweet-faced lady of fifty, whom Joan counted her only friend on the
+company) and approached Rideout's personal representative, Druggett,
+with a demand for an advance. With considerable reluctance Druggett
+surrendered fifteen dollars, and promised her as much more on Monday,
+toward expenses on the road. And again on the advice and introduction of
+Mrs. Arnold, the girl succeeded in satisfying her needs at an
+instalment-plan clothing-house: paying eight dollars down on a bill of
+about forty and agreeing to remit the balance at the rate of four
+dollars each week.</p>
+
+<p>The final dress-rehearsal was called for Saturday morning. They were to
+leave New York Sunday night. But on Friday afternoon a sense of
+uneasiness and uncertainty invaded the temper of the organization.
+Wilbrow neglected the players to engage in protracted conferences with
+Matthias, Rideout, Moran, and Druggett, out of earshot, at the back of
+the auditorium. One or two weather-wise "troupers" hazarded gloomy
+surmises as to the nature of the "snag": that most favoured involved a
+"shake-up with the Shuberts" over some change in their route. With a
+singular unanimity the prophets of disaster either avoided or overlooked
+the actual cause of the trouble.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock the next morning&mdash;a little late&mdash;Joan, with her costume
+in the dilapidated wicker suit-case, hurried into the theatre to find
+the company scattered about the stage in poses variously suggestive of
+restless dejection. Neither the star nor the leading woman was present,
+and there was no scenery in sight, other than that belonging to the
+production which occupied the same stage nightly. Rideout was nowhere to
+be seen, but the author, the producer, and Druggett were engaged in
+earnest but inaudible argument "out front." From their manner Joan
+inferred that Druggett was advocating some course actively opposed by
+Wilbrow and passively by Matthias. The group broke up before she found
+opportunity to question her associates. Druggett, in manifest dudgeon,
+turned sharply and marched out of the house, while Wilbrow strode
+purposefully back to the stage by way of the passage behind the boxes,
+Matthias following with an air of profound disgust and despondency.</p>
+
+<p>From the centre of the stage the producer addressed the little
+gathering.</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said sharply; and waited until he had all
+their attention. "There'll be no rehearsal today, and&mdash;and unless
+something quite unexpected happens, we won't open Monday. The truth is,
+there isn't money enough behind this show to finance it beyond Altoona.
+Moran can't collect on his scenery, and won't deliver. Mr. Matthias has
+offered to fix Moran up if we agree to go out, but I can't see it that
+way. Mr. Rideout's proposition is that we go on the road and run our
+chances of making expenses&mdash;but I don't have to tell you people what a
+swell show we'd have of breaking even on a tank route at this season of
+the year&mdash;hot weather still with us, and all that. We <i>might</i>&mdash;but
+that's about all you can say. And I don't think any of us want to count
+ties from Altoona....</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Druggett thinks that Mr. Rideout will be able to make a deal with
+the Shuberts, but I doubt it. Just now they're all tied up with their
+own productions and have no time to waste on a gambling risk like this.
+Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll all be notified. But I wouldn't, if I
+were you, pass up another engagement on the off-chance of this thing
+panning out after all.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry about this&mdash;we're all sorry, naturally. We all lose. Mr.
+Matthias here loses as much as any of us&mdash;the rights in a valuable
+property for several months, at the inside. I'm out fifteen hundred
+dollars I was to get for putting the show on. And Rideout's out the two
+thousand real coin he's invested in expectation of backing which failed
+to materialize. Personally I refused to shoulder the responsibility of
+letting you go out in ignorance of the real state of affairs. That's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated an instant, as if not satisfied that he had dealt fully
+with the situation, and glanced a little ruefully from face to face of
+the company. But for the moment none made any comment. And with an
+uncertain nod to the author, Wilbrow turned and disappeared through the
+stage-door.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias waited a trifle longer, as though anticipating trouble with the
+disappointed players; but there was no feeling manifest in their
+attitude toward him other than sympathy for a fellow-sufferer. And
+presently he consulted his watch and followed the stage-director.</p>
+
+<p>Those left in the theatre discussed the contretemps in subdued and
+regretful accents, betraying surprisingly little rancour toward anyone
+connected with it. Even Rideout escaped with slight censure. He was, in
+the final analysis, one of them&mdash;an incurable optimist who had erred
+only in banking too heavily on hope and promises.</p>
+
+<p>By twos and threes they gathered up their belongings and straggled off
+upon their various ways, a sorry, philosophic crew. Within ten minutes
+their dissociation was final and absolute.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Late in the evening, Matthias gave it up, and shaking off Rideout (whose
+only hope had resided in the author's anxiety to save his play) betook
+himself to an out-of-the-way restaurant to idle with a tasteless meal.</p>
+
+<p>He was at once dog-weary and heart-sick.</p>
+
+<p>The net outcome of some ten hours of runnings to and from, of meetings
+and schemings, of conferences by telephone and of communications by
+telegraph with those who had promised financial support to Rideout's
+project, was an empty assurance, indifferently given by the Shuberts, to
+the effect that, if nothing happened to make them think otherwise, they
+might possibly be prepared to consider the advisability of producing
+"The Jade God" about the first of January.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of the situation was that neither the Shuberts nor any other
+managerial concern was likely (as Wilbrow put it) "to look cross-eyed at
+the piece" until they could get full control of it; which would be in
+some three months, when Rideout's contract to produce would expire by
+limitation. And since Rideout might be counted upon to hold on to his
+contract rights till the last minute and leave nothing else undone in
+the effort to recoup his already substantial losses, it was useless to
+consider the play as anything but a property of potential value
+relegated indefinitely to abeyance.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias believed in the play with all his heart. During the last three
+weeks he had watched it come to life and assume the form he had dreamed
+for it, coloured with the rich hues of his imagination and quick with
+the breath of living drama. And because he possessed in some measure
+that rare faculty of being able to weigh justly the work of his own
+hand, and had looked upon this and seen that it was good, he had counted
+on it to win him that recognition which, more than money, his pride
+craved&mdash;partly by way of some compensation for what it had suffered at
+the hands of Venetia Tankerville.</p>
+
+<p>He was still sore with the hurt of that experience. Privately he doubted
+whether he would ever wholly recover from it; but the doubt was a very
+private one, never discovered even to his most sympathetic friends, not
+even to Helena, whose scorn of her sister-in-law remained immeasurable.
+Fortunate in having been able to afford those several weeks in the
+wooded hills of Maine, in their fragrant and passionless silences
+Matthias had found peace and regained confidence in his old, well-tried,
+wholesome code of philosophy; which held that though here and there a
+man ill-used by chance or woman might be found, the world was none the
+less sound and kind at heart, and good to live in.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, he could not easily endure the thought of Venetia's
+lowering herself to use him to further her love affair with Marbridge;
+of Venetia going from his arms and lips to the lips and arms of that
+insolent animal, Marbridge: the one amused by her successful cunning,
+the other contemptuous in his conquest. And he often wondered with what
+justice he judged the woman. It comforted him a little, at times, to
+believe that she had not acted so cruelly altogether as a free agent, to
+think her meeting with Marbridge in New York a freak of chance and fate,
+her elopement an unpremeditated and spontaneous surrender to the
+indisputable magnetism of the man. Marbridge commanded the reluctant
+admiration of men who did not like him&mdash;who knew him too well to like
+him. How much more easily, then, might he not have overcome the scruples
+of a girl untutored in the knowledge of her own heart....</p>
+
+<p>Or had it all been due merely to the fact that John Matthias was not a
+man to hold the love of women? Such men exist, antipathetic to the
+Marbridges of the world. Was he of their unhappy order, incapable of
+inspiring enduring love?</p>
+
+<p>He could review a modest cycle of flirtations with women variously
+charming and willing to be amused, light-hearted attachments and
+short-lived, one and all, those that might have proved more lasting
+broken off without ill-will on either side&mdash;though always by the woman.
+Venetia alone had named Love to him as if it stood to her for something
+higher and more significant than the diversion of an empty hour&mdash;Venetia
+who was now in Italy, the bride of Marbridge!</p>
+
+<p>And yet, oddly enough, it wasn't his memories of Venetia and his regrets
+and wounded self-esteem that rendered insipid his belated dinner and
+made him presently abandon it in favour of the distracting throngs of
+Broadway. They were thoughts of another woman altogether that urged him
+forth and homeward&mdash;a poignant sympathy for Joan Thursday, the
+friendless and forlorn, whose high anticipations had with his own that
+day gone crashing to disaster. He couldn't remember what had made him
+think of her, but now that he did, it was with disturbing interest.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself suddenly very sorry for the girl&mdash;much more sorry for
+her than for himself. What to him was at worst a staggering reverse, to
+her must seem calamitous beyond repair.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't hard to conjure up a picture of the child, pitifully huddled
+upon her bed, in tears, heart-broken, desolate, perhaps (since he had
+not been home to pay her) supperless and hungry!</p>
+
+<p>Matthias quickened his stride. His suddenly awakened and deep solicitude
+tormented him. He had received evidence that Joan's was a nature
+tempestuous and prone to extremes: he didn't like to contemplate the
+lengths to which despair might drive her.</p>
+
+<p>Through the texture of this new-found care ran a thread of irritation
+that it should have proved a care to him. He realized that he must of
+late have been giving a deal of thought to the girl. Formerly he had
+been aware of her much as he was of Madame Duprat; such kindness as he
+had shown her had been no greater than, and of much the same order as,
+he would have shown a stray puppy. Tonight he found himself unable to
+contemplate her as other than a vital figure in his life&mdash;a creature of
+fire and blood, of spirit and flesh, at once enigmatic and absolute,
+owning claims upon his consideration no less actual because passive. He
+who had pledged his ability and willingness to find her a foothold on
+the stage, was responsible for her present distress and disappointment.
+And if his good offices had been sought rather than voluntary, still was
+he responsible; for she wouldn't have dreamed of seeking them if he
+hadn't in the first place insisted on putting her under obligation to
+him. He had in a measure bidden her to look to him; now it was his part
+to look out for her.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly a pleasant predicament: Matthias resented it bitterly, with
+impatience conceding the weight of that doctrine which teaches the fatal
+responsibility of man for his hand's each and every idle turn. He had
+paused to pity a stray child of the town; and because of that, he now
+found himself saddled with her welfare. A situation exasperating to a
+degree! And, he argued, it was merely this subconscious sense of duty
+which had of late held the girl so prominently in his mind&mdash;ever since,
+in fact, that night when she had broken down and impulsively kissed his
+hand. Just that one hot-headed, frantic, foolish act had primarily
+brought home to Matthias his obligations as the object of her unsought,
+unwelcome gratitude....</p>
+
+<p>He found Joan waiting on the stoop: a silent and vigilant figure, aloof
+from the other lodgers&mdash;a woman and two or three men lounging on the
+steps. And as these moved aside to give Matthias way, Joan rose and
+slipped quietly indoors, where in the hall she turned back with a
+gesture that too clearly betrayed the strain and tensity of her
+emotions; but, to his gratification, she was dry of eye and outwardly
+composed.</p>
+
+<p>"You were waiting for me?" he asked; and taking assent for granted
+rattled on with a show of cheerful contrition: "Sorry I'm late. There
+were ten dozen stones we had to turn, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes questioned.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, apologetic: "No use; Rideout simply can't swing it."</p>
+
+<p>"I've finished type-writing that book," she announced obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you? That's splendid! Will you bring it to me? And then we can
+have a little talk."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded&mdash;"I'll go fetch it right away"&mdash;and scurried hastily up the
+stairs as he went on to his room.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the door ajar and lighting his reading-lamp, Matthias closed the
+shutters at the long windows, adjusting their slats for ventilation.
+Then for some minutes he was left to himself. Resting against the edge
+of his work-table, he studied ruefully a cigarette which he was too
+indifferent or too distracted to continue smoking. Smouldering between
+his fingers, its slender stalk of pearly vapour ascended with hardly a
+waver in the still air, to mushroom widely above his head. It held his
+eyes and his thoughts in dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking, simply and unconsciously, of the Joan he had just
+realized in the half-light of the hallway: a straight, slim creature
+with eyes like troubled stars, her round little chin held high as if in
+mute defiance of outrageous circumstance; vividly alive; giving a
+strange impression, as of some half-wild thing, at once timid and
+spirited, odd and&mdash;beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>To the sound of a light tap on the open door, the girl herself entered,
+a mute incarnation of that disturbing memory. She put down the
+manuscript before acknowledging his silent and intent regard. But
+becoming aware of this, her eyes wavered and fell, then again steadied
+to his. He was vastly concerned with the surprising length of her dark
+silken lashes and the delicate shadows on her warm, rich flesh. And he
+was sensitive to the virginal sweetness and fluent grace of her round
+and slender body. Vaguely he divined that the calm courage of her
+bearing was merely a naïve mask for a nature racked by intense
+feeling....</p>
+
+<p>"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the manuscript. "I
+finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any
+evidence of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found
+money, and paid her for the week.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want
+any more type-writing done for a while?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over.
+Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door:
+people all the time passing through the hall...."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with
+his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having
+closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her
+circumstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its
+customary efficiency of grasp.</p>
+
+<p>He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable
+embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the manuscript she had just
+delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long
+fingers&mdash;"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him sharply: "O no, you're not!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly, amazed and disconcerted by the hint of anger in
+her tone. A little tremor ran through her body and she lifted her chin a
+trace higher while she met his stare with eyes hot and shining. Red
+spots like signals blazed in her either cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Confused, he stammered: "I beg your pardon&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"I say you're not sorry. You're glad. You're glad, just like anybody
+else might be. <i>I</i> don't blame you."</p>
+
+<p>She shot these words at him like bullets, with a disturbing display of
+passionate resentment. He opened his lips to speak, and thinking better
+of it, or else not thinking at all in his astonishment, gaped witlessly,
+wholly incapable of conceiving what had got into the girl.</p>
+
+<p>With a flush of scornful satisfaction her eyes remarked these evidences,
+so easily to be misinterpreted; then quickly she lowered her head and
+turned away, leaning against the table, her back to the light and face
+in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> don't blame you," she repeated in a sullen murmur.</p>
+
+<p>He demanded blankly: "My dear girl, what <i>do</i> you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean.... Why, just that you're glad to get rid of me!" she returned,
+looking away. He noticed the nervous strength with which her hands
+closed over the edge of the table, the whitening of their small
+knuckles.... "It's perfectly natural, I guess. I've been a nuisance so
+long, you've got every right to be tired of having me hang around&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear young woman&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted impatiently: "Oh, don't call me that. It don't mean
+anything. I guess I know when I'm not wanted. I'll go now and never
+bother you any more."</p>
+
+<p>Moving a pace or two away, she resumed before Matthias could muster
+faculties to cope with this emergency:</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate
+how good you've been to me&mdash;and patient, and all that. I am
+grateful&mdash;honest'&mdash;but I'm not as dumb as you think: I know when I'm in
+the way, all right!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you entirely misunderstand me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"O no, I don't! You've made yourself plain enough, if you didn't think I
+had sense enough to see. It don't take <i>brains</i> to see through a man
+who's only trying to be polite and kind&mdash;all the time bored&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Thursday&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture of open exasperation. This was all so unfair! He had
+only meant to be kind and considerate and&mdash;and everything like that! And
+now she had drawn against him one of those unique and damnable
+indictments which seem to be peculiarly the product of a certain type of
+feminine mentality, and against which man is constitutionally incapable
+of setting up any effective defence, reason and logic alike being
+arbitrarily ruled out of court by the essential injustice of the charge.
+She chose to accuse him of having adopted toward her a mental attitude
+of which he was wholly guiltless; and there was no way by which he might
+persuade her of his innocence!</p>
+
+<p>And it was so confoundedly clear that she considered herself,
+temporarily at least, abused and altogether justified of her complaint!</p>
+
+<p>"Please," he begged, "don't go yet. Give <i>me</i> a chance!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand was on the knob. She hesitated, with an air of expectant and
+generous concession.</p>
+
+<p>"You're really quite unfair," he began; but paused to regain control of
+himself and to wonder a little, blindly, why it was that he tolerated
+her impudence&mdash;for it couldn't be called anything less. It would be much
+more sensible and quite just to bow to her construction of their
+indefinite relations and let her go her ways without more argument.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of everything, he could not refrain from one last attempt to
+set himself right.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you
+insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've
+really wanted to help you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly
+know...."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you know better?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded
+from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted
+quietly, "that a man like you can't be just <i>kind</i> to a girl like me
+without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the
+show had gone out&mdash;and everything&mdash;but now, with that hope gone&mdash;and
+nothing more to do for you&mdash;with no prospects but to lose you&mdash;the only
+friend I've got in the world&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to
+stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling
+violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and
+bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's,
+saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, can't you see!"</p>
+
+<p>With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a
+face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been
+numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp
+upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.</p>
+
+<p>In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms.
+She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite
+wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a
+breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with
+all her strength, in an ecstasy of impassioned tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>Bending his head, Matthias found her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, dear girl!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she breathed, "I have loved you always&mdash;always!"</p>
+
+<p>"If I had only known, if I had only guessed&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"How could you? <i>I</i> didn't know ... not till a little while ago....
+And even then, I couldn't have told you ... only the thought of losing
+you ... my dear, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never guessed...."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not sorry? You're not angry with me&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Angry? I adore you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You will love me always?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always and forever."</p>
+
+<p>"And never send me away from you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall never leave me but of your own will."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I was going mad with the thought of losing you!"</p>
+
+<p>"My beloved girl!..."</p>
+
+<p>The dusky stillness of the room was murmurous with whispers, sighs,
+terms of endearment half smothered and all but inaudible.</p>
+
+<p>To these a foreign and alarming sound: a rapping at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias lifted his head, wincing from the interruption. The girl in his
+arms moved feebly, as if to disengage. He held her for a moment still
+more close. Her heart sounded sonorously against his bosom. "Hush!" he
+said in a low and warning voice. And then the rapping was repeated. At
+once he released her. She moved away, blushing and dishevelled, the
+fragrant freshness of her starched linen waist a crumpled disorder, her
+hair in disarray; her crimson face one of many evidences of the tumult
+of her senses.</p>
+
+<p>In the hallway a man's voice said: "He must be in. There's a light&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A woman answered impatiently: "Of course he's in; but the chances are
+he's asleep." She called in a louder tone: "Jack&mdash;Jack Matthias!"</p>
+
+<p>Recognizing the voice of his aunt, that person groaned aloud&mdash;"O
+Lord!"&mdash;stole a glance at Joan, hesitated, shrugged, as if to say:
+There's no help for it! Then he answered the door.</p>
+
+<p>Helena swept in with a swirl of impatient skirts. "Good heavens!" she
+cried. "What ails you, Jackie? We knocked half a dozen times. Were
+you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Her glance encountering Joan, the words dried on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville, at her heels, jerked a motor gauntlet from his fat hand in
+order to grasp that of Matthias. "Surprised you&mdash;eh?" he
+chuckled&mdash;"getting in so late. Well, it's all accidental. We were bound
+home&mdash;been visiting the Hastings for a week, you know&mdash;but the car broke
+down just this side of Poughkeepsie and delayed us and...."</p>
+
+<p>He became distressfully aware of his wife's silence, simultaneously
+ascertained the cause of it, and cut his speech short in full stride.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias laughed a little, quietly: no good trying to carry off this
+situation; by many a clue aside from Joan's confusion, they were
+betrayed.</p>
+
+<p>"You've caught us," he said cheerfully. "We may as well own up. Helena,
+this is Joan&mdash;Miss Thursday&mdash;my fiancée. And Joan, this is my aunt, Mrs.
+Tankerville&mdash;and her husband."</p>
+
+<p>And immediately he was conscious of the necessity of bridging the pause
+that would inevitably hold these three confounded, pending adjustment to
+his amazing announcement.</p>
+
+<p>"We had intended to keep it quiet for a while," he pursued evenly,
+shutting the door.... "Helena, let me help you with that cloak.... But
+since you've declared yourselves in, we can only ask you to hold your
+peace until we're ready. I'm sure we can count on you both."</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville puffed an explosive: "Oh&mdash;certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>Helena glanced shrewdly from Joan to Matthias. He smiled his confidence
+in her, knowing that he might count upon her doing the right thing to
+put the girl at ease&mdash;just shoulders of the girl as positively as he
+might count upon her violent opposition to the match as soon as she
+discovered that he had engaged himself to her pet abomination, a woman
+of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>With a bright nod to him, she turned back to Joan; drew slowly near to
+her; dropped kindly hands upon the shoulders of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear!" she exclaimed in a tone of expostulation&mdash;"you are
+beautiful!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Escorting his aunt to the car, Matthias helped her in, closed the door,
+and then, with a grin of amused resignation masking that trepidation to
+which he was actually a prey, folded his arms on the top of the door and
+invited the storm with one word of whimsical accent: "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true?" she demanded, as if downright incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"Most true," he insisted with convincing simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>The tip of one gloved finger to her chin, Helena considered remotely.</p>
+
+<p>"She's very beautiful," she conceded, "and sweet and fetching and
+hopelessly plebeian. She'd be wonderful to have around, to look at; but
+to listen to.... Oh my dear! what <i>are</i> you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cut it," Tankerville advised from his corner. "None of your funeral,
+old lady."</p>
+
+<p>"That consideration never yet hindered a Matthias," his wife
+retorted&mdash;"or a Tankerville, either, as far as I've been gifted to
+observe. However"&mdash;she turned again to her nephew&mdash;"you are presumably
+in love, and I hope you'll be happy, if ever you marry her. I shan't
+interfere&mdash;don't be afraid&mdash;but ... I could murder Venetia for this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," said Matthias, offering his hand.</p>
+
+<p>But instead of taking it, his aunt leaned forward, caught his cheeks
+between both hands, and kissed him publicly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," she murmured in a tragical voice. "And Heaven help you!...
+When is it going to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't settled that yet," he laughed; "but you may be sure I shan't
+marry until I'm able to support my wife in a manner to which she's
+unaccustomed."</p>
+
+<p>He returned to Joan with&mdash;until he recrossed the threshold of his
+study&mdash;a thought ironic concerning the inconsistency of Helena's
+veneration of caste with her union to fat, good-natured, pretentiously
+commonplace George Tankerville. For that matter, the Matthias dynasty
+itself was descended from a needy, out-at-elbows English adventurer who
+had one day founded the family fortunes by taking title to Manhattan
+real estate in settlement of a gambling debt and on the next had died in
+a duel&mdash;the only act of thoughtful provision against improvidence
+registered in his biography. So Matthias wasn't much disposed to
+reverence his pedigree: social position, at least as a claim upon his
+consideration, meant little to him: the only class distinctions he was
+inclined to acknowledge were those created by the intellect and of the
+heart. In his private world people were either intelligent or stupid,
+either kindly or (stupidly) egoistic. To the first order, with humility
+of soul he aspired; for the other he was, without condescension,
+heartily sorry....</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing half so analytical as this in his temper when he
+rejoined Joan: only wonder and rejoicing and delight in her.</p>
+
+<p>He found her near the door, tense and hesitant, as though poised on the
+point of imminent flight. There was in her wide eyes a look almost of
+consternation; they seemed to glow, shot with the fire of her lambent
+thoughts. A doubting thumb and forefinger clipped her chin; a thin line
+of exquisite whiteness shone between her scarlet lips.</p>
+
+<p>Closing the door, he opened his arms. She came to them swiftly and
+confidently. Doubts and fears vanished in the joy of his embrace; she
+was no longer lonely in a world unfriendly.</p>
+
+<p>From the eloquent deeps of their submerged and blended senses, words now
+and again floated up like bubbles to the surface of consciousness:</p>
+
+<p>"You still love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't pity&mdash;impulse&mdash;Jack&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was&mdash;love. It is love. It shall be love, dear heart, forever and
+always...."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>told</i> her&mdash;your aunt&mdash;we were engaged!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>A convulsive tightening of her arms....</p>
+
+<p>A whisper barely articulate: "You really ... want me ... enough to marry
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"But...."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I am&mdash;only me: nothing: a girl who dares to love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Could any man ask more?"</p>
+
+<p>"You.... What will your friends say?... You'll be ashamed of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! That's treason."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will&mdash;you won't be able to help it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A faint, half-hearted cry of protest: words indistinguishable, silenced
+by lips on lips; a space of quiet....</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I make myself worthy of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love me always."</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I dare to meet your family, your friends&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will be my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"But that won't be for a long time...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we must wait&mdash;be patient, Joan." She lifted her head, wondering.
+"But don't fear; love will sustain us."</p>
+
+<p>"I will be patient. You'll have to give me time to learn how not to
+disgrace you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it. I must be somebody. I'm nobody now."</p>
+
+<p>"You are my dearest love."</p>
+
+<p>"I must be more, to be your wife. Give me time to learn to act. When I
+am a success&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No more of that!" There was definite resolution in the interruption.
+"You must give up all thought of the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the place for you&mdash;for my wife that is to be."</p>
+
+<p>"But we're not to be married for a long time, you say."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a poor man, dear&mdash;I have enough for one, not enough for two. It may
+be only weeks, it may be months or years before my work begins to pay."</p>
+
+<p>"But meantime I must live&mdash;support myself, somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"You will leave that to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must do something&mdash;be independent&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you leave it all to me? I will arrange everything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do whatever you wish me to."</p>
+
+<p>"And forget the stage&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I'll try, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"You must, dear one."</p>
+
+<p>It was not a time for disagreements. Joan clung more closely to him. The
+issue languished in default, was forgotten for the time....</p>
+
+<p>Transports ebbed: the faintest premonitory symptoms of a return to
+something resembling sanity made their appearance; of a sudden Matthias
+remembered the hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," he said with tender gravity, having consulted his watch,
+"it's after eleven?"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem possible," she laughed happily.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm hungry," he announced. "Aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>She dared to be as frank as he: "Famished!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, then! Run, get your hat. It gives us an excuse for at least
+two hours more...."</p>
+
+<p>By the time she had repaired the damage this miracle had wrought with
+her appearance, Matthias had walked to the Astor and brought back a
+taxicab. The attention affected Joan with a poignant and exquisite
+sense of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>It was only her second ride in a motor vehicle. The top being down, they
+sat very circumspectly apart; but Matthias captured her hand and eye
+spoke to eye with secret laughter of delight, each reading the other's
+longing thought. The speed of the cab and its sudden slackening as it
+picked its path down Broadway, the flow of cool air against her face,
+the swimming maze of lights through which they sped, the sense of luxury
+and protection, added the last touch of delirious pleasure to Joan's
+mood.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias had chosen the café of "Old Martin's," at Twenty-sixth Street,
+the first place that suggested itself as one where they could sup
+without the girl being made to feel out of place in her modest
+work-a-day attire; but his thoughtfulness was misapplied: Joan was
+exalted beyond such annoyances; and those feminine glances which she
+detected, of pity, disdain, and jealousy, she took complacently as
+envious tributes to her prettiness and her conquest.</p>
+
+<p>From a seat against the wall, in a corner, she reviewed the other
+patrons of the smoke-wreathed room with a hauteur of spirit that would
+have seemed laughable had it been suspected. She thought of herself as
+the handsomest woman there, and the youngest, of Matthias as the most
+distinguished man and&mdash;the luckiest. The circumstances of the place and
+her partner enchanted her to distraction.</p>
+
+<p>The food Matthias ordered she devoured heedlessly; but there was a
+delicious novelty in the experience of sipping her first glass of
+champagne. It was, for that matter, the first time she had ever tasted
+good wine, or any kind of alcoholic drink other than an occasional glass
+of lukewarm beer, cheap and nasty to begin with and half-stale at best,
+and that poisonous red wine of the Italian boarding-house to which
+Charlie Quard had introduced her. She had never dreamed of anything so
+delicious as this dry and exhilarating draught with its exotic bouquet
+and aromatic bubbles.</p>
+
+<p>With a glowing face and dancing eyes she nodded to Matthias over the rim
+of her goblet.</p>
+
+<p>"When we are rich," she laughed softly, "I'm never going to drink
+anything else!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled quietly, enjoying her enjoyment; but, when emptied, the
+half-bottle he had ordered was not renewed.</p>
+
+<p>There was without that enough intoxication in his fondness, in the
+simulacrum of gaiety manufactured by the lights, the life, the laughter,
+and in the muted, interweaving strains of music. Joan felt that she was
+living wonderfully and intensely, a creature of an existence
+transcendent and radiant.</p>
+
+<p>It was after one when another taxicab whisked them homeward through the
+quieting streets. She sat as close as could be to her lover and would
+not have objected on the grounds of "people looking" had he put an arm
+round her. Though he didn't, she was not disappointed, sharing something
+of his mood of sublimely sufficient contentment. But when he bade her
+good night at the foot of the stairs in the deserted and poorly lighted
+hallway, she gave herself to his caresses with a passion and abandon
+that startled and sobered Matthias, and sent him off to his room and bed
+in a thoughtful frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Lying awake in darkness until darkness was dimly tempered by the
+formless dusk that long foreruns the dawn, he communed gravely with his
+troubled heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Things can't go on this way&mdash;as they've started. There's <i>got</i> to be
+sanity.... It's myself I've got to watch, of course," he said with
+stubborn loyalty to his ideal. "I mustn't forget I'm a man&mdash;nine years
+older&mdash;nearly ten.... Why, she's hardly more than a kiddie.... She
+doesn't <i>know</i>.... I've got to watch myself...."</p>
+
+<p>And in her room, four floors above, Joan sat as long before her bureau,
+chin cradled on her slim, laced fingers, eyeing intently the face shown
+her by gas-light in the one true patch of the common, tarnished mirror.</p>
+
+<p>When at length she rose, suddenly conscious of a heavy weariness, she
+lingered yet another long moment for one last fond look.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true," she told herself with a little nod of conviction; "I am
+beautiful. <i>She</i> said I was ... he thinks I am ... I must be...."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into
+the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing
+this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view
+remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement
+and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from
+them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.</p>
+
+<p>Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: <i>I am
+beautiful</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Her second, not <i>I love him</i>, but <i>He loves me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And her third grew out of the second: <i>I can make him do what pleases
+me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very
+self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the
+level of humanity!</p>
+
+<p>A fit of petulance, beauty in tears, a whispered word of passion:
+strange and strangely simple incantation to have turned a world upside
+down! How easily was man suppled to the spell!</p>
+
+<p>The sense of power ran like wine through her being: she felt herself
+invincible, an adept of love's alchemy; she had surprised its secret,
+and now the world of man's heart lay open to the practices of her
+disastrous art. For a moment she experienced an almost terrifying
+intimation of empires ripe for conquest that lay beyond Matthias; but
+from this she withdrew her troubled gaze; nor would she look again; not
+yet....</p>
+
+<p>She considered his mad extravagance of last night&mdash;taxicabs, champagne,
+tips! Was he, then, able to afford such expenditures? In her
+understanding they went oddly with his pretensions to decent poverty. Or
+had he merely lost his head under the influence of her charms? This last
+theory pleased her; she adopted it with reservations: the question
+remained one to be cleared up.</p>
+
+<p>He disapproved of a career upon the stage for her?... Joan smiled
+indulgently: that matter would be arranged in good time. She meant to
+have her way....</p>
+
+<p>At a tap on her door she changed suddenly from the aloof egoist to a
+woman athrill before the veil of portentous mysteries. She sat up in
+bed, called out to know who was knocking, gave permission to the
+chambermaid to enter, and received a note in the hand of Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Past twelve o'clock</i>," she read, "<i>and still no sign of you,
+sweetheart. I give you thirty minutes to dress and come to me. If you
+don't, I'll come for you. After breakfast, we'll run out of town for the
+day&mdash;our first day together!</i> <span class="smcap">Matthias.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>Half wild with delight, she hurried through her toilet and ran
+down-stairs to find her lover waiting in the hallway, watch in hand.</p>
+
+<p>He closed it with a snap, and made her a quaintly ceremonious bow. "In
+two minutes more&mdash;!" he observed in a tone of grave menace. "But before
+we go out, have the kindness to step into my humble study. I have
+somewhat to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>She appeared to hesitate, to be reluctant and preoccupied occupied.</p>
+
+<p>"What about?" she demanded distantly.</p>
+
+<p>But her dancing eyes betrayed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant
+universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by
+the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a
+charming diffidence.</p>
+
+<p>In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken;
+returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first
+submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded....</p>
+
+<p>She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and
+sweet and nameless longing....</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans
+for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long
+Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by
+the prospect&mdash;the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was
+comprised in a few trips to Coney Island&mdash;consented with a strange
+mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a
+conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know you had an automobile."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."</p>
+
+<p>"But ... but ... won't it be awf'ly expensive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"But, you know, you aren't&mdash;rich."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a magnate of happiness, at all events: and today is <i>our</i> day, the
+first of our love, sweetheart. For twelve long hours we're going to
+forget everything but our two selfish selves. Why fret about tomorrow?
+It always does manage to take care of itself, somehow. And frankly, I
+don't care to be reminded of its existence today; for tomorrow I
+work...."</p>
+
+<p>A day of quicksilver hours slipping ever from their jealous grasp; of
+hours volatile and glamorous: in Joan's half-dazed consciousness, a
+delectable pageant of scenes, sensations and emotions no sooner
+comprehended than displaced by others no less wonderful....</p>
+
+<p>Abed long after midnight, visions besieged her bewilderingly: a length
+of dusty golden highway walled by green forest, with a white bridge
+glaring in sunlight at the bottom of a hill; the affrighting onrush of
+great motor-cars meeting their own, and the din and dust of their
+passage; the bright harbour of Huntington, blue and gold in a frame of
+gold and green, viewed from the marble balustrade of the Château des
+Beaux Arts; the wrinkled, kindly, comprehending face of a waiter who
+served them at dinner; the look in her lover's eyes as she repeated, on
+demand, guarded avowals under cover of the motor's rumble; the ardent
+face of a boy who had seemed unable to cease staring at her in the
+restaurant; silver and purple of the road by night; wheeling ranks of
+lights dotting the desolation of suburban Brooklyn; the high-flung span
+of Queensboro' Bridge, a web of steel and concrete strung with
+opalescent globes; the glare of the city's painted sky; the endless
+pulsing of the motor; their last caress on parting at the foot of the
+stairs....</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow she went back to her typewriter like Cinderella to her
+kitchen. But what work Matthias was able to invent for her was neither
+arduous nor urgent; she was able to take her time on it, and wasted many
+an hour in dreaming. Her mind was, indeed, more engaged with thoughts of
+new frocks than with the circumstances of her love or her services to
+her lover.</p>
+
+<p>She was to receive thenceforward twenty-five instead of ten dollars a
+week. Matthias had experienced little difficulty in over-ruling her
+faint protestations: they were to be together a great deal, he argued,
+and she must be able to dress at least neatly; moreover, by requiring
+her promise to marry him at some future time when his fortunes would
+permit, he had in a measure made her dependent upon him; she couldn't
+reasonably be asked to wait for long on a bare pittance.</p>
+
+<p>His arguments were reinforced by one he knew nothing of, a maxim culled
+from the wisdom of Miss Maizie Dean: <i>It was up to a girl to look out
+for herself first, last, and all the time</i>. The platitude had made an
+ineffaceable impression upon Joan's sense of self-preservation. And if
+Matthias were able to afford nightly dinners for two at good
+restaurants, in addition to theater tickets several times a week, he
+ought to be able to afford a decent compensation to his stenographer;
+especially when it was his wish that she refrain from attempting to earn
+more money on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, true that no offer had come to Joan of other theatrical
+work, and that the issue of her ambition remained in abeyance, a subject
+which she didn't care to raise and which Matthias, since that first
+night, had considered settled.</p>
+
+<p>Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance
+from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the
+other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some
+favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not
+obligatory&mdash;the café of their first supper by preference, or else the
+Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few
+minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the
+approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work,
+they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up
+Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance
+upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his
+work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous
+drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have
+good but inconspicuous seats.</p>
+
+<p>In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and
+since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they
+witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of
+social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an
+amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the
+quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of
+the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays
+furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As
+plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools
+of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her
+gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress
+portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation
+whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their
+gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something
+of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion
+of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the
+girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified
+to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with
+varying discretion and success.</p>
+
+<p>She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his
+friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For
+long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact,
+distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was,
+summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very
+guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted
+the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone,
+dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its
+own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of
+the feminine toilet.</p>
+
+<p>Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of
+imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the
+improvement in his fiancée without realizing it objectively; what
+pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of
+innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was
+inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine:
+he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not
+possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the
+mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined
+efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under
+the strain of it all....</p>
+
+<p>"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an
+evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God"
+company. "He's dickering with Algerson&mdash;thinks the thing may possibly
+come to a deal before long."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play&mdash;at a bargain to
+himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's
+hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking
+her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that
+she had never heard it before.</p>
+
+<p>"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now
+he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."</p>
+
+<p>"And if he gets 'The Jade God'&mdash;when will he put it on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say&mdash;haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested
+as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can
+be ratified."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll consent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it
+stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective
+bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."</p>
+
+<p>Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork;
+glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the
+tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder ..." she murmured abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You wonder what&mdash;?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if&mdash;if he gets the
+piece&mdash;Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want
+you to stick at that game."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson
+will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes
+to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean,
+he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until
+he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his
+hands."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he will produce out West?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you have to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses.
+Although ... I don't know ... perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the
+only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most
+certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production&mdash;and his
+expenses to the Coast and back, besides.... It would be a shame to let a
+valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you may go, after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it
+over."</p>
+
+<p>Joan sighed.</p>
+
+<p>A week elapsed before the subject came up again.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had
+sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the
+back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its
+heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the
+people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan
+could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as
+wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable
+prejudice of her lover.</p>
+
+<p>And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her
+thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires,
+seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized
+that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in
+his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance,
+or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of
+intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to
+join issue with his will.</p>
+
+<p>And yet ... she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she
+felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been
+better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of
+living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she
+might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and
+honest than that which he offered her.</p>
+
+<p>But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in
+her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion....</p>
+
+<p>Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before
+sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving
+vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair,
+knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm
+tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience
+stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something
+of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood.
+He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at
+arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside
+quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect
+the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her
+sweet lips, and again drew her to him.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude.
+"What is it? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing&mdash;only&mdash;I guess&mdash;I'm
+a little blue&mdash;lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be
+at work or&mdash;with you always."</p>
+
+<p>"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now&mdash;I
+believe in my very soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Till when&mdash;?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with
+eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till
+when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to
+me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract
+this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad!"</p>
+
+<p>"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to
+produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest!"</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval....</p>
+
+<p>"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness
+for you, dear&mdash;not more than a few weeks&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I
+couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."</p>
+
+<p>"When do you leave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monday&mdash;the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los
+Angeles."</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.</p>
+
+<p>"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may
+have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm to be left&mdash;here&mdash;alone&mdash;with nothing to do but wait&mdash;perhaps
+more than a month!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me
+with you," she pleaded earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one
+thing, it wouldn't&mdash;O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!'
+but&mdash;it wouldn't look right. We're not married."</p>
+
+<p>"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I
+haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you
+here."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders,
+exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of
+much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and
+releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks'
+separation, Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a
+cigarette and lighted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you can wait that long&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be,
+it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he
+grumbled. "But I don't see...."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments,
+then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little
+collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence.
+One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much
+attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him
+an exclamation: "Hello!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tanglewood?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Aunt Helena's home&mdash;down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She
+has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate,
+and temporarily to forego further petulance.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be
+anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned
+over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll
+be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes&mdash;sweetheart!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck.
+She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some
+of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced
+her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination
+stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant
+novel-reading and theater-going.</p>
+
+<p>On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena's invitation she
+went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks' savings with that
+delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman
+of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent
+days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the
+pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy hoarded
+dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her association with
+Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)</p>
+
+<p>Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple
+evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably
+faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much
+higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an
+end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had
+the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully
+becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of
+its kind that she had ever owned.</p>
+
+<p>As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch
+at Martin's, she told herself that she would never know greater
+happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the
+figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>But after luncheon&mdash;over which they lingered until they were quite alone
+in the eastern dining-room&mdash;with some hesitation, and having assured
+himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled
+in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case,
+and passed it across the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward
+smile. "But I don't think I can wait...."</p>
+
+<p>Joan opened the box&mdash;and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart
+seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she
+grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!</p>
+
+<p>Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life;
+and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that
+night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature
+calculated to dissipate that glamour&mdash;save, perhaps, in one untoward
+circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided
+against.</p>
+
+<p>A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as
+violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end
+visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But
+Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the
+man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis
+lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan's way was made
+smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the
+moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible
+suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The
+smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville's
+obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the
+stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at
+her ease) facilitated matters immensely.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid&mdash;was, indeed, given no
+reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the
+establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them
+herself, she received at Helena's hands the indispensable service of
+"hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means
+overshadowed by Helena's or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the
+men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her
+ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New
+York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of
+their terrors.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring
+friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville
+to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone
+with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of
+Tanglewood....</p>
+
+<p>But it wasn't until the first hours of a still and splendid September
+Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its
+foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its
+grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its
+location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her
+perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new
+world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave
+her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the
+South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a
+short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....</p>
+
+<p>Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least
+comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at
+the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the
+man&oelig;uvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the
+breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather
+extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common
+ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the
+depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light
+banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her
+extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic
+environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own
+ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow,
+strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.</p>
+
+<p>The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun&mdash;the
+season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The
+Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies
+bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an
+exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame
+in the mortal passion of Indian summer.</p>
+
+<p>In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet
+ineluctable hint of melancholy....</p>
+
+<p>From landward, with unusual resonance in the deep quiet of that hour,
+sounded the long, dull, whining purr of a motor-car.</p>
+
+<p>Helena lowered the glasses, turned an ear to the sound, and came slowly
+back to the tea-table and Joan. Her faint smile, together with a slight
+elevation of her delicately darkened brows, indicated surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Engrossed in their argument, Matthias and Tankerville gave no heed to
+the threatened visitation.</p>
+
+<p>Resentfully, Joan detached her attention from the diamond Matthias had
+given her, and at discretion tossed aside a cigarette which she had been
+pretending to like because Helena smoked quite openly, and it was
+consequently the smart thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces
+toward the house, paused, waited. A woman's laugh with an accent of
+cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed
+Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his
+chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a
+light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the
+time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even
+though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. She was
+unquestionably the loveliest creature Joan had ever seen. Without
+moving, but staring, the girl sat transfixed with distrust and poignant
+envy.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of wonder&mdash;"Venetia!"&mdash;Helena ran to greet these unpresaged
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting, the two women indulged in an embrace almost theatrically
+perfunctory. The commonplaces of such situations were breathlessly
+exchanged. Then Helena, disengaging turned to the man and extended a
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Marbridge!..." she cried with a light note of semi-reproof in
+her laughter.</p>
+
+<p>At this, with a brightening smile, Marbridge bent over her hand, saying
+something indistinguishable to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>She was watching the meeting between Matthias and Venetia Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>He held both her hands, and she permitted him to retain them, for a
+longer moment of silent greeting than Joan thought necessary. But this
+circumstance alone betrayed whatever constraint was felt by either. A
+smile, vague and perhaps not lacking a thought of tender sadness,
+touched the lips and eyes of Venetia. Matthias returned his twisted and
+indefinitely apologetic grin.</p>
+
+<p>"More than ever charming, Venetia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>If there were any hint of challenge in her tone or her straightforward
+eyes, Joan didn't detect it.</p>
+
+<p>George Tankerville submitted with open resignation to the embrace of his
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I've got to stand for this," he observed with philosophy. "Do
+you mean me to infer that you're humble and contrite?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least," Venetia retorted defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," said he. "That being the case, I extend to you my
+belated blessing. How did you leave things on the other side?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much as usual&mdash;and by steamer."</p>
+
+<p>"When'd you get back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last Monday...."</p>
+
+<p>Venetia became openly aware of Joan. Matthias interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursday&mdash;my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"Miss Thursday&mdash;my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs.
+Marbridge."</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Truly?"</p>
+
+<p>The shock told; she had been playing off very deftly a painful
+contretemps, but this announcement dashed Venetia. Momentarily she
+hesitated, scarlet lips apart but inarticulate, widening eyes of violet
+a shade darker, with&mdash;if possible&mdash;a pallor deeper even than that most
+striking attribute of her beauty. But the check could have been apparent
+only to the initiate or to a strongly intuitive intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> so glad!" she cried with sincerity&mdash;"so glad for both of you!"
+Impulsively she caught Joan's hands, drew the girl to her&mdash;"May I, my
+dear? We're to be great friends, you know!"&mdash;kissed her; then swinging
+round&mdash;"Vincent!" she called gaily. "Such news! Do come here
+immediately!"</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge showed a face strongly marked with the enquiry of his heavy,
+lifting eyebrows. His glance comprehended Joan with kindling interest.
+With Helena he approached, his heavy body rolling a little in spite of
+the elasticity of his stride.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband, Vincent Marbridge. Vincent, this is Joan Thursday. She's
+engaged to Jack Matthias. Isn't it wonderful? And aren't they both
+fortunate? And <i>isn't</i> she pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge's unctuous and intimate smile accompanied his reply: "Yes to
+all&mdash;twice yes to your last question." His warm strong hand closed
+over Joan's diffident fingers. "My heartiest congratulations to you
+both.... Ah, Mr. Matthias, how are you? So we meet again&mdash;at
+Tanglewood!"</p>
+
+<p>The hands of the two men touched and fell apart. But this clue was
+wasted upon Joan, who stood silently abashed and sullen with
+consciousness of her own inept awkwardness as contrasted with the
+amiable aplomb of these people with whom good breeding was a cult, the
+practice of the art of self-possession its primary rite.</p>
+
+<p>To Marbridge she stammered: "Pleased to meet you." And immediately felt
+her face burning and as if she could faint for sheer mortification.</p>
+
+<p>It was Helena who, pitiful for the gaucherie of the girl, saved the
+situation by raising the issue of tea. Venetia demurred: they were, it
+seemed, visiting friends in Southampton; had driven over only for a call
+of a moment; would be late for dinner if they tarried. But Marbridge
+settled the question by dropping solidly into a chair and announcing
+that there he was and there would stay pending either tea or a highball.
+Venetia, unable to disguise a flush of resentment, showed her back to
+her husband and devoted herself to George Tankerville. As Helena
+summoned a servant, Marbridge hitched his chair closer and inaugurated a
+rather one-sided conversation with Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Again in her basket-chair, knees daintily crossed in imitation of a pose
+mentally photographed from the stage, Joan experienced renewed
+consciousness of her attractions, and with it regained a little ease. It
+could scarcely be otherwise under the wondering regard that Marbridge
+bent upon the girl. His admiration was unconcealed, and to Joan at first
+the sweeter since it was diverted from his wife.</p>
+
+<p>But insensibly the situation began to affect her less pleasantly. She
+grew sensitive to an effect of strain in the atmosphere, made up in
+equal parts of Venetia's indignation, Matthias's annoyance, Helena's
+suave but quite fruitless efforts to interpose and distract the interest
+of Marbridge to herself.</p>
+
+<p>And there was a confusing and disturbing element of familiar and
+personal significance in the man's undeviating and brazen stare. Truly,
+in the older sense of the word, impudent, it hinted an understanding so
+complete as to be almost shameful&mdash;worse, it educed a real if unspoken
+response from the girl; unwillingly she admitted the existence of a bond
+of sympathy between herself and this man whom she had never seen before,
+a feeling more true and intimate than that which her association with
+Matthias had inspired, than any she had ever known. For a time she
+fought against this impression, in a bewilderment that evoked from her
+only witless and hesitant responses. Then suddenly encountering his
+eyes&mdash;actually against her will&mdash;she was stricken dumb and breathless by
+comprehension of their intent; in effect, they stripped her: bodily and
+mentally they made her naked to this man.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was this the sum: for the merest fraction of a moment Joan felt
+herself answering: in her bosom a strange oppression, strangely
+troubling and sweet; in her own eyes a kindling light, sympathetic,
+shameless....</p>
+
+<p>Instantly quenched: distress and affronted modesty incarnadined her
+face, veiled her eyes. Almost unconsciously she turned away.
+Indistinctly she saw the white face of Venetia, set and hard, with a
+scornful lip for her husband. Shifting to view the object of his
+admiration, it showed no change of expression. Her voice cut incisively
+through his lazy, drawling accents.</p>
+
+<p>"This is quite impossible," she said coolly, consulting a jewelled watch
+on her slender, gloved wrist. "If we stay another instant we shall be
+unforgivably late. But"&mdash;to Helena&mdash;"thank you so much, dear, for
+wanting us to stop.... Vincent, I am going."</p>
+
+<p>She moved slowly toward the house. Marbridge kept his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" he expostulated. "Plenty of time. Tea's just coming. And I'm
+dying the death of a dog with thirst."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going," Venetia repeated in an uninflected voice.</p>
+
+<p>His dark face darkening, Marbridge glanced to Helena, to Tankerville,
+ignored Matthias, looked back to Joan: gaining as little encouragement
+from her, as from his host and hostess, since she dared not again meet
+his gaze. With a movement of his heavy shoulders and a chuckle he heaved
+himself out of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>all</i> right," he called indulgently to his wife: "coming!... All
+women are crazy, anyhow," he confided to the others. "You've got to let
+'em have their own way. So&mdash;good night. Hope I'll have the pleasure of
+seeing you-all soon again."</p>
+
+<p>He extended a hand to Helena&mdash;who gave him cool fingertips&mdash;and paused
+before Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Au revoir, Miss Thursday...."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was unconscious of the proffered hand. Her eyes averted, she
+murmured a good night.</p>
+
+<p>His smile broadening, Marbridge turned to Matthias; received from him a
+look that was as good as a kick, gave back a grin of graceless
+effrontery; and swinging, linked arms with Tankerville.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, George&mdash;take a look at our new car. She's a wonder!"</p>
+
+<p>Civilly playing his part, Tankerville submitted.</p>
+
+<p>They disappeared&mdash;Marbridge gabbling cheerfully&mdash;into the house. Joan
+uncurtained her eyes. Her lover, with a face of thunder, was looking
+toward his aunt; who made a slight negative motion of her head, with an
+admonitory flutter of one hand: a servant with a tray was drawing near.
+Matthias answered her with a gesture of controlled wrath; turned to the
+balustrade; stood there staring straight into the angry sunset glow.</p>
+
+<p>On the drive a motor snorted, snored, drew away with a whine
+diminuendo....</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the remainder of Joan's visit the incident was not once
+referred to. But it had had its curious and disturbing effect upon the
+girl. She remembered it all very vividly, reviewed it with insatiable
+inquisitiveness. From this she derived a feeling, which she resented, of
+having witnessed a scene fraught with significance indecipherable to
+her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>A little after the hour of four on Monday afternoon, Joan emerged from
+that riotous meander of hideous wooden galleries, ramps, passages,
+sheds, and vast echoing caves of gloom, which in those days encumbered
+the site of the new Grand Central Station; and with a long breath of
+relief turned westward on Forty-second Street.</p>
+
+<p>She walked slowly and without definite aim; yet she had never felt so
+keenly the quickness and joy of being alive. Her idle fancy invested
+with a true if formless symbolism her escape from that amazing labyrinth
+of shadows to the clear, sweet sunlight of the clamorous, busy street:
+as if she had eluded and cast off convention and formality, the
+constraint of a settled future and the strain of aspirations to be other
+than as Nature had fashioned her; and was free again of the enchanting
+ease of being simply herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had within five minutes said good-bye to her betrothed; her lips
+were yet warm with their parting kiss, her eyes still moist&mdash;and so, the
+more bewitching&mdash;with the facile tears through which she had watched his
+train draw out of the station.</p>
+
+<p>He was not to be back within a month; more probably his return would not
+occur within five or six weeks....</p>
+
+<p>She was contrarily possessed by two opposed humours: one approximately
+saturated with an exquisite melancholy and a sense of heroic emotions
+adequately experienced; and the other, of freedom untrammelled by
+restrictions of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>Overruling her faint-hearted protests, Matthias had left her the sum of
+six weeks' wages (or allowance) in advance, by way of provision against
+emergencies and delays. Joan had this magnificent sum of one hundred and
+fifty dollars intact in her pocket-book: more money than she had
+ever&mdash;at least, seriously&mdash;dreamed of possessing at one time.
+Temporarily it represented to her imagination, level-headed as she
+ordinarily was in consideration of money matters, wealth almost
+incalculable. It thrilled her tremendously to contemplate this tangible
+proof of her lover's unquestioning trust and generosity&mdash;and at the same
+time it irked her with gnawing doubts of her worthiness. For continually
+the knowledge skulked in the dark backwards of her consciousness that
+only lack of opportunity restrained her from active disloyalty to his
+prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>Though she had disguised it from him, and even in some measure from
+herself, she knew that love had not quenched but had quickened her
+ambition for the stage. To be desired by one man only stimulated her
+longing to be desired inaccessibly&mdash;beyond the impregnable barrier of
+footlights&mdash;by all men.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered how far her strength and constancy would serve her to
+resist, were opportunity to come her way during the absence of Matthias,
+when distance should have sapped the strength of his influence and
+loneliness had lent an accent to her need for occupation and
+companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Furtively she closed her left hand, until she could feel the diamond in
+his ring, turned in toward the palm beneath her glove: as if it were a
+talisman....</p>
+
+<p>Turning north on Broadway, she breasted the full current of the late
+afternoon promenade. Where the subway kiosks encroach upon the sidewalk,
+in front of what had been Shanley's restaurant, there was a distinct
+congestion of footfarers: Joan was obliged to move more slowly, crowded
+from behind, close on the heels of those in front, elbowed by
+pedestrians bound the opposite way.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly she caught sight of Wilbrow, approaching. Almost at the same
+instant he saw her. Momentarily his eyes clouded with an effort of
+memory; then he placed her, his lantern cheeks widened with an ironic
+grin, and he lifted his hat with elaborate ceremony. Joan flushed
+slightly, smiled brightly in response, and tossed her head with a
+spirited suggestion of good-humoured tolerance. In another moment,
+wondering why she had done this, she realized that it had been due
+simply to a subconscious valuation of the man's interest, in the event
+she should ever again decide to try her luck on the stage....</p>
+
+<p>Crossing at Forty-third Street, she turned again north on the sidewalk
+in front of a building given over almost entirely to the offices of
+theatrical businesses: a sidewalk darkened the year round with groups of
+actors sociably "resting."</p>
+
+<p>One of these groups, as Joan drew near, broke up on the urgent
+suggestion of a special policeman detailed for the purpose; and a member
+of it, swinging with a laugh to "move on," stopped short to escape
+collision with the girl. Then he laughed again in the friendliest
+fashion, and offered his hand. She looked up into the face of Charlie
+Quard.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" he cried heartily, "I always was a lucky guy! I've been thinking
+about you all day&mdash;wondering what'd become of you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan smiled and shook hands. "I guess it wasn't worrying you much," she
+retorted. "If you'd wanted to, you knew where to find me."</p>
+
+<p>Quard needed no more encouragement. Promptly ranging alongside and
+falling into step: "That's just it," he argued; "I knew where to <i>start</i>
+looking for you, all right, but I was kinda afraid you might be in when
+I called, and didn't know whether you'd snap my head off or not."</p>
+
+<p>"That's likely," the girl countered amiably. There was a distinctly
+agreeable sensation to be derived from this association with one upon
+whom she could impose her private estimate of herself. "What made you
+want to see me all of a sudden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you ain't sore on me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" she evaded transparently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know what for, all right. I'm sore enough on myself not to want
+to talk about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Joan indifferently, "I guess it's none of my business if
+you're such a rummy you can't hold onto a job. Only, of course, I don't
+have to stand for that sort of foolishness more than once."</p>
+
+<p>"You said something then, all right," Quard approved humbly. "I can't
+blame you for feeling that way about it. But le' me tell you an honest
+fact: I ain't touched a drop of anything stronger'n buttermilk since
+that night&mdash;so help me Klaw and Erlanger!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess I must've took a tumble to myself. Anyhow, when I got
+over the katzenjammer thing, I thought it all out and made up my mind it
+was up to me to behave for the balance of my sentence."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" Joan asked, pausing definitely on the corner at
+Forty-fifth Street.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I can," Quard asserted convincingly. "Believe me, Joan, I hate
+the stuff! I'd as lief stake myself to a slug of sulphuric. No, on the
+level: I'm booked for the water-tank route for the rest of my natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awful glad," observed the girl maliciously. "It's so nice for your
+mother. Well ... g'dafternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on!" Quard protested. "I'll walk down to the house with you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't," she returned promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't!" he murmured blankly, pulling down the corners of his
+wide, expressive mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>So</i> sorry," she parroted. "G'dafternoon."</p>
+
+<p>She was several steps away before the man recovered from this rebuff.
+Then, with a face of set intent, he gave chase.</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;Miss Thursday!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan accepted with a secret smile this sudden change from the off-hand
+manner of his first addresses. "Miss Thursday, eh?" she said to herself;
+but halted none the less.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"&mdash;with self-evident surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here&mdash;<i>lis'n</i>!" insisted Quard: "I got to have a talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>"What about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this is no good place. When can I see you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it quite necessary, Mister Quard?"</p>
+
+<p>He wagged an earnest head at her: "That's right. What are you doing
+tonight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I got an engagement with some friends of mine," she said with
+spontaneous mendacity.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, when?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know; you might as well take your chances&mdash;call round
+sometime&mdash;in two or three days."</p>
+
+<p>"And I got to be satisfied with that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Quard shook his head helplessly: "I'd like to know what's come over
+you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter?" The temptation to lead him on was
+irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>"You've changed a lot since I seen you last. What you been doing to
+yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>She bridled.... "Maybe it's you that is changed. Maybe you're seeing
+things different, now you're sober."</p>
+
+<p>Quard hesitated an instant, his features drawn with anger. Then
+abruptly: "<i>Plenty!</i>" he ejaculated, and as if afraid to trust himself
+further, turned and marched back to Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling quietly, Joan made her way home. On the whole, the encounter had
+not been unenjoyable. She had not only held her own, she had
+condescended with striking success.</p>
+
+<p>Later, she repented a little of her harshness; she had been hardly kind,
+if Quard were sincere in his protestations of reform; and a little
+tolerance might have earned her an evening less lonely.</p>
+
+<p>It was spent, after a dinner which proved unexpectedly desolate, lacking
+the companionship to which of late she had grown accustomed, in the
+back-parlour (to which Matthias had left her the key) and in
+discontented efforts to fix her interest on a novel. Before ten o'clock
+she gave it up, and climbed to her room, to lie awake for hours in mute
+rebellion against her friendless estate. She might, it was true, have
+kept a promise made to her lover just before his departure, to look up
+and renew relations with her family. But the more she contemplated this
+step, the less it attracted her inclination. There'd be another row with
+the Old Man, most likely and ... anyway, there was plenty of time.
+Besides, they'd want money, if they found out she had any; and while a
+hundred and fifty was a lot, there was no telling when she'd get more.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually she fell asleep while reviewing her meeting with Quard and
+turning over her hazy impression that it wouldn't hurt her to be less
+stand-offish with him, next time.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning she settled herself at her typewriter in a fine spirit of
+determination to keep her mind occupied with the work in hand&mdash;and
+incidentally to rid her conscience of it&mdash;until the feeling of
+loneliness wore off or at least till its reality became a trifle less
+unpalatable through familiarity. But not two pages had been typed before
+the call of the sunlit September day proved seductive beyond her will to
+resist; a much-advertised "<i>Promenade des Toilettes</i>" at a department
+store claimed the rest of the morning; and after lunch she "took in" a
+moving-picture show.</p>
+
+<p>But again her evening was forlorn. Theatres allured, but she hardly
+liked to go alone. In desperation she cast back mentally to the friends
+of the old days, and after rejecting her erstwhile confidant and
+co-labourer at the stocking counter, Gussie Innes (who lived too near
+home, and would tell her father, who would pass it along to the Old Man)
+Joan settled upon one or two girls, resident in distant Harlem, to be
+hunted up, treated to a musical comedy, and regaled with a narrative of
+the rise and adventures of Joan Thursday until their lives were poisoned
+with corrosive envy.</p>
+
+<p>But the first mail of Wednesday furnished distractions so potent that
+this project was postponed indefinitely and passed out of Joan's mind,
+never to be revived. It brought her two letters: manufacturing an event
+of magnitude in the life of a young woman who had yet to write her first
+letter and who had thus far received only a few scrappy and incoherent
+notes from boyish admirers.</p>
+
+<p>There was one from Matthias, posted in Chicago the preceding morning.
+Her first love letter, it was scanned hurriedly, even impatiently, and
+put aside in favour of a fat manila envelope whose contents consisted of
+a type-written manuscript and a note in scrawling long-hand:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Friend Joan&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are not still mad with me and sorry I got hot under
+the collar Monday only I thought you might of been a little
+easy on me because, I am strictly on the Water Wagon and this
+time mean it&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What I wanted to talk to you about was a Sketch I got hold of
+a while ago you know you picked the other one only that was
+punk stuff compared with this I think&mdash;Please read this and
+tell me what you think about it if you like it, I think I will
+try it out soon, if it's any good it's a cinch to cop out
+Orpheum time for a Classy Act like this&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Your true friend&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Chas. H. Quard.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. of course I mean I want you to act the Womans part if you
+like the Sketch, what do you think!"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>It was afternoon before she realized the flight of time.</p>
+
+<p>She turned back to Quard's note, a trifle disappointed that he hadn't
+suggested an hour when he would call for her answer.</p>
+
+<p>Adjusting her hat before the mirror, preparatory to going out to lunch,
+she realized without a qualm that there was no longer any question of
+her intention as between Quard's offer and the wishes of Matthias.
+Whatever the consequences she meant to play that part&mdash;but on terms and
+conditions to be dictated by herself.</p>
+
+<p>But in the act of drawing on her gloves, she checked, and for a long
+time stood fascinated by the beauty and lustre of the diamond on her
+left hand. A stone of no impressive proportions, but one of the purest
+and most excellent water, of an exceptional brilliance, it meant a great
+deal to one whose ingrained passion for such adornments had, prior to
+her love affair, perforce been satisfied with the cheap, trashy, and
+perishable stuff designated in those days by the term "French novelty
+jewellery." Subconsciously she was sensitive to a feeling of kinship
+with the beautiful, unimpressionable, enigmatic stone: as though their
+natures were somehow complementary. Actively she knew that she would
+forfeit much rather than part with that perfect and entrancing jewel.
+With nothing else in nature, animate or inert, would it have been
+possible for her to spend long hours of silent, worshipful, sympathetic
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>If she were to persist in the pursuit of her romantic ambition, it might
+bring about a pass of cleavage between herself and her lover; it was
+more than likely, indeed; she knew the prejudices of Matthias to be as
+strong as his love, and this last no stronger than his sense of honour.
+Tacitly if not explicitly, she had given him to understand that she
+would respect his objections to a stage career. He would not forgive
+unfaith&mdash;least of all, such clandestine and stealthy disloyalty as she
+then contemplated.</p>
+
+<p>The breaking of their engagement would involve the return of the
+diamond.</p>
+
+<p>Intolerable thought!</p>
+
+<p>And yet....</p>
+
+<p>Staring wide-eyed into her mirror, she saw herself irresolute at
+crossroads: on the one hand Matthias, marriage, the diamond, a secure
+and honourable future; on the other, Quard, "The Lie," disloyalty, the
+loss of the diamond, uncertainty&mdash;a vista of grim, appalling hazards....</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;she had four weeks, probably six, perhaps eight, in which to
+weigh the possibilities of this tremendous and seductive adventure. "The
+Lie" <i>might</i> fail....</p>
+
+<p>In that case, Matthias need never know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>As she drew near to Longacre Square, Joan saw Quard detach himself from
+an area-railing against which he had been lounging across the street,
+and move over to intercept her. Since she had anticipated that he might
+waylay her in some such manner, if he didn't call at the house, she was
+not surprised by this man&oelig;uvre; but she was a little surprised and
+not a little amused (if quite privately) to see him throw away his cigar
+as they drew together, and lift his hat. Such attentions from him were
+distinctly novel&mdash;and gratifying.</p>
+
+<p>Complacent, and at the same time excited beneath a placid demeanour, she
+greeted him with a cool little nod.</p>
+
+<p>He grinned broadly but nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wondering if you wouldn't happen along soon...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" Joan returned blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind my walking with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No-o," the girl drawled.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if I'm in the way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no&mdash;I'm just looking for some place to lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm hungry myself. Why not let me set up the eats?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she assented indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! Where'll we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know...."</p>
+
+<p>"Anywheres you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Rector's is right handy."</p>
+
+<p>"That suits me," Quard affirmed promptly.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to
+the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Wha'd you think of the piece?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ... the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan
+added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time&mdash;just glanced
+through it, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; I thought it <i>quite</i> interesting," said the girl
+patronizingly.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard
+withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.</p>
+
+<p>In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the
+restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a
+table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of
+waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and
+bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl
+and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but
+vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the
+menu&mdash;"please order something very simple. I hardly <i>ever</i> have much
+appetite so soon after breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;ah&mdash;how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his
+smoothened brow.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."</p>
+
+<p>And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she
+removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the
+table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking
+about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means
+have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in
+naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into
+Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"What<i>ever</i> do you mean?" drawled Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning&mdash;mind my own business," he inferred morosely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, what do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I
+guess I can take care of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right&mdash;and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have
+come into some money&mdash;not much." Her gaze was as clear and
+straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic
+well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to
+brass tacks: how about that sketch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition
+strikes you. That's what I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't made me any proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular
+business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better,
+and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had
+had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars...."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"But look here: you're only a beginner&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty&mdash;and transportation on the road."</p>
+
+<p>He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner,
+bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do
+anything in the world for you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty and transportation!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's
+option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five
+a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the
+cast, outsida you and me. <i>David</i>'ll want fifty at least, and the
+<i>Thief</i> thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and
+thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all
+that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can
+hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission
+for booking us, leaving only seventy for <i>my</i> bit&mdash;and I'm risking all I
+got salted away to try it out."</p>
+
+<p>He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough
+actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good
+at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."</p>
+
+<p>This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily
+silenced.</p>
+
+<p>"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing
+mendacity&mdash;"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can
+get any figure I want to ask, in reason."</p>
+
+<p>Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess
+you heard about that."</p>
+
+<p>The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast....
+Look here: make it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All
+right."</p>
+
+<p>At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than
+elegance the food before him.</p>
+
+<p>Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her
+tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect
+of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen
+rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to
+her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to
+her will....</p>
+
+<p>There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of
+gratulate reflection.</p>
+
+<p>From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had
+finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance.
+Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned,
+and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited
+suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy,
+ambitions achieved through adulation of men....</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Thursday, how <i>do</i> you do?"</p>
+
+<p>Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her
+chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr.
+Marbridge!"</p>
+
+<p>Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance
+measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's
+hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and
+hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday,
+and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome
+eyes ogled her effectively.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist
+stopping to speak. How are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I"&mdash;Joan stammered&mdash;"I'm very well, thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as
+happy&mdash;more charming than both! You are&mdash;eh&mdash;not lonesome?"</p>
+
+<p>His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard,
+exposed the innuendo.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to
+call on you. Where do you put up in town?"</p>
+
+<p>Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address&mdash;knowing in her heart that
+the truth was not in this man.</p>
+
+<p>"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?"
+She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia.
+Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So
+glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...."</p>
+
+<p>Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her
+with odd intentness.</p>
+
+<p>"Friend of yours?" he demanded with a sneer and a backward jerk of his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the husband of a friend of mine," she replied quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The actor digested this information grimly. "Swell friends you've got,
+all right!" he commented, not without a touch of envy. "Now I begin to
+understand.... What's Marbridge going to do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do for me? Mr. Marbridge? Why, nothing," she answered blankly, in a
+breath. "I don't know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right then. But take a friendly tip, and give him the office
+the minute he begins to talk about influencing managers to star you.
+I've heard about that guy, and he's a rotten proposition&mdash;grab it from
+me. He's Arlington's silent partner&mdash;and you know what kind of a rep.
+Arlington's got."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't," Joan challenged him sharply. "What's more, I don't care.
+Anyway, I don't see what Arlington's reputation's got to do with my
+being a friend of Marbridge's wife."</p>
+
+<p>"No more do I," grumbled Quard&mdash;"not if Marbridge believes you are."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before leaving the restaurant Quard outlined in detail his plans for
+producing "The Lie" for vaudeville presentation. He named the other two
+actors, spoke of hiring a negro dresser who would double as the servant,
+and indicated his intention of engaging a producing director of the
+first calibre who, he said, thought highly of the play.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was a little overcome. Peter Gloucester was a producer quite worthy
+to be named in the same breath with Wilbrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he believes in the piece," Quard explained&mdash;"the same as me&mdash;and
+he says he'll give us ten afternoon rehearsals for a hundred and fifty.
+It'll be worth it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must think so," said Joan, a little awed.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet I do. This means a lot to me, anyway; I gotta do something to
+keep my head above out-of-town stock&mdash;or the movies again." Mentioning
+his recent experience, he shuddered realistically. "But if this piece
+ain't actor-proof, I'm no judge. Gloucester says so, too. And to have
+him tune it up into a reg'lar classy act will be worth ... something, I
+tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>His hesitation was due to the fact that Quard was secretly counting on
+the representations of his agent, Boskerk, who insisted that, properly
+presented, the sketch would earn at least four hundred and fifty dollars
+a week, instead of the sum he had named to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan overlooked this lamely retrieved slip; she was all preoccupied
+with a glowing sense of gratification growing out of this endorsement of
+her first surmise, that Quard had only waited on her consent to go
+ahead. The thought was unctuous flattery to her conceit, inflating it
+tremendously even in the face of a shrewd suspicion that it was
+sentiment more than an exaggerated conception of her ability that made
+Quard reckon her coöperation indispensable. That the man was infatuated
+with her she was quite convinced; on the other hand, she didn't believe
+him sufficiently blinded by passion to imperil the success of his
+venture by giving her the chief part unless he believed she could play
+it&mdash;"actor-proof" or no.</p>
+
+<p>"Lis'n, girlie," Quard pursued after one meditative moment: "could you
+begin rehearsing tomorrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I could."</p>
+
+<p>"Because if we don't, we lose three days...."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Quard explained with a sheepish grin, "I guess I ain't any more
+nutty than the next actor you'll meet on Broadway; but I'd as lief slip
+my bank-roll to the waiter for a tip as start anything on a Friday. And
+Sat'day and Sunday's busy days for the Jinx, too. I got too much up to
+wish anything mean onto this piece!..."</p>
+
+<p>At his suggestion they left the dining-room by the hotel entrance on
+Forty-fourth Street, and Joan waited in the lobby while Quard telephoned
+Gloucester.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right," he announced, beaming as he emerged from the
+booth&mdash;"Pete's ready to commence tomorrow aft'noon. Now I got to hustle
+and round up the rest of the bunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Where will it be?" asked Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know yet&mdash;I'll 'phone you where in the morning, at the
+latest...."</p>
+
+<p>Hastening home, Joan plunged at once into the study of her part, with
+the greater readiness since the occupation was anodynous to an uneasy
+conscience. Though she was always what is known as a "quick study," this
+new rôle was a difficult one; by far the longest, and unquestionably the
+most important, it comprised fully half the total number of "sides" in
+the manuscript&mdash;nearly half as many again as were contained in Quard's
+part, the next in order of significance. And her application, that
+first day, was hindered by a perplexing interruption in the early
+evening, when a box was delivered to her containing a dozen magnificent
+red roses and nothing else&mdash;neither a card nor a line of identification.
+At first inclining to credit Quard with this extravagance, on second
+thought she remembered Marbridge, whom she felt instinctively to be
+quite capable of such overtures. And her mind was largely distracted for
+the rest of the night by empty guesswork and futile attempts to decide
+whether or not she ought to run the risk of thanking Quard when next
+they met.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually she made up her mind to let the sender furnish the clue; and
+inasmuch as Quard never said anything which the most ready imagination
+could interpret as a reference to the offering, she came in time to feel
+tolerably satisfied that the anonymous donor must have been Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be long, however, before this surmise could be confirmed;
+although, on getting home Saturday night, after a hard day's work and a
+late dinner with Quard, she was informed that a gentleman had called and
+asked for her during the afternoon, but had left neither word nor card.
+The same thing happened on Monday, under like circumstances; after which
+the attempts to see her were discontinued.</p>
+
+<p>And then, Joan noticed that Venetia didn't call....</p>
+
+<p>Interim, the task of whipping "The Lie" into shape went on so steadily
+that she had little leisure to waste wondering about Marbridge or
+feeling flattered by his interest; and she even ceased, except at odd
+moments, to regard Quard as a man and therefore a possible conquest:
+Gloucester drilled the actors without mercy and spared himself as
+little.</p>
+
+<p>A pursy body, with the childish, moon-like face of a born comedian, he
+applied himself to the work with the extravagant solemnity of a minor
+poet mouthing his own perfumed verses at a literary dinner. During
+rehearsals his manner was immitigably austere, aloof, inspired; but
+however precious his methods, he achieved brilliant effects in the
+despised medium of clap-trap melodrama; and under his tutelage even Joan
+achieved surprising feats of emotional portrayal&mdash;and this, singularly
+enough, without learning to despise him as she had despised Wilbrow.</p>
+
+<p>She learned what either Wilbrow had lacked the time to teach her or she
+had then been unable to learn: how to assume the requisite mood the
+moment she left the wings and drop it like a mask as soon as she came
+off-stage again. She was soon able to hate and fear Quard with every
+fibre of her being throughout their long scenes of dialogue, and to chat
+with him in unfeigned amiability both before and after. And her liking
+and admiration for the man deepened daily, as Gloucester deftly moulded
+Quard's plastic talents into a rude but powerful impersonation.</p>
+
+<p>Partly because of the brevity of the little play, which enabled them to
+run through it several times of an afternoon as soon as they were
+familiar with its lines, and partly because Gloucester was hard up and
+in a hurry to collect his fee, the company was prepared well within the
+designated ten days. And through the agent Boskerk's influence, they
+were favoured with an early opportunity to present it at a "professional
+try-out" matinée, a weekly feature of one of the better-class
+moving-picture and vaudeville houses.</p>
+
+<p>The audiences attracted by such trial performances are the most singular
+imaginable in composition, and of a temper the most difficult&mdash;with the
+possible exceptions of a London first-night house bent on booing
+whatever the merits of the offering, and a body of jaded New York
+dramatic critics and apathetic theatre loungers assembled for the fourth
+consecutive first-night of a week toward the end of a long, hard winter.</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday afternoons and nights (as a rule) they foregather in the
+"combination houses" of New York, animated (save for a sprinkling of
+agents and bored managers) by a single motive, the desire to
+laugh&mdash;preferably at, but at a pinch with, those attempting to win their
+approbation. Their sense of humour has been nourished on the sidewalk
+banana-peel, the slap-stick and the patch on the southern exposure of
+the tramp's trousers; and while they will accept with the silence of
+curiosity, if not of respect, and at times even applaud, straight
+"legitimate" acting, the slightest slip or evidence of hesitation on the
+part of an actor, the faintest suggestion of bathos in a line, or even
+the tardy adjustment of one of the wings after the rise of the curtain,
+will be hailed with shrieks of delight and derision.</p>
+
+<p>Before an assemblage of this character, "The Distinguished Romantic
+Actor, Chas. H. Quard &amp; Company," presented "The Lie" as the fifth
+number of a matinée bill.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting in the wings and watching the stage-hands shift and man&oelig;uvre
+flats and ceiling, and arrange furniture and properties at the direction
+of the <i>David</i> (who doubled that rôle with the duties of stage manager)
+Joan listened to the dreadful wails of a voiceless vocalist who, on the
+other side of the scene-drop, was rendering with sublime disregard for
+key and tempo a ballad of sickening sentimentality; heard the feet of
+the audience, stamping in time, drown out both song and accompaniment,
+the subsequent roar of laughter and hand-clapping that signalized the
+retirement of the singer, and experienced, for the first and only time,
+premonitory symptoms of stage-fright.</p>
+
+<p>Through what seemed a wait of several minutes after the disappearance of
+the despised singer&mdash;who, half-reeling, half-running, with tears
+furrowing her enameled cheeks, brushed past Joan on her way to her
+dressing-room&mdash;the applause continued, rising, falling, dying out and
+reviving in vain attempts to lure the object of its ridicule back to the
+footlights.</p>
+
+<p>At a word from <i>David</i>, the stage-hands vanished, and at his nod Joan
+moved on. <i>David</i> seated himself and opened a newspaper while the girl,
+trembling, took up a position near a property fireplace, with an
+after-dinner coffee-cup and saucer in her hands. She was looking her
+best in the evening frock purchased for the week-end at Tanglewood, and
+was in full command of her lines and business; but there was a lump in
+her throat and a sickly sensation in the pit of her stomach as the cheap
+orchestra took up the refrain of a time-worn melody which had been
+pressed into service as curtain music.</p>
+
+<p>Peering over the edge of his newspaper, <i>David</i> spoke final words of
+kindly counsel: "Don't you mind, whatever happens. Make believe they
+ain't no audience."</p>
+
+<p>The house was quiet, now, and the music very clear.</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling within the recess of the fireplace, almost near enough to touch
+her hand, Quard begged plaintively: "For the love of Gawd, don't let
+their kidding queer you, girlie. Remember, Boskerk promised he'd have
+Martin Beck out front!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded&mdash;gulped.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain rose. Through the glare of footlights the auditorium was
+vaguely revealed, a vast and gloomy amphitheatre dotted with an
+infinite, orderly multitude of round pink spots, and still with the hush
+of expectancy. Joan thought of a dotted lavender foulard she had
+recently coveted in a department-store; and the ridiculous incongruity
+of this comparison in some measure restored her assurance. Turning her
+head slowly, she looked at <i>David</i>, who was properly intent on his
+newspaper, smiled, and parted her lips to speak the opening line.</p>
+
+<p>From the gallery floated a shrill, boyish squeal:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Gee! pipe the pippin!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The audience rocked and roared. Joan's heart sank; then, suddenly,
+resentment kindled her temper; she grew coldly, furiously angry, and
+forgot entirely to be afraid of that stupid, bawling beast, the public.
+But her faint, charming smile never varied a fraction. Turning, she
+spoke the first line, heedless of the uproar; and as if magically it was
+stilled. A feeling of contempt and superiority further encouraged her.
+She repeated the words, which were of no special value to the
+plot&mdash;merely a trick of construction to postpone the ringing of a
+telephone-bell long enough to let the audience grasp the relationship of
+those upon the stage.</p>
+
+<p>In a respectful silence, <i>David</i> looked up from the newspaper and
+replied. The telephone-bell rang. Turning to the instrument on the table
+beside him, he lifted the receiver to his ear and&mdash;the plot began to
+unfold.</p>
+
+<p><i>David</i>, the husband, in his suburban home, was being called to New York
+on unexpected business with a client booked to sail for Europe in the
+morning. It was night; reluctant to go, he none the less yielded to
+pressure, rang for the coachman and ordered a carriage, in the face of
+the protests of Joan, his wife. She was to be left alone in the house
+with their little son; for the maids were out and the coachman slept
+beyond call in the stable. Reassuring her with his promise to return at
+the earliest possible moment, <i>David</i> departed....</p>
+
+<p>A brief and affectionate passage between the two was rendered inaudible
+by derisive laughter; but this was almost instantly silenced when Quard
+showed himself at a window in the back of the set, peering furtively in
+at the lonely woman in the unguarded house.</p>
+
+<p>An excellent actor when properly guided, and fresh from the hands of one
+of the most astute producers connected with the American stage, without
+uttering a word Quard contrived to infuse into this first brief
+appearance at the window a sense of criminal and sinister mystery which
+instantly enchained the imagination of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>In the tense silence of the house, the nervous gasp of a high-strung
+woman was distinctly audible. But it passed without eliciting a single
+hoot.</p>
+
+<p>Darting round to the door, Quard entered and addressed Joan. She cried
+out strongly in mingled terror and horror. A few crisp and rapid lines
+uncovered the argument: Quard was the woman's first husband, who had
+married and deserted her all in a week and whom she had been given every
+reason to believe dead. Ashamed of that mad union with a dissolute
+blackguard, she had concealed it from the husband of her second
+marriage. Now she was confronted with the knowledge that her innocently
+bigamous position would be made public unless she submitted to
+blackmail. Promising in her torment to give the man all he demanded, she
+induced him to leave before the return of the servant.... Alone she
+realized suddenly the illegitimacy of the child of her second marriage.</p>
+
+<p>At this, a scene-curtain fell, and a notice was flashed upon it
+informing the audience that the short moment it remained down indicated
+a lapse of five hours in the action.</p>
+
+<p>Already the interest of the audience had become so fixed that it
+applauded with sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying to her dressing-room, Joan stepped out of her pretty frock and
+into a negligee. The removal of a few pins permitted her hair to fall
+down her back, a long, thick, plaited rope of bronze. Then grasping a
+revolver loaded with blanks, she ran back to the second left entrance.</p>
+
+<p>The scene-curtain was already up; on the stage, in semi-darkness, the
+<i>Thief</i>, having broken into the house by way of the back window, was
+attempting to force the combination of a small safe behind a screen....
+Quard, kneeling to peer through the fireplace, lifted a signalling hand
+to Joan. <i>David</i> stamped loudly, off-stage. In alarm, the <i>Thief</i> hid
+himself behind the screen; and Joan came on, with a line of soliloquy to
+indicate that she had been awakened by the noise of the burglar's
+entrance. As she turned up the lights by means of a wall-switch, Quard
+re-entered by way of the window, in a well-simulated state of
+semi-drunkenness which had ostensibly roused his distrust and brought
+him back to watch and threaten his wife anew....</p>
+
+<p>Here happened one of those terrible blunders which seem almost
+inseparable from first performances.</p>
+
+<p>As Joan wheeled round to recognize Quard, her hand nervously contracted
+on the revolver, and it exploded point-blank at Quard's chest. Had it
+been loaded he must inevitably have been killed then and there; and
+when, pulling himself together, Quard managed to go on with the
+business&mdash;springing upon Joan and wresting the weapon from her&mdash;the
+audience betrayed exquisite appreciation of the impossibility, and
+shrieked and whooped with joy unrestrained.</p>
+
+<p>It was some minutes before they were able audibly to take up the
+dialogue. And this was fortunate, in a way; for the shock of that
+unexpected explosion had caused Quard to "dry up"&mdash;as the slang of the
+stage terms nervous dryness of the throat whether or not accompanied by
+forgetfulness. He required that pandemoniac pause in which to recover;
+and even when able to make himself heard, he repeated hoarsely and with
+extreme difficulty the line called to him by <i>David</i>&mdash;who was holding
+the prompt-book, in the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>But the instinct of one bred to the stage from childhood saved him. And
+with comparative quiet restored, he braced up and played out the scene
+with admirable verve and technique. Joan was well aware that, stronger
+though her rôle might be, the man was giving a performance that
+overshadowed it heavily.</p>
+
+<p>He was drunk and he was brutal: <i>David</i> had telephoned that he was at
+the railroad station and would be home in a few minutes; Quard, not
+content with promises, insisted on money, of which the woman had none to
+give him, or her jewels, which were locked away in the safe. When she
+refused to disclose the combination or to open the safe, Quard in
+besotted rage attempted to force her to open it. Struggling, they
+overturned the screen, exposing the <i>Thief</i>. Through a breathless and
+silent instant the two men faced one another, Quard bewildered, the
+<i>Thief</i> seeing his way of escape barred. Then simultaneously they
+fired&mdash;Quard using the woman's revolver. One shot only took effect&mdash;the
+<i>Thief's</i>&mdash;and that fatally. Quard fell. Joan seized the arm of the
+<i>Thief</i> and urged him from the house; as he vanished through the window,
+she picked up the revolver which Quard had dropped, and turned to the
+door. Frantic with alarm, <i>David</i> entered. Joan reeled into his arms,
+screaming: "I have killed a burglar!"</p>
+
+<p>On this tableau the curtain fell&mdash;and rose and fell again and again at
+the direction of the house-manager deferring to an enthusiastic
+audience. Crude and raw as was this composition, the surprise of its
+last line and the strength with which it was acted, had won the
+unstinted approval of a public ever hungry for melodrama.</p>
+
+<p>Quard, revivified, bowing and smiling with suave and deprecatory grace,
+Joan in tears of excitement and delight, and the subordinate members of
+the company in varying stages of gratification over the prospect of
+prompt booking and a long engagement, were obliged to hold the stage
+through nine curtain-calls....</p>
+
+<p>On her way back to her dressing-room Joan was halted by a touch on her
+shoulder. She paused, to recognize Gloucester, of whose presence in the
+house she had been ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well done, my dear," he said loftily; "very well done. You've got
+the makings of an actress in you, if you don't lose your head. Now run
+along and dry your eyes, like a good girl, and don't bother me with your
+silly gratitude."</p>
+
+<p>With this he brusquely turned his back to her.</p>
+
+<p>But Quard, overtaking her in the gangway, without hesitation or apology
+folded her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And Joan submitted
+without remonstrance, athrill and elate.</p>
+
+<p>"Girlie!" he cried exultantly&mdash;"you're a wonder!</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>knew</i> you could do it!... But, O my Gawd! you nearly finished me
+when you let that gun off right in my face!..."</p>
+
+<p>Somehow she found her way home alone, and shut herself up in the
+hall-bedroom to calm down and try to review the triumph sensibly.</p>
+
+<p>Unquestionably she had done well.</p>
+
+<p>Quard had done much better&mdash;but no wonder! She wasn't jealous: she was
+glad for his sake as well as for her own.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, this meant a great change. There was to come the day of
+reckoning with Matthias.... She had four letters of his, not one of
+which she had answered.... If "The Lie" got booking, and she went on the
+road with it&mdash;as she knew in her soul she would: nothing now could keep
+her off the stage&mdash;she would almost certainly lose Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>Quard, however, would remain to her; and of Quard she was very sure.
+That he loved her with genuine and generous devotion was now the one
+clear and indisputable fact in her unstable existence. If only he would
+refrain from drinking....</p>
+
+<p>He was to telephone as soon as he received any encouraging news; and he
+had expected definite word from Boskerk before the afternoon was over.
+In anticipation of being called down-stairs at any minute, Joan remained
+in her street dress, aching for her bed though she was with reaction and
+simple fatigue. But it was nearly eight o'clock before she was summoned.</p>
+
+<p>"That you, girlie?" the answer came to her breathless "Hello?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;yes, Charlie. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen Boskerk&mdash;in fact, I'm eating with him now. It's all settled.
+We're to open next Monday somewhere in New England&mdash;Springfield,
+probably; and we get forty weeks solid on top of that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you are. We're all glad, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;Charlie&mdash;" she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;are you all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I'm all right. Good night, girlie. Take care of yourself. See you
+tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Hooking up the receiver, she leaned momentarily against the wall,
+feeling a little faint and ill.</p>
+
+<p>Was it simply overtaxed imagination that had made her believe she
+detected a slight constraint in Quard's voice&mdash;a hesitation assumed to
+mask blurred enunciation?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>But when Joan met Quard in the morning her anxious eyes detected in his
+assured bearing none of the nervous unrest, in his clear eyes and the
+even tone of his coarse, pasty-pale skin none of the feverish stains,
+that are symptomatic of alcoholic excesses.</p>
+
+<p>Surprised and grateful, she treated the man with a tenderness and
+sweetness she had otherwise been too wary to betray....</p>
+
+<p>By Thursday it was settled that they were to open on Monday at Poli's
+Theatre in Springfield, for an engagement of a week. If the audiences
+there endorsed the verdict of the first, Boskerk promised Quard a full
+season's booking.</p>
+
+<p>From the Springfield house he was to receive three hundred and fifty
+dollars. He permitted Joan to understand, however, that his fee would be
+no more than the sum he had first mentioned&mdash;three hundred dollars.</p>
+
+<p>It was decided to leave New York by a Sunday train which would put them
+down in Springfield in the middle of the afternoon, enabling the company
+to find suitable lodgings before meeting to run through their lines in
+the evening. They would have an opportunity for a sketchy, scrambly
+rehearsal on the stage Monday morning, but dared not depend on that; for
+the greater part of their allotted period would necessarily be consumed
+in the selection of a practicable "set" from the stock of the theatre,
+in making arrangements for suitable furniture properties, and in
+drilling the house electrician in the uncommonly heavy schedule of light
+cues&mdash;any one of which, if bungled, was calculated seriously to impair
+the illusion of the sketch.</p>
+
+<p>Joan thoughtfully stipulated for twenty-five dollars advance, against
+expenses. Quard protested, alleging financial straits due to his already
+heavy outlay, but the girl was firm. True, she still had (unknown to
+him) one hundred and twenty-five dollars; but not until near the end of
+their week at Springfield would they know whether or not they were to
+get further booking.</p>
+
+<p>In the end the actor ungraciously surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>She made her preparations for leaving her hall-bedroom with a craft and
+stealth worthy of a burglar preparing to break prison.</p>
+
+<p>If her break with Matthias was to become absolute, she was determined
+not to leave any clue whereby she might be traced.</p>
+
+<p>An enquiry as to the best place to take a dress to be dry-cleaned
+furnished sufficient excuse for lugging away one well-filled suit-case,
+which Joan left at a cheap theatrical hotel a few blocks farther uptown
+and east of Broadway, where she simultaneously engaged a room for
+Saturday night. And on Saturday afternoon she carried away a second
+suit-case containing the remainder of her wardrobe, informing Madame
+Duprat that she was going to visit her folks for a day or two.</p>
+
+<p>But first she had to undergo a bad quarter-hour in the back-parlour.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of her treachery would not lift from her mood. Perhaps she
+felt its oppression the more heavily because of her uncertainty: she
+couldn't yet be sure she wasn't committing herself to a step of
+irrevocable error; she was only sure that she was doing what she wanted
+to do with all her heart, whatever evil might come of it. And there
+would be more ease in companionship with Quard; with him she could have
+her own way in everything, could always be her natural self and still
+retain his respect&mdash;and her own. On the other hand, she could not look
+up to him, and was by no means as fond of him as of Matthias. Her
+fiancée was without reproach: he loved her; but his respect she could
+never own. Dimly she recognized this fact; though he thought he
+respected her, and did truly honour her as his promised wife, he was his
+own dupe, passion-blinded. Actually, they were people of different
+races, their emotional natures differently organized, their mental
+processes working from widely divergent views of life.</p>
+
+<p>Even in this instance, Joan's perception of the gulf between them was
+more emotional than thoughtful....</p>
+
+<p>She moved slowly about the room, resentfully distressed, touching with
+reluctant fingers objects indelibly associated in her memory with the
+man of her first love.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting at his desk, she enclosed in a large envelope his letters. Two
+had arrived since Thursday; but these she had not opened. She hardly
+understood why she desired not to open them; she still took a real and
+deep interest in his fortunes; but she was desperately loath to read the
+mute reproach legible, if to her eyes alone, between his lines.</p>
+
+<p>She meant to leave him a note of her own, tenderly contrite and at the
+same time firmly final; but in spite of a mood saturate with an
+appropriately gentle and generous melancholy, she could not, apparently,
+fix it down with ink on paper. Eventually she gave it up: destroyed what
+she had attempted, and sealed the packet, leaving Matthias no written
+word of hers save his name on the face of the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>There remained the most difficult duty of all.</p>
+
+<p>With painful reluctance, Joan removed the ring from her finger (where it
+had been ever since she had last parted with Quard) and replacing it in
+its leather-covered case, sat for a long time looking her farewell upon
+that brilliant and more than intrinsically precious jewel.</p>
+
+<p>At length, closing the case, she placed it on top of the envelope, rose
+and moved to the door. There she hesitated, looking back in pain and
+longing.</p>
+
+<p>There was no telling what might happen to it before Matthias returned. A
+prying chambermaid....</p>
+
+<p>And then it was quite possible that "The Lie" would not last out the
+week in Springfield.</p>
+
+<p>Quard had more than once pointed out: "There's nothing sure in this game
+but the fact that you're bound to close sooner 'n you looked for."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I'll be back inside a week," Joan doubted.</p>
+
+<p>There was always that chance; and she had already left one door open
+against her return.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, it isn't safe, there. And I can mail it to him, registered,
+when I'm sure he's home."</p>
+
+<p>Turning back, she snatched up the leather case and darted guiltily from
+the study and out of the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The stage-wise have long since learned to discount a "slump" in the next
+performance to follow a brilliantly successful première: the phenomenon
+is as inevitable as poor food on a route of one-night stands.</p>
+
+<p>At Springfield, on Monday afternoon, "The Lie" was presented in a manner
+of unpardonable crudity. Quard forgot his lines and extemporized and
+"gagged" desperately to cover the consequent breaks in the dialogue;
+leaving poor Joan hopelessly at sea, floundering for cues that were
+never uttered.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment it was discovered that nothing had been provided to
+simulate, at the beginning of the second scene, the sound of a clock
+striking twelve, off-stage. The property man could offer nothing better
+than an iron crowbar and a hammer; the twelve strokes, consequently,
+resembled nothing in the world other than a wholly untemperamental
+crowbar banged by a dispassionate hammer. Fortunately, the effect was so
+thin and dead that it convulsed only the first few rows of the
+orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>The light cues went wrong when they were not altogether ignored; and
+once, when Joan having indicated in a brief soliloquy her depression on
+being left alone in the gloomy house, gave the cue "<i>I must have more
+light</i>," at the same time touching a property switch on the wall, every
+light in the house other than the red "exit" lamps was "blacked out."
+And at all other times the required changes either anticipated or
+dragged far behind their cues.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Thief</i> forgot to load his revolver, with the result that Quard
+fired the only shot in their duel&mdash;and then fell dead. This so rattled
+<i>David</i> that he anticipated his first entrance and rushed on the stage
+only to back off precipitately while Joan was urging the <i>Thief</i> to go
+and leave her to shoulder his crime.</p>
+
+<p>The only misadventure that failed to attend upon the performance was a
+traditional one of the stage: the theatre cat by some accident did <i>not</i>
+walk upon the scene at a climax and seat itself before the footlights to
+wash its face.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the sketch "got over" at the matinée, receiving three
+curtain calls; and at night&mdash;when the little company, conscious of its
+crimes, pulled itself together and acted with an intensity of effort
+only equalled by that of its first performance in New York&mdash;the house
+gave the piece a rousing reception.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter they played it well and consistently, with increasing
+assurance as days passed and use bred the habit in them all.</p>
+
+<p>On Thursday Quard heard from Boskerk, and announced that the company
+would return to New York the following Monday to play a six weeks'
+engagement in the Percy Williams houses, beginning with a fortnight in
+Manhattan and winding up in Greenpoint, Long Island. He added that
+Boskerk was busy arranging a subsequent tour which would take them to
+the Pacific Coast and back. He did not add that the agent had
+successfully demanded as much as four hundred and fifty dollars a week
+for the offering from many of the more prosperous houses on their list;
+from which figure the price ranged down to as little as three hundred in
+some of the smaller inland towns. But even at this minimum, Quard had so
+scaled his salary list, contrary to his representations to Joan, that
+his gross weekly profit (excluding personal living expenses) would
+seldom be less than one hundred dollars a week.</p>
+
+<p>Back in New York, Joan established herself temporarily at a small
+and very poor hotel on the west side of Harlem. Since their
+engagement took her no farther south than Sixty-third Street and
+Broadway during its first week, and the second week was played at
+One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, she felt
+tolerably insured against meeting either Matthias or any member of her
+own family.</p>
+
+<p>She really meant to go home some time and see how her mother and Edna
+were doing, but from day to day put it off, if with no better excuse on
+the ground that she was too tired and too busy.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact she was in the habit of waking up at about ten, but
+never rose until noon; spent the hours between three and four and nine
+and ten in the theatre; and was ordinarily abed by half-past twelve or
+one o'clock. Up to the matinée hour, and between that and the night, she
+managed without great difficulty to kill time, spending a deal of it,
+and a fair proportion of her earnings, in the uptown department stores.
+She dined with Quard quite frequently, and almost invariably after the
+last performance they supped together, often in company with friends of
+his&mdash;for the most part vaudeville people whom he had previously known or
+with whom he struck up fervent, facile friendships of a week's duration.</p>
+
+<p>They were a quaint, scandalous crew, feather-brained, irresponsible and,
+most of them, destitute of any sort of originality; but their spirits
+were high as long as they had a pay-day ahead, their tongues were quick
+with the patter of the circuits, and their humour was of an order new
+and vastly diverting to Joan. She had with them what she called a good
+time, and soon learned to look leniently upon the irregular lives of
+some who entertained her. Once or twice she was invited to "parties",
+sociable gatherings in flats rented furnished, at which she learned to
+regard the consumption of large quantities of bottled beer as a polite
+and even humorous accomplishment, and to permit a degree of freedom in
+song and joke and innuendo that would have seemed impossible in another
+environment.</p>
+
+<p>Probably she would have felt less tolerant of these matters had Quard
+betrayed the least tendency to "fall off the wagon." But in her
+company, at least, he refrained sedulously from drink; and since his was
+one of those constitutions whose normal vitality is so high and constant
+that alcohol benumbs rather than stimulates its functions, he shone the
+more by contrast with their occasionally befuddled companions.</p>
+
+<p>Joan admired him intensely for the steadfastness of his stand, and still
+more when she saw how established was the habit of regular if not always
+heavy drinking in the world of their peers. No one but herself pretended
+for a moment to regard the reformation of Quard as anything but a
+fugitive whim; and now and again she was made aware that his abstinence
+was resented. She once heard him contemptuously advised to "chuck the
+halo and kick in and get human again." At another time he explained a
+false excuse given in her presence for refusing an invitation: "It's no
+use trying to travel with that gang unless you're boozing. They got no
+use for me unless I'm willing to get an edge on. What's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a surliness, a resentment underlying his tone. Intuitively
+Joan bristled.</p>
+
+<p>"No use," she said sharply. "You know what you're up against better than
+they do. You've got to stick to the soft stuff if you want to keep
+going."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know," he grumbled. "But it ain't as easy as you'd think."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she retorted calmly; "but I give you fair warning, I'll
+quit you the very first time you come around with so much as a whiff of
+the stuff on you."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to worry," he responded. "I'm on all right.... But," he
+added abruptly, "you needn't run away with any notion this piece would
+head for the storehouse if you <i>was</i> to quit it. The woods are full of
+girls who'd jump at your chance."</p>
+
+<p>Joan answered only with an enigmatic smile. It is doubtful if Quard
+himself realized, just then, as keenly as the girl did, the depth and
+strength of his infatuation.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan did not doubt her power. Neither did she overestimate it.</p>
+
+<p>It was toward the end of their "time" in New York that she learned of
+the failure of "The Jade God," the information coming to her through the
+medium of one of those coincidences which would be singular anywhere but
+on the stage. An actress in a farcical sketch, which followed the
+intermission preceded by "The Lie," was assigned to use Joan's
+dressing-room when the latter was through with it. Naturally, the two
+struck up a chatting acquaintance. Joan one time replied to a question
+with the information that "The Lie" was booked for the Pacific Coast,
+and (Matthias in mind) confessed to some curiosity regarding Los
+Angeles. The other actress admitted ignorance of the West, but had only
+that morning received a letter from a sister who was playing with the
+Algerson stock company in Los Angeles. The letter contained a clipping
+describing the immediate and disastrous collapse of "The Jade God,"
+which had been withdrawn after its third repetition. Reading the review,
+Joan was puzzled to recognize some of its references; she was fairly
+familiar with the play, but here and there she encountered strictures
+which seemed to involve scenes she couldn't remember. But of the fact of
+the failure there could be no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>She was genuinely sorry. Her first impulse was to seek Matthias, if he
+were in town, and tell him of her sympathy; her second (discarded with
+even less ceremony than the first) to write to him. Two things held her
+back: sheer moral cowardice, that would not let her face the man whom
+she had failed even as had his play; and the impossibility of explaining
+that she loved the stage more than him or anything else in the
+world&mdash;except his ring. And while she never faltered from meaning to
+return this last "before long," she could not yet bring herself to part
+with it. Always it was with her, on her finger when at home and alone,
+in her pocket-book when abroad or with Quard; still in her imagination
+retaining something of its vaguely talismanic virtue; standing to her
+for something fanciful and magic, which she could not name, a visible
+token of the mystical powers that worked for her good fortune....</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-October: sweetest of all seasons in New York; a time of early
+evenings and long, clear gloamings beneath skies of exquisite suavity
+and depth; of crisp and heady days whose air is wine in a crystal
+chalice; when thoughts are long and sweet, gentle with the beauty and
+the sadness of aging autumn.</p>
+
+<p>At the first hint of winter Joan's heart turned in longing to the
+thought of furs. She wasted hours studying advertisements, and many more
+going from place to place, examining, rejecting, coveting. Her fancy was
+not modest: a year ago she would have been delighted with the meanest
+strip of squirrel for a neckpiece; today she felt a little ashamed even
+to price the less expensive furs, and would make no attempt to purchase
+until she had saved up enough money to meet her desires.</p>
+
+<p>And then, one morning&mdash;they were playing at the Orpheum Theatre in
+Brooklyn&mdash;a messenger brought her a package from one of the Fulton
+Street stores and required a signed receipt. It contained a handsome
+coat of imitation seal with a collar of rich black fur and lined with
+golden brocade. Fitting her perfectly, it enclosed her in generous
+warmth from throat to ankle. Accompanying it was the card of "<i>Mr.
+Charles Harborough Quard, Presenting 'The Lie,' the Sketch Sensation of
+the Year, Address c/o Jas. K. Boskerk, St. James Building, N.Y.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Not since that day when she had received his ring from Matthias had she
+been so happy.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting Quard in the gangway outside her dressing-room, before the
+matinée performance, she showed her gratitude by lifting her face for
+his kiss.</p>
+
+<p>In the world in which they existed, kisses were commonplaces, quite
+perfunctory, of little more significance than a slap on the shoulder
+between acquaintances. Not so Joan's: she had set a value upon her
+caresses, a standard peculiarly inflexible with respect to Quard. None
+the less, this was not the second time he had known her lips. But the
+occasion was one rare enough to render him appreciative.</p>
+
+<p>He wound an arm round her, and held her tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Like it, eh, girlie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"But how did you guess what I wanted most?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I did a little head-work to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"It's dear of you!"</p>
+
+<p>"So long's you think so, I've got no kick coming."</p>
+
+<p>She disengaged, drew a pace or two away.</p>
+
+<p>"But what made you do it, Charlie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't afford to have my leading lady out of the cast with a
+cold."</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head at him in gay reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"Or do you want me to tell you what you know already&mdash;that I'm crazy
+about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Foolish! It's time we were dressing!"</p>
+
+<p>But her laugh was fond, and so was the look she threw over her shoulder
+as she evaded his arms and vanished into her dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Quard lingered a moment, with a fatuous smile for the panels of the
+closed door, and wagged his head doggishly. He felt that he was winning
+ground at a famous rate&mdash;the difficulties, the coolness and craft of his
+antagonist, considered. And in a way he was right, though perhaps not
+precisely the way he had in mind.</p>
+
+<p>Even before his princely gift, Joan had been thinking a great deal about
+him, and very seriously. Instinctively she foresaw that their
+relationship could not long continue on its present basis of simple
+good-fellowship. Quard wasn't the sort to be content at arm's-length:
+he must either come closer or go farther away, and might be depended
+upon not to adopt the latter course until the former had proved
+impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>And Joan didn't want him to go farther away. She was positive about
+this. But she was also very sure that the arm's-length relationship must
+be abridged only under certain indispensable conditions&mdash;decorously&mdash;and
+soon, if at all: else she must be the one to withdraw, lest a worse
+thing befall her. It was a problem of two factors: Quard's nature and
+her own; she had herself to reckon with no less than with him; and
+herself she distrusted, who was no stronger than her greatest weakness.
+He attracted her. She often caught herself thinking of him as she had
+thought of no other man&mdash;not Matthias, not the Quard of "The Convict's
+Return," not even Marbridge except, perhaps, for one shameful instant.</p>
+
+<p>Something in the lawless, ranging, wanton grain of this man called to
+her with a call of infinite allure: something latent in her thrilled to
+the call and answered.... That way lurked danger, disguised, but deadly.</p>
+
+<p>They moved on to Greenpoint, thence to Trenton for a week.</p>
+
+<p>Daily Quard's attentions became more constant, intimate and tender. They
+were much together, and now far more exclusively together than had been
+possible in New York, where acquaintances commandeered so much of their
+time. In Trenton they lodged at the same hotel, the other members of the
+company finding cheaper accommodations at greater distance from the
+theatre. This increased their close and confidential association. They
+fell into the habit of breakfasting together. Quard, always first to
+rise, would telephone to Joan's room, ascertain how soon she would be
+dressed, and order for both of them accordingly. In return for this
+privilege he had that of paying for both meals.</p>
+
+<p>A negro waiter spoke of Joan one morning, in her presence, as "the
+Missus." When he had retired out of earshot, their eyes sought one
+another's; constraint was swept away in laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"We might's well be married, the way we're together all the time," Quard
+presently ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know about that," Joan retorted pertly.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, the way other people see us. I shouldn't be surprised if
+everybody in the hotel thought we was married, girlie."</p>
+
+<p>Joan coloured faintly....</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the room-clerk knows better," she said definitely. "I'd like
+another cup of coffee, please."</p>
+
+<p>Quard snapped his fingers loudly to attract the attention of the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>He grew aware of an awkward silence: that the thoughts of both were
+converging to a common point.</p>
+
+<p>"Folks are fools that get married in the profession," he observed
+consciously. "It's all right if you've got a husband or I've got a wife
+at home&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see it," Joan interrupted smartly. "Anyway, <i>I</i> haven't. Have
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The actor stared, confused. "Have I&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Got a wife at home?" Joan repeated, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;nothing like <i>that</i>!" he asserted with intense earnestness. "I
+mean, it's all right if you've got somebody keeping a flat warm for you,
+some place not too far off Broadway; but if you marry into the
+business&mdash;good <i>night</i>! You got all the trouble of being tied up for
+life, and that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Managers don't want husband and wife in the same company. They're
+always fighting each other's battles when they ain't fighting between
+themselves. So you're always playing different routes, and the chances
+are they never cross except it's inconvenient and you get caught and
+nominated for the Alimony Club."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you belong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I just tell you nothing like that?" Quard protested with
+unnecessary heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Joan murmured mischievously, "you seem to know so much about it.
+I only wondered...."</p>
+
+<p>Their place on the bill was near the end, that week: a trick bicyclist
+followed them, and moving-pictures wound up the performance.
+Consequently, by the time they were able to leave the theatre in the
+afternoon the sun was already below the horizon. They emerged the same
+evening from the stage-door to view a cloudless sky of pulsing amber,
+shading into purple at the zenith, melting into rose along the western
+rim of the world. A wash of old rose flooded the streets, lifting the
+meanest structures out of their ugliness, lending an added dignity to
+rows of square-set, old-fashioned residences of red-brick with white
+marble trimmings.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way are you going?" Quard enquired as they approached the corner
+of a main thoroughfare. "Back to the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I'm sick of that hole," Joan replied with a vivid shudder. "I'm
+going to take a walk. Want to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to ask you."</p>
+
+<p>They turned off toward the Delaware.</p>
+
+<p>It was the twenty-first of November&mdash;winter still a month away; yet the
+breath of winter was in the air. It came up cool and brisk from the
+river, enriching the colour in Joan's cheeks that were bright and
+glowing from the scrubbing she always gave them after removing
+grease-paint with cold cream. The blood coursed tingling through her
+veins. Her eyes shone with deepened lustre. They walked with spirit, in
+step, in a pensive silence infrequently disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Quard presently offered without preface, "it's different in
+vodeveal, if you stick to it."</p>
+
+<p>"What's different?"</p>
+
+<p>"Being married."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's eyes widened momentarily. Then she laughed outright. "Gee! You
+don't mean to say you've been chewing <i>that</i> rag ever since breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I just happened to think of it again," said Quard with the air of
+one whose motives are wantonly misconstrued.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he wouldn't let the subject languish.</p>
+
+<p>"There's plenty of family acts been playing the circuits Gawd knows how
+long," he pursued, with a vast display of interest in the sunset glow.
+"Look't the Cohans, before George planted the American flag in Longacre
+Square and annexed it to the United States. And they ain't the only ones
+by a long shot. I could name a plenty that'll stick in the big time
+until their toes curl. It's all right to trot in double-harness so
+long's you manage your own company."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" Joan asked with a sober mouth and mischievous eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you're getting ready to slip me my two-weeks' notice, why not be a
+man and say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"What would I do that for?" Quard demanded indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you're thinking about getting married; and there's only room
+for one leading lady in any company I play in."</p>
+
+<p>"Quit your kidding," the man advised sulkily; "you know I couldn't get
+along without you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Joan admitted calmly, "<i>I</i> know it, but I didn't know you did."</p>
+
+<p>Quard shot a suspicious glance askance, but her face was immobile in its
+flawless loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>He started to say something, choked up and reconsidered with a painful
+frown. A mature man's perfect freedom is not lightly to be thrown away.
+And yet ... he doubted darkly the perfection of his freedom....</p>
+
+<p>They held on in silence until they came to Riverside Park.</p>
+
+<p>Over the dark profile of the Pennsylvania hills the sky was jade and
+amethyst, a pool of light that dwindled swiftly in the thickening shades
+of violet. Below them, as they paused on a lonely walk, the river stole
+swiftly, like a great black serpent writhing through the shadows. A
+frosty wind swept steadily into their faces, making cool and firm the
+flesh flushed with exercise. There was no one near them. A train of
+jewelled lights swept over the railroad bridge and vanished into the
+night with a purring rumble that lent an accent to their isolation. Joan
+hugged about her voluptuously her wonderful coat, stole a glance warm
+with gratitude at the face of Quard. He intercepted it, and edged
+nearer. Aglow and eager, she murmured something vapid about the
+prettiness of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>He answered only with the arm he passed about her. She suffered him,
+lashes veiling her eyes, her head at rest in the hollow of his shoulder.
+The man stared down at her exquisite, suffused face, luminous in the
+last light of gloaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," he said throatily&mdash;"girlie, don't you love me&mdash;a little?"</p>
+
+<p>Her mouth grew tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"I ... don't ... know," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you!" he cried suddenly in an exultant voice&mdash;"I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>He folded her, unresisting, in both his arms, covering her face with
+kisses, ardent, violent kisses that bruised and hurt her tender flesh
+but which she still sought and hungered for, insatiable. She sobbed a
+little in her happiness, feeling her body yield and yearn to his,
+transported by that sweet, exquisite, nameless longing....</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly she was like a steel spring in his embrace, writhing to
+free herself. Wondering, he tried to hold her closer, but she twisted
+and fended him off with all the power of her strong young arms. And
+still wondering, he humoured her. She drew away, but yet not wholly out
+of his clasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie!" she panted.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling!"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you get married in New Jersey?"</p>
+
+<p>He pulled up, dashed and a little disappointed, and laughed nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you get a license and then&mdash;well, almost anybody'll do to tie the
+knot."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded tensely: "I guess a regular minister will be good enough for
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess so," he demurred; and with another laugh: "I wasn't thinking
+serious' about it, but I guess I might's well be married as the way I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she said quietly, "we've <i>got</i> to. It's the only way...."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>And then, suddenly, the face of life was indescribably changed: Joan
+Thursday seemed but a memory, a slight and somehow wistful shadow in the
+shadowed depths of that darkling mirror, yesterday; in her place another
+creature altogether reigned, the Joan Quard of today, woman, actress,
+wife; with a gold band round her finger; mature, initiate of mysteries,
+ripe in wisdom; strong, poised serenely, clear of eye; with added
+graciousness in her beauty, conscious of added powers over Man, but
+discreet in their employment.</p>
+
+<p>She thought a great deal about herself in those days: not, perhaps, more
+than had been common with her in that so-dead yesterday, but much, and
+more profoundly; reading a new meaning into the riddle of existence, so
+changed had all things become since her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Before her pensive vision Life unfolded rare, golden-vista'd promises.</p>
+
+<p>With another man, or in another stratum of society, she might have
+fulfilled herself wonderfully, even unto her salvation....</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, she was very happy. Fond to distraction of her husband,
+she never doubted that he worshipped her; he gave her quick wits no
+cause to entertain a doubt. They were together always, inseparable. She
+felt that nature must truly have fashioned them solely for one another,
+and could not forget her wonder that their passion should be so mutual,
+so complete. She loved him to distraction: all his traits, his robust
+swagger, his sonorous and flexible tones, the flowery eloquence of his
+gesture, his broad, easy-going, tolerant good-humour, the way he wore
+his clothes and the very cut and texture of them. And she ruled him like
+a despot.</p>
+
+<p>Quard submitted without complaint. She was all his fancy had painted
+her, and something more; recognizing dimly that she excelled him
+variously (although he was quite incapable of analyzing these
+distinctions) he served her humbly, with unconscious deference to her
+many excellences. She was by way of making him a better wife than he
+deserved. If at times conscious of some little irk from her amiable but
+inflexible autocracy, he reminded himself that she was a finer woman
+than any he had ever known, well worth humouring: it wasn't on every
+corner a fellow'd pick up one like Joan.</p>
+
+<p>He liked to follow her into hotel lobbies and restaurants and watch
+people turn to eye her, the men with sudden interest, the women with
+instinctive hostility. It even amused him to quell a too-ambitious stare
+with a fixed, grim, and truculent regard backed by the menace of his
+powerful physique. It gave a man standing, license to swagger, to own a
+woman like Joan.</p>
+
+<p>He came to pander oddly to this vanity&mdash;would leave Joan to go to their
+room alone, while he strolled off to a bar to meet some crony or
+acquaintance of the day, tell his best story, and then suddenly excuse
+himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, s'long. The wife's waiting for me."</p>
+
+<p>The response rarely failed: "Ah, let her wait; have another drink. Did
+<i>I</i> ever tell you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A lifted, deprecatory palm, a knowing look: "No&mdash;guess I'll kick along;
+y'see, <i>she</i>'s some wife...."</p>
+
+<p>Conscious only of his adoration, Joan was enchanted by their mode of
+life, with its constant shifts of scene, its spice of vagabondage. She
+believed she could never tire of travelling.</p>
+
+<p>Railroad journeys, with their inevitable concomitants of dirt, noise,
+and discomfort, never discouraged her: she really liked them; they were
+taking her somewhere&mdash;it didn't much matter where. She even derived a
+sort of pleasure from such nauseating experiences as rising to catch a
+train at four-thirty in the morning, against their "long jumps." And
+there was keen delight in napping in a parlour-car chair or with a head
+upon her husband's shoulder in a day-coach, to wake all drowsy, breathe
+air foul with coal-smoke, and peer through a black window-pane (shadowed
+by her hand) to catch a glimpse of some darkly fulgent breadth of
+strange water, or the marching defile of great alien hills, or a sweep
+of semi-wooded countryside bleached with moonlight&mdash;remembering that,
+only a few short months ago, the world of her travels had been bounded
+by Fort George on the north, Coney Island on the south, knowing neither
+east nor west.</p>
+
+<p>She was discovering America: even as she was discovering Life....</p>
+
+<p>Their route from Trenton took them south through Philadelphia,
+Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Norfolk; whence they
+doubled back by steamer to New York, took a Sound boat to Fall River,
+played Boston, and drifted through New England in bitter cold weather,
+eventually striking westward again, via Albany, Buffalo, and the middle
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Quard drew her attention to the fact that it was "a liberal
+education...."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she thought pityingly of Matthias, and wondered if he knew she
+was married and what she was doing; and whether he were angry, or
+heart-broken, or eaten up with morbid jealousy; and how he would act
+should chance ever throw them together again. She was sorry for him: he
+had lost her. If only he had been a little more enterprising.... She
+wondered what would have happened if Matthias <i>had</i> been more
+enterprising; he could have possessed her at any time during the brief
+period of their infatuation. If he had married her then, would she be as
+contented as she was now, with Charlie? She doubted it; Quard was so
+completely his opposite....</p>
+
+<p>She ceased to worry about the ring. She meant to return it some day,
+perhaps. Though she did not wear it and had never so much as mentioned
+Matthias to Quard, it remained a possession whose charms tugged at her
+heart-strings. At times she amused herself formulating idle little
+intrigues, with the object (if ever set in motion) of excusing the
+appearance of the jewel upon her hand. But all her schemes seemed to
+possess some fatal flaw, and she was desperately afraid of the truth.
+Meanwhile, the ring lay perdue at the bottom of a work-basket of woven
+sweet-grass which she had purchased shortly after her marriage; twisted
+in an old, empty needle-paper and mixed in with a worthless confusion of
+trash, such as women accumulate in such receptacles, its hiding place
+was well calculated to escape detection by even an informed purloiner.</p>
+
+<p>Quard's tardy engagement ring was set with an inferior diamond flanked
+by artificial pearls. Joan despised it secretly. For a long time it was
+the sole blemish on the bright shield of her happiness....</p>
+
+<p>And then, the night of their opening day in Cincinnati, Quard escorted
+her from the theatre to the hotel, left her at the door, and turned back
+to "see a friend" who happened to be playing on the same bill.</p>
+
+<p>This was quite the usual thing, and Joan went contentedly off to her
+room and in due course to bed, confident that Quard would return within
+an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Five hours later she awoke to startled apprehension of the facts, first
+that she must have dropped off to sleep without meaning to, next that
+Quard had not returned, finally that it was past four o'clock in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>With a little shiver of sickening premonition she rose, slipped into a
+dressing-gown, called a bell-boy, and instructed him to look for her
+husband. Some time later the boy reported that the bar was closed and
+the gentleman not to be found.</p>
+
+<p>It was broad daylight when Quard staggered in with the assistance of
+the same bell-boy and his negro dresser. His eyes were glazed, his face
+ghastly, his mind wandered: he was as helpless as a child. With the aid
+of the boys, Joan managed to undress the man and put him to bed. At once
+he fell asleep, with the cold stump of a half-burned cigar obstinately
+clenched between his teeth. It was an hour before the muscles of his jaw
+relaxed enough to release it.</p>
+
+<p>Dressing, Joan left the hotel, swallowed some coffee and rolls,
+tasteless to her, in a nearby restaurant, and wandered about until eight
+o'clock, when she found a drug-store open, and consulted the clerk. He
+advised bromo seltzer and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Armed with these,
+she returned to her husband, and shortly after noon, daring to delay no
+longer, roused him by sprinkling cold water in his face&mdash;all other
+methods having failed even to interrupt his stertorous breathing. Even
+then it was some time before she could induce him to swallow the
+medicine, and it required no less than three powerful doses, together
+with much black coffee and followed by a cold bath, to restore him to
+presentable condition. In the end, however, she succeeded in getting him
+to the theatre in time for the matinée.</p>
+
+<p>Through it all she uttered no single word of reproach, but waited on the
+man with at least every outward sign of sympathy and devotion.</p>
+
+<p>His remorse (when another nap at the hotel after the matinée had brought
+him to more complete realization of what had happened) was touching and,
+as long as it lasted, unquestionably sincere. Joan accepted without
+comment his lame explanation as to the manner of his temptation and fall
+during an all-night session at poker "with the boys," and gave genuine
+credulity to his protestations that it would never, never happen again.</p>
+
+<p>But three weeks later in Chicago he repeated the performance, though
+under somewhat less distressing circumstances. As before, he left her in
+the lobby, "to finish his cigar and chin with Soandso." Within an hour
+he was half-led, half-carried to their room, in a hopelessly sodden
+condition. The actor with whom he had been drinking accompanied him,
+apparently quite sober, but puzzled; and after Quard had been helped to
+bed, explained to the girl that her husband's collapse had been
+incomprehensibly due to no more than three drinks.</p>
+
+<p>"I never seen nothin' like it!" the man expostulated, with an air of
+grievance. "There he was, standin' up against the bar, with his foot on
+the rail, laughin' and kiddin', same's the rest of us; and he'd only had
+three whiskeys&mdash;though I will say they was man-size drinks; and then,
+all of a sudden, he turns white as a sheet and starts mumblin' to
+himself, and we all thinks he's joshin' until he keels over, limp's a
+rag. If the stuff gets to him like that, he's got no business touchin'
+it, ever!"</p>
+
+<p>These experiences continued at varying intervals; and presently Joan
+began to understand that Quard had not only primarily a weakness to
+tempt him, but a constitutional inability to assert his will-power after
+he had surrendered to the extent of a single drink. One modest dose of
+alcohol seemed to exercise upon him a sort of hypnotic power, driving
+him on whether he would or not to the next, the next, and the
+next&mdash;until the nadir of unconsciousness was reached. It was not that he
+invariably succumbed to moderate indulgence, but that once started he
+rarely stopped until his identity was completely submerged. Indeed, the
+way of alcohol with him seemed never twice to follow the same route; but
+its end was invariably the same.</p>
+
+<p>Hoping against hope, fighting with him, pleading, reasoning, threatening
+with him, even praying, Joan endured for a long time&mdash;much longer than,
+in retrospective days, seemed possible even to her; for she was honestly
+fond of her husband, far more so than she was ever of any other living
+being save herself.</p>
+
+<p>They reached San Francisco the third week in April. For some time Quard
+had been drinking rather methodically but stealthily. A threat made by
+Joan, while he was sobering up from his last debauch, to the effect that
+on repetition of the offence she would leave him without an hour's
+notice, had frightened the man to the extent of making him hesitate to
+add one drink to another except at intervals long enough to retard the
+cumulative effect; but never a day passed on which, in spite of her
+watchfulness, he did not contrive to throw several sops to the devil in
+possession, if without ever quite losing his wits.</p>
+
+<p>Detected with reeking breath, he would adopt one of three attitudes: he
+was a man, subject to the domination of no woman and of no appetite, had
+learned his lesson and now knew when to stop; or he was sorry&mdash;hadn't
+stopped to think&mdash;and wouldn't let it go any further; or nothing of the
+sort had happened, he had drunk nothing except a glass of soda-fountain
+nerve-tonic, or possibly it was his cigar that she smelled. With the
+first, Joan had no patience; and since she had a temper, it was the last
+resort in Quard's more sober stages, seldom employed save when potations
+had made him either indifferent or vicious. In his contrition, whether
+real or assumed, she tried hard to believe. But his lies never deceived
+her: to these she listened in the silence of contempt and despair.</p>
+
+<p>On the Wednesday afternoon of their week in San Francisco, the girl did
+a bit of shopping after the matinée; it was half after five before she
+returned to the hotel, and walked into their room to find Quard, with
+his coat off, seated in a chair that faced the door. His back was to the
+windows, through which the declining sun threw a flood of blinding
+golden light, so that Joan's dazzled vision comprehended only the dark
+silhouette of his body.</p>
+
+<p>She said "Hello, dearie!" lightly enough in the abstraction of reviewing
+some especially pleasing purchases, closed the door, walked over to the
+bureau, put down her handbag and a small parcel, and removed her hat.
+Then the fact that Quard had not answered penetrated her reverie.
+Disposing of her hat, she looked half casually over her shoulder, to
+discover that he hadn't moved. Two surmises struck through her wonder:
+that he had fallen asleep waiting for her; with poignant apprehension,
+that he had been drinking again. But this seemed hardly likely: he had
+been entirely rational and unintoxicated during the matinée.</p>
+
+<p>She said sharply: "What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Quard made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>With a troubled sigh she moved to his chair and bent over him. His eyes,
+wide and blazing, met hers with a look of inflexible hostility and rage;
+his mouth was set like a trap, his lips, like his face, were almost
+colourless. The air was pungent with his breath, but intuitively she
+divined that it was not drunkenness alone which had aroused this temper,
+the more dismaying since it was for the time being under control.</p>
+
+<p>From the look in his eyes she started back as from a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie! What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Quard opened his lips, gulped spasmodically, closed them without
+speaking. The muscles on the left side of his face twitched nervously.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly he shot up out of his chair, strode to the door, locked it and
+pocketed the key. His face as he turned was terrible to see.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank away, but his eyes held hers in the fascination of fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;Charlie!&mdash;what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He interrupted with an imperative gesture, took a step toward her, and
+shook his hand in her face. Between his thumb and forefinger glittered
+something exquisitely coruscant in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" he demanded in a quivering voice.</p>
+
+<p>She moved her head in assumed bewilderment, staggered to recognize the
+symbol of her broken troth with Matthias.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. What is it? You keep moving it around so, I can't
+see...."</p>
+
+<p>"There, then!" he cried, steadying the hand under her nose.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively her gaze veered to her trunk. Its lid was up. On the floor
+lay her work-basket in the litter of its former contents. Her
+indignation mounted.</p>
+
+<p>"What were you doing in my trunk?" she demanded hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Quard's eyes clouded under the impact of this counter attack.
+Momentarily his dazed expression made it very plain that he had taken
+advantage of her absence to drink heavily. And this was even more plain
+in the blurred accents, robbed of the sharpness rage had lent them, in
+which he endeavoured to justify himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted&mdash;shew on s'pender button&mdash;wanted work-basket...."</p>
+
+<p>Anger returned; his voice mounted: "And I found this! What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan snatched at the ring, but he drew back his hand too quickly for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's mine. Give it to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you get it? Tha'sh what I wanna know!"</p>
+
+<p>"None of your business. Give it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"T' hell it ain't my business. I'm your husband&mdash;gotta right to know
+where you get diamonds"&mdash;he sneered&mdash;"diamonds like this! I never bought
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she flamed back; "you're too stingy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Stingy, am I?" He faltered swaying. "Tha'snough. I'm tightwad, so
+s'nother guy gets chansh to buy you diamonds. Tha's way of it, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"You give me that ring, Charlie," Joan demanded ominously.</p>
+
+<p>"You got anotha good guess coming. What I'll give you is jush two
+minutes to tell me name of the fellow't give it to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Charlie!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't intend to be fool&mdash;any longer. You tell me or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He checked, searching his befuddled mind for a compelling threat.</p>
+
+<p>With a shift of manner, Joan extended her hand in pleading.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the ring, Charlie, and be sensible. I haven't done anything
+wrong. I can explain."</p>
+
+<p>"Well...." Grudgingly he dropped the ring into her palm. But immediately
+her fingers had closed upon it, mistrust again possessed him. "Now, you
+tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she interrupted patiently. "You needn't shout. I don't mind
+telling you now. It's my engagement ring."</p>
+
+<p>"Your <i>what</i>?" sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"My engagement ring. I was engaged last summer to Mr. Matthias, before
+we began to rehearse the sketch."</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged?" he iterated stupidly. "Engaged for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged to be married. He was in love with me. I meant to marry him
+until you and I met the second time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Meant to marry who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Matthias. We&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Matthias? What Matthias?"</p>
+
+<p>"John Matthias, the author&mdash;the playwright. He wrote 'The Jade God.'"</p>
+
+<p>Quard wagged his head cunningly. "Y'mean to tell me you was engaged to
+that guy, and&mdash;didn't marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. I married you, didn't I, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"And if that's true, how't happen you didn't give'm back his ring?
+<i>Eh?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I meant to, Charlie, but he was out of town and I didn't know his
+address."</p>
+
+<p>"That's likely!" The actor laughed harshly. "Tha'sh <i>good</i> one, that is!
+You going to marry him, and didn't know his address. Expect me to
+believe that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, Charlie&mdash;it's God's truth."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a liar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"I say, you're a liar! Wha'sh more, I mean it."</p>
+
+<p>Quard waved his hand, palm down, to indicate his scornful disposition of
+her yarn. Then he staggered, steadied himself by clutching the back of a
+chair, and conscious how this betrayed his condition, worked himself
+into a towering rage to cover it.</p>
+
+<p>"I know better. 'F you'd ever got a chance to marry that feller, you'd
+'ve jumped at it. He'd never've got away. You wouldn't 've given him no
+more chance'n you did me&mdash;you'd 've pulled wool over his eyes same way.
+<i>I</i> know what'm talking about. You're a <i>liar</i>, a dam' dirty little
+liar, tha's what you are."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's colour deserted her face entirely.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie! don't you say that to me again."</p>
+
+<p>"And what'll you do? Think I care? I know what you'll do, all right,
+because I'm going make you do it."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wha's more, I know now who gave you that ring. I was fool not to guess
+it before. I didn't give it to you&mdash;no! Mist' Matthias didn't give it to
+you&mdash;no! But somebody <i>did</i> give it to you&mdash;<i>eh?</i> Tha's right, isn't it?
+And his name&mdash;'s name was <i>Vincent Marbridge</i>! Wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his inflamed face close to hers, leering wickedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Marbridge!" Joan echoed blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Vincent Marbridge&mdash;tha's the feller't give you the ring. He's the
+feller't could do it, too&mdash;got all the money in the world&mdash;enough to buy
+dozens'r rings&mdash;enough to buy you all them good clothes you got hold of
+after you threw me down and before I was ass enough to take up with you
+again! A' that, you were a fool not to get more outa him."</p>
+
+<p>The insult ate like an acid into the pride of the girl. She flushed
+crimson, then in an instant paled again. Her eyes grew cold and hard.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do," she said bitterly. "You've said enough&mdash;too much. After
+all I've endured from you&mdash;your drunkenness, your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was a maniac glare in the eyes of the man as he thrust his face
+still closer.</p>
+
+<p>"And what'll you do, eh?" he shouted violently. "What'll <i>you</i> do?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face aside, in disgust of his reeking breath.</p>
+
+<p>"And what'll <i>you</i> do? Tell me that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll leave you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You betcha life you'll leave me. I knew <i>that</i> before you come into
+this room!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm sorry I didn't go long ago&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The hell you are!" In a gust of uncontrollable frenzy, Quard struck her
+sharply over the mouth. "You go&mdash;d'you hear?&mdash;you damn'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In blind fury Joan flung herself upon him, sobbing, biting, scratching,
+kicking. He reeled back before that unexpected assault, then, sobered a
+trifle by its viciousness, caught her wrists, held her helpless for an
+instant, and threw her violently from him. She fell to her knees,
+lurched over on her side....</p>
+
+<p>The door slammed: he was gone.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a>
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>The door slammed. He was gone.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>She knew the man too well not to know he would make instantly for the
+nearest bar; the only question was what guise intoxication would assume
+in him, this time. It was possible that he would drink himself raving
+mad and return fit for murder.</p>
+
+<p>She must make her escape with all possible expedition....</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Joan sat up, dried her eyes, convulsively swallowed her sobs,
+and felt of her bruised mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Before her on the carpet the diamond ring winked sardonically in the
+sunset light.</p>
+
+<p>She pondered savagely the wide and deep damnation it had wrought in her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed impossible that only a few minutes had elapsed since she had
+entered this room, an affectionate, patient, and not unhappy wife. Now
+she sifted her heart and found in it not one grain of the love it had
+once held for Quard. This alone would have rendered irrevocable her
+decision to leave him.</p>
+
+<p>The thing was over&mdash;settled&mdash;finished.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a gesture of finality.</p>
+
+<p>With all her heart she hoped that the sketch would go to the devil
+without her....</p>
+
+<p>Rising, she went to the mirror, to stare incredulously at the face it
+presented for her inspection, a cruel caricature, lined, distorted,
+blowsy, stained with tears. At this vision, hysteria threatened again.</p>
+
+<p>With a great effort she fought it down, and controlled and smoothed out
+the muscles of her face. Now she was more recognizable. Even her mouth
+was not seriously disfigured; he had struck with the flat of his hand
+only; her lips were sore and slightly but not markedly swollen. A veil
+would disguise them completely.</p>
+
+<p>At the wash-stand she devoted some very valuable moments to sopping her
+face with cold water, and particularly her mouth and eyes. The treatment
+toned down the inflammation of weeping, rendered her flesh firm and cool
+once more, and left her with a feeling of spiritual refreshment, with
+nerves again under control and her will even more inalterably fixed than
+before.</p>
+
+<p>Rouge and powder completed her rejuvenescence.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to her trunk, she took out the tray&mdash;and paused with a low cry
+of consternation. From the tumbled and disordered state of its contents,
+it was plain that, having discovered the ring, Quard had searched
+diligently for further confirmation of his suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>With quickening breath, the girl dropped to her knees and hastily but
+thoroughly ransacked and turned out upon the floor all her belongings.
+Within a brief period she satisfied herself of one appalling fact: Quard
+had not only insulted and struck her and cast her off&mdash;he had stooped to
+rob her. Her hands were tied: she had not money enough to leave him.</p>
+
+<p>Probably, with the low cunning and fallacious reasoning of dipsomania,
+he had pouched her savings with that very thought in mind. Meaning to
+break with her, to have his scene and satisfy his lust for brutality, he
+had also planned to prevent Joan's leaving the cast of "The Lie" until a
+successor could be found and broken in. Penniless (he had argued) she
+would be obliged to play on, at least until Saturday, to earn her fare
+back East.</p>
+
+<p>It was Quard's practice to carry his money in large bills folded in a
+belt of oiled silk which he wore buckled round his waist, beneath his
+underclothing&mdash;with a smaller fund for running expenses in a leather
+bill-fold more accessibly disposed. But Joan (finding a money-belt
+uncomfortable because of her corsets) had adopted the shiftless plan of
+secreting her savings in a pocket contrived for that purpose in an old
+underskirt. And since she had always held her husband rigidly to account
+for her individual fifty dollars per week, she had managed thus to set
+aside about three hundred dollars. Unfortunately, it had been their
+habit to carry duplicate keys to one another's luggage by way of
+provision against loss.</p>
+
+<p>So that now she was left with less than twenty dollars in her
+pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>She paced the floor in wrathful meditation, pondering means and
+expedients. Once or twice she noticed the ring, but passed it several
+times before she paused, picked it up, and abstractedly placed it on her
+finger.</p>
+
+<p>It did not once occur to her that she could raise money by hypothecating
+the jewel at a pawn-shop: by hook or crook she was determined to regain
+her own money. She was wondering what good it would do her to threaten
+Quard with arrest. Had a wife any right to her earnings, under the law?</p>
+
+<p>After a time, she opened her handbag, found her personal bunch of keys,
+and unlocked her husband's trunk. Her pains, however, went for nothing;
+she investigated diligently every pocket of his clothing without
+discovering a piece of money of any description. But one thing she did
+find to make her thoughtful&mdash;Quard's revolver....</p>
+
+<p>Removing this last, she relocked the trunk and rang for a bell-boy. Then
+she put the weapon on the bureau and covered it with her hat.</p>
+
+<p>The youth who answered had an intelligent look. Joan appraised him
+narrowly before trusting him. She opened negotiations with a dollar tip.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to find my husband for me," she said. "If he's anywhere
+around the hotel, he'll probably be in the bar. But look everywhere, and
+then come and tell me. You needn't say anything to him. I just want to
+know where he is. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd know him if you saw him&mdash;Mr. Quard, the actor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. Hurry."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the boy was gone she turned again to her luggage, selecting
+indispensable garments and toilet articles and packing them in a
+suit-case. By the time a knock sounded again upon the door, she had the
+case strapped and locked.</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't nowhere about the house, ma'm," the bell-boy reported. "He was
+in the bar a while, but he's went out."</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded, was dumb in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want as I should go look for him, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you leave the hotel?" Joan asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just going off-duty now, ma'm; the night shift came on about ten
+minutes ago, at six o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think you could possibly find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He took a cab, ma'm. The driver's stand is in front of the hotel. If I
+can find him, I can find where your husband went. Anyhow, it ain't hard
+to follow up a gentleman as&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"As drunk!" Joan put in when the boy hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm."</p>
+
+<p>Joan weighed the chance distrustfully; but it was at least a chance, and
+this was no time to be careful. Taking a five-dollar gold-piece from her
+scanty store, she gave it to the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Go find him," she said. "And if he seems to know what he's doing&mdash;just
+hang around until he doesn't: he won't keep you waiting long. Then bring
+him to me. But first take this suit-case down to the Union Ferry house,
+check it in the baggage-room, and give me the check when you bring him
+back. And&mdash;don't say anything to anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm&mdash;no, ma'm."</p>
+
+<p>Supperless, she sat down to wait, Quard's revolver ready to her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight waned; night fell; hours passed. Motionless and imperturbable,
+Joan waited on, the tensity of her mood betrayed only by the burning of
+her baleful, dangerous eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past nine a noise of scuffling feet, gruff voices and heavy
+breathing in the hallway, following the clash of an elevator gate,
+brought her to her feet. Going to the bureau, she opened a drawer and
+put the revolver away.</p>
+
+<p>There would be no need of that, now.</p>
+
+<p>Answering a knock, she threw the door wide. Two porters staggered in,
+one with the shoulders, one with the feet of Quard. The bell-boy
+followed. When they had lugged to the bed that inert and insensate thing
+she had once loved, Joan tipped the men and they departed. The boy
+lingered.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything more I can do, ma'm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down on the Coast. I don't know what wouldn't've happened to him if you
+hadn't sent me after him. He was up an alley&mdash;had been stuck up by a
+couple of strong-arms. I seen 'em making their get-away just as I come
+in sight."</p>
+
+<p>She uttered a cry of despair: "Robbed&mdash;you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm. He ain't got as much's a nickel on him."</p>
+
+<p>Overwhelmed, Joan sank into a chair. The boy avoided her desolate eyes;
+he was a little afraid she might want part of the five dollars back.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't I better send the hotel doctor up, ma'm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she muttered dully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'm. And here's the check for your suit-case. Nothing else? Good
+night, ma'm."</p>
+
+<p>The door closed.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, Joan jumped up and ran to the bed in the alcove.</p>
+
+<p>Quard's condition was pitiable, but in her excited no compassion. His
+face was pallid as a death-mask save on one cheek-bone, where there was
+an angry and livid contusion. His hands were scratched, bleeding, and
+filthy, his clothing begrimed and torn, his pockets turned inside out.
+He seemed scarcely to breathe, and a thin froth flecked his slack and
+swollen lips.</p>
+
+<p>With feverish haste she unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and tugged at
+his undershirt. Then she sobbed aloud, a short, dry sob of relief. She
+had discovered the money-belt. In another minute she had unbuckled and
+withdrawn it from his body. She took it to the other room, to the light,
+and hastily undid its fastenings.</p>
+
+<p>There were perhaps two dozen fresh, new bills, for the most part of
+large denominations, folded once lengthwise to fit into the narrow
+silken tube; but someone knocked before she found time to reckon up
+their sum.</p>
+
+<p>Hastily cramming the money, together with the tell-tale belt, into her
+handbag, Joan took a deep breath and said "Come in!"</p>
+
+<p>There entered a grave man of middle-age, carrying a physician's satchel.</p>
+
+<p>He said, with a slight inclination of his head: "Mrs. Quard, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Joan gasped. She nodded toward the alcove: "Your patient's in
+there."</p>
+
+<p>He murmured some acknowledgment, turning away to the bedside. For
+several minutes he worked steadily over the drunkard. While she waited,
+her wits awhirl, Joan mechanically pinned on her hat.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat,
+turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing
+eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right.
+But I need your help. You were going out?"</p>
+
+<p>She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've
+got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the
+performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held
+up&mdash;all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. And you can do without him?"</p>
+
+<p>"His understudy'll take his part&mdash;we'll manage somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance&mdash;a trained nurse."</p>
+
+<p>"Do, please, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>He moved toward the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back in about an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Mrs. Quard."</p>
+
+<p>He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it....</p>
+
+<p>Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through
+a side door to the street.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her
+transcontinental flight.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his
+feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window,
+began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not
+come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer
+mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned,
+discovered only an empty impasse.</p>
+
+<p>Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair,
+and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air
+fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like
+that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And
+truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for
+all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson
+border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed
+them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up.
+Curious whim of hers! Curious weather!</p>
+
+<p>Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to
+investigate these unseasonable phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones,
+conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid
+opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow
+sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim
+overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the
+earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an
+improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.</p>
+
+<p>At an open window across the way a public-spirited and extremely pretty
+young woman appeared with a towel pinned round her shoulders and let
+down her hair, a shimmering cascade of gold for the sun's rays to wanton
+with and, incidentally, to dry.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere at a distance a cracked old piano-organ was romping and
+giggling rapturously through the syncopated measures of Tin Pan Alley's
+latest "rag."</p>
+
+<p>A vision drifted before Matthias' eyes, of the green slopes of
+Tanglewood, the white château on its windy headland, the ineffable blue
+of the Sound beyond....</p>
+
+<p>Incredulous, he turned to consult his calendar: the day was Wednesday,
+the seventeenth of April.</p>
+
+<p>It was true, then: almost without his knowledge the bleak and barren
+Winter had worn away and Spring had stolen upon Town, flaunting,
+extravagant, shy and seductive, irresistible Spring....</p>
+
+<p>For a little Matthias held back in doubt, with reluctant thoughts of his
+work. Then&mdash;all in a breath&mdash;he caught up hat and stick, slammed the
+door behind him, and blundered forth to fulfill his destiny....</p>
+
+<p>She was seated on a bench, in a retired spot sheltered from the breeze,
+open to the sun, when Matthias, having swung round the upper reservoir,
+came at full stride down the West Drive, his blood romping, his eyes
+aglow, warm colour in his face: for the first time in half a year
+feeling himself again, Matthias the lover of the open skies divorced
+from Matthias of the midnight lamp and the scored and intricate
+manuscripts&mdash;that Matthias whom the world rejected.</p>
+
+<p>At a word, her companion rose and moved to intercept him; and at the
+sound of his name, Matthias paused, wondering who she could be, this
+strange, sweet-faced woman, plainly dressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" he said, lifting his hat. "I am Mr. Matthias&mdash;yes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Marbridge would like to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>His gaze veered quickly in the direction indicated by her brief nod. He
+saw Venetia waiting, and immediately went to her, in his surprise
+forgetful of the woman who had accosted him. This last moved slowly in
+the other direction and sat down out of earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"This is awfully good of you, Venetia," he said, bending over her hand.
+"I didn't see you, of course&mdash;was thinking of something else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I was thinking of you," she said. "I've been wanting to see you for
+a long time, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely Helena could have told you where to find me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew we'd run across one another, somehow, somewhere, sometime&mdash;today
+or tomorrow, without fail. So I was content to do without the offices of
+Helena. Do sit down. I want so much to talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Most completely yours to command," he said lightly, and took the place
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>But his heart was on his lips and in his eyes, and Venetia was far from
+blind.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me about yourself," she asked. "It's been so long since I've
+had any news!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible? I should have imagined my doting aunt&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted with a slight, negative smile and shake of her head:
+"Helena doesn't approve of me, you know, and of late there has been a
+decided coolness between the families. I'm afraid George fell out with
+Vincent for some reason&mdash;not too hard to guess, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>He looked away, colouring with embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"So," she pursued evenly&mdash;"about yourself: are you married yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias started, laughed frankly. "You didn't know about that,
+either?... Well, it's true even Helena couldn't have told you much, for
+I told her nothing.... No, I'm neither married, nor like to be."</p>
+
+<p>"She was so very sweet and pretty&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Joan was wholly charming," he agreed gravely, "but&mdash;well, I fancy it
+was inevitable. We were lucky enough to be obliged to endure a
+separation of some weeks before, instead of after, marriage; and so we
+had time to think. At least, she must have foreseen the mistake we were
+on the point of making, for the break was her own doing&mdash;not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"You think it would have been a mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, unquestionably. I confess I'd not have known it, probably, until
+too late, if she hadn't made me think when she threw me over. I hope it
+doesn't sound caddish&mdash;but I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief
+when I got back from California and found she'd cleared out without
+leaving me a line."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand. And did you never hear from her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not from&mdash;by accident, <i>of</i> her. She was predestined for the stage&mdash;I
+can see that clearly now, though I objected then. She was offered a
+chance during my absence, jumped at it, and made a sort of a half-way
+hit in a very successful sketch which, oddly enough, I happened to have
+written&mdash;under a pseudonym. It had been kicking round my agent's office
+for a year; he didn't believe in it any more than I did; and I
+disbelieved in it hard enough to be ashamed to put my own name to it.
+That's often the way with a fellow's work; one always believes in the
+cripples, you know.... Well, some actor chanced to get hold of the
+'script one day, fell in love with it and put it on with Joan as his
+leading woman. If it had been anybody else's sketch, I'd never have
+known what became of her, probably. As it was, I knew nothing until I
+got back from the Coast.... I believe they got married very shortly
+after it was produced; and now they're playing it all over the country.
+Odd, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very," Venetia smiled. "And so your heart wasn't broken?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head and laughed: "No!"</p>
+
+<p>But a spasm of pain shot through his eyes and deceived the woman a
+little longer.</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you been doing?" she pursued, meaning to distract him. "I
+mean, your work?"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged. "Oh, I've had an average luckless year. To begin with,
+Rideout fell down on his production of 'The Jade God'&mdash;the only time it
+ever had a chance to get over&mdash;and a man named Algerson bought his
+contract and put it on at his stock theatre in Los Angeles. That's why I
+went out there&mdash;to see it butchered."</p>
+
+<p>"It failed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Extravagantly!"</p>
+
+<p>"But didn't you once have a great deal of confidence in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every play is a valuable property until it's produced," he answered,
+smiling. "This one was killed by its production. Nothing was right: it
+needed scenery, and what they gave it had served a decade in stock; it
+needed actors, and what actors were accidentally permitted to get into
+the cast got the wrong rôles; finally, it needed intelligent stage
+direction, and that was supplied by the star, whose idea of a good play
+is one in which he speaks everybody's lines <i>and</i> his own. Then they
+rewrote most of the best scenes and botched them horribly."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't stop them?"</p>
+
+<p>"When I attempted to interfere, I was told civilly to go to the devil.
+Under my contract, I could have stopped them: but that meant suing out
+an injunction, which in turn meant putting up a bond, and&mdash;I didn't have
+the money."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry, Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's all in the game. I learned something, at least. But the
+greatest harm it did me was to sap the faith of managers here. One
+man&mdash;Wylie&mdash;who was under contract to produce my 'Tomorrow's People,'
+paid me on January first a forfeit of five hundred dollars rather than
+run the risk after 'The Jade God.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And so you lost both plays?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; I still have 'Tomorrow's People,' and only a short time ago
+signed up with a manager who isn't afraid of his shadow. We'll put it on
+next Autumn."</p>
+
+<p>"And you believe in that, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it will go," Matthias asserted with level confidence. "It's only
+a question of intelligence at the producing end&mdash;and I've arranged to
+get that."</p>
+
+<p>"And meanwhile&mdash;you've been working?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh"&mdash;he spread out his hands&mdash;"one doesn't stop, you know. It's too
+interesting!"</p>
+
+<p>And then he laughed again. "But, you see, you flatter a fellow into
+talking his head off about himself! Forgive me, and let me do a little
+cross-examining. How are you? And what have you been doing? You&mdash;you
+know, Venetia&mdash;you're looking more exquisitely pretty than ever!"</p>
+
+<p>And so she was&mdash;more strangely lovely than ever in all the long span of
+their friendship: with a deeper radiance in her face, a clearer, more
+translucent pallor, in her eyes a splendour that lent new dignity to
+their violet-shadowed mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that," she said quietly. She folded listless hands in her
+lap, her eyes seeking distances. "I'm going to be very happy ... I
+think...."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>That she wasn't happy now, he could well understand: that Marbridge was
+behaving badly was something rather too broadly published by the very
+publicity of his methods. Marriage had not been permitted to
+interfere&mdash;at least, not after his return from Europe&mdash;with the ordinary
+tenor of his bachelor ways. Matthias himself had seen him not
+infrequently in theatres and restaurants, but only once in company with
+Venetia&mdash;most often he had been dancing attendance upon a Mrs. Cardrow:
+she who had given her lips to Matthias, thinking him Marbridge, that
+long-ago night at Tanglewood. She was said to be stage-struck; and
+Marbridge was rumoured to be deeply, though quietly, involved in the
+financing of certain theatrical enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, then, Venetia must know what everybody knew, and be unhappy in
+that knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>But now she was so calmly confident that she was "going to be happy"!</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if she were contemplating divorce....</p>
+
+<p>And then in a flash he understood. That woman who had stopped him was
+not of Venetia's caste; if he guessed not wildly, she was a nurse. And
+Venetia afoot instead of in her limousine....</p>
+
+<p>She turned her eyes to his, smiling with a certain diffident, sweet
+sedateness. "You didn't know, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, looking quickly away.</p>
+
+<p>"But you've guessed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Her hand fell lightly over his for a single instant. "Then be glad for
+me, Jack," she begged gently. "It's&mdash;it's compensation."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," he said, "and I'm truly very glad. It's kind of you
+to&mdash;to tell me, Venetia."</p>
+
+<p>"It changes everything," she said pensively: "all my world is changed,
+and I am a new strange woman, seeing it with new eyes. I have learned so
+much&mdash;and in so short a time&mdash;I can hardly believe it. To think, it's
+not a year since that time at Tanglewood&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please!" he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, Jack. But it's that I wanted to talk to
+you about. You won't mind, when you understand, as I have learned to
+understand.... I tell you, I'm altogether another woman. Marriage is
+like learning to live in a foreign land, but motherhood is another
+world. I find it difficult to realize Venetia of a year ago: she's like
+some strange creature I once knew but never quite understood. And yet,
+little as I understood her, I can make excuses for her: I know her
+impulses were not bad. I know, better than she knew ... she loved you,
+Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not say that, Venetia!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it's true, my dear, most true," she insisted in her voice of gentle
+magic. "The rest ... was just madness, the sort of madness that some men
+have the power to&mdash;to kindle in women. It's a deadly power, very
+terrible, and they&mdash;who have it&mdash;use it as carelessly as children
+playing with matches and gunpowder&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I understand, Venetia, I understand! Don't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;let me tell you. I've got to, Jack. I've had this so long in my
+heart to tell you!... You must be patient with me, this once, and
+listen.... You must know that I loved you then when I&mdash;ran to you&mdash;threw
+myself into your arms&mdash;made you ask me to marry you and promised I would
+and&mdash;and thought that I was safe from <i>him</i> because of my promise. But I
+didn't know myself&mdash;nor him. He seemed able to make his will my law so
+easily&mdash;so strangely!... Even when I ran away with him, I knew that
+happiness could never come of it.... It was just the madness ... I
+couldn't help myself ... I just could not <i>help</i> myself.... And
+then&mdash;ah, but I have paid for my madness&mdash;many times over!..."</p>
+
+<p>For the moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. The woman bent
+forward to gain a glimpse of his half-averted face, and searched it
+anxiously with her haunted eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You do understand, Jack?... You forgive?..."</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any question of forgiveness," he said. "And I always
+understood&mdash;half-way. You know that&mdash;you must have known it, or you
+couldn't have said&mdash;what you have&mdash;to me."</p>
+
+<p>The woman laughed a little, tender, broken laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad!" she said softly. "Perhaps it's wrong.... But you've made
+me a little happier. I have needed so desperately someone to confess
+to&mdash;someone on whose sympathy I could count. And&mdash;Jack&mdash;the only one in
+the world was you.... You&mdash;you've helped."</p>
+
+<p>She rose, holding out both hands to him, and as he took them and held
+them tight he saw that her lovely eyes were wide and dim with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You've proved my faith in you," she said&mdash;"my gentle man&mdash;my knight
+sans peur et sans reproche!"</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head to her hands, but before his lips could touch them,
+very gently she drew them away, and turned and left him.</p>
+
+<p>Bareheaded and wondering, for a long time he stood staring at the spot
+where, in company with the nurse, she had disappeared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan
+had reserved for her sole accommodation&mdash;in spite of the strain of
+thrift ingrained in her nature&mdash;she retired to it, buttoned securely the
+heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that
+state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then,
+by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out
+the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from
+Quard.</p>
+
+<p>The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She
+hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash.</p>
+
+<p>Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat
+packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of
+her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The
+remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to
+New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in
+one of her stockings.</p>
+
+<p>Then extinguishing the light, she lay back, but not to sleep. The
+pressure of her emotions was too strong to let her lose touch with
+consciousness. As a general rule, sleeping-cars had no terrors for Joan;
+never a nervous woman, her thoroughly sound and healthy organization
+permitted her to sleep almost at will, even under such discouraging
+circumstances as those provided by modern railway accommodations. But
+that night she lay awake till dawn flushed the windows with its wash of
+grey, awake and staring wide of eye into the gloom of her section,
+listening to the snores of conscienceless neighbours, and thinking,
+thinking&mdash;thinking endlessly and acutely.</p>
+
+<p>But they were thoughts singularly uncoloured by remorse for what she had
+done or fear of its consequences.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in the least sorry she had taken Quard's money; she was
+glad. The mere amount of it was proof enough for Joan that her husband
+had lied to her about the earnings of the sketch, had lied from the very
+beginning; otherwise he could by no means have laid by so much in the
+term of their booking to date. And for that, he deserved to suffer. She
+was only sorry he might not be made to understand how heavily he was
+paying for those months of deception. But that was something Quard would
+never know: with the story of the bell-boy he must be content; he must
+go through life placing the blame of his misfortune upon the heads of
+those nameless "stick-up men" of the Barbary Coast.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was he likely to suffer otherwise. Joan was confident the man would
+manage somehow to find his feet financially, almost as soon as
+physically. A telegram to his agent, Boskerk, would bring him aid if all
+else failed; the play was too constant an earner of heavy commissions
+for Boskerk to let it fall by the wayside for lack of a few hundred
+dollars. So was it too strong a "draw" on the vaudeville circuits to be
+blacklisted and barred by managers because of the temporary break-down:
+something which Quard would readily explain and excuse (and Joan could
+imagine how persuasively) with his moving yarn of foot-pads and
+knock-out drops. Nor would it be more than a temporary break-down; with
+Quard restored to his senses, the absence of the leading woman would
+prove merely a negligible check. Joan entertained no illusions as to her
+indispensability: once, in Denver, when she had been out of the cast for
+two consecutive performances, suffering with an ulcerated tooth, another
+actress had gone on and actually read the part from manuscript without
+materially lessening the dramatic effect of the playlet as a whole.
+Other women by the score could be found to fill her place acceptably
+enough, if few as handsomely (Joan soothed her pride with this
+reservation). "The Lie" would go on its conquering way without
+her&mdash;never fear!</p>
+
+<p>And Quard? Joan curled a lip: <i>he</i> wouldn't pine away for her. She had
+come to know too well his shallow bag of tricks; and life to him was not
+life if he lacked one before whose dazzled vision he could air his
+graces and accomplishments&mdash;strut and crow and trail a handsome wing in
+the dust. Looking back she could see very clearly, now, how love had
+waned as soon as lust was sated in the man. That night in Cincinnati had
+been the turning point: he had refrained from drink only as long as his
+wife continued to intoxicate his senses.</p>
+
+<p>And Joan?... In the stifling gloom of her curtained section the girl
+stretched luxuriously, breathed deep, and smiled a secret, enigmatic
+smile. No more than he, would she waste herself away with grief and
+longing. She was no longer another's but now her own mistress: a free
+adventurer, by the gold band upon her finger licensed to cruise with
+letters of marque.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before sunrise she fell asleep, still smiling, and slept on
+sweetly well into mid-morning. Then, rising, she refreshed herself in
+the wash-room, and went to a late breakfast with countenance as clear
+and firm and bright as if she had never known a wakeful hour.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of men followed her wherever she moved, and when she was seated
+alone in her section, dreaming over a magazine or gazing pensively out
+of the window, men discovered errands that took them to and fro in her
+vicinity more often than was warranted by any encouragement she gave
+them. For she gave them none, she ignored them every one. She was
+through with Man for good and all!</p>
+
+<p>It was a brand new rôle, and to play it diverted her immensely for the
+time being....</p>
+
+<p>She spent the greater part of her waking hours, during the next few
+days, planning what she would do with all that money. Clothes, of
+course, figured ever first in these projections, and then a suite of
+rooms at some ostentatious hotel, and taxicabs when she went out to call
+on managers. How many times hadn't she heard Maizie Dean solemnly affirm
+that "a swell front does more to put you in <i>right</i> than anything else,
+with them lowlifers"?</p>
+
+<p>And again she was pleasurably diverted by a vision of herself,
+extravagantly gowned, returning to recount her Odyssey to an admiring
+audience composed of Ma, Edna, and, perhaps, Butch; at the close of
+which she would distribute largesse, not forgetting to return Butch's
+loan with open-handed interest, and go on her way rejoicing, pursued by
+envious benedictions....</p>
+
+<p>New York received her like a bridegroom, clothed in April sunshine as in
+a suit of golden mail, amazingly splendid and joyous. After that weary
+grind of inland towns and cities, differing one from another only in
+degrees of griminess, greyness, and dullness, New York seemed Paradise
+Regained to Joan. She had not believed it could seem so beautiful, so
+magnificent, so sensuously seductive.</p>
+
+<p>In the exaltation of that delirious hour she plunged madly into a
+department store near the Pennsylvania Station, even before securing
+lodgings, and bought herself a pair of cheap white kid gloves, simply
+for the sheer voluptuousness of possessing once again something newly
+purchased in New York.</p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of an orgy. Joan hadn't thought how shabby and
+travel-worn she must seem until she donned those fresh and staring
+gloves and saw them in relief against the wrinkled and dusty garments
+she had worn across the continent.</p>
+
+<p>Thoughtful, she sought a nearby mirror and looked herself over, then
+shook her head and turned away to check her suit-case at the parcels
+desk and surrender herself body and mind to the sweet dissipation of
+clothing herself afresh from top to toe....</p>
+
+<p>But first of all she visited the hairdressing and manicuring department:
+she meant to be altogether spick-and-span before venturing forth to woo
+and win anew this old and misprized lover, her New York.</p>
+
+<p>It was the head saleswoman of the suit department whose remote disdain
+led Joan deeper into extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had selected a taffeta costume which, while by no means the
+most expensive or the handsomest in stock, possessed the advantage of
+fitting well her average figure, requiring no alterations. On paying for
+it she announced her desire to put it on at once and have her old suit
+sent home.</p>
+
+<p>"Reully?" drawled the saleswoman, disappointed in her efforts to induce
+the girl to buy a higher-priced suit which did require alterations.
+Conjuring a pencil from the fastnesses of her back-hair, she produced an
+order pad. "Miss&mdash;what did you say? Ah, Thursday! Thanks. What numba,
+please? <i>Is</i> it in the city?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed, but controlled her impulse to wither and blast this
+insolent animal.</p>
+
+<p>"The Waldorf-Astoria," she said quietly&mdash;though never once had she
+ventured within the doors of that establishment&mdash;and withdrew in triumph
+to make her change of clothing.</p>
+
+<p>And having committed herself to this extent, she enjoyed ordering
+everything sent to that hotel, which in her as yet somewhat naïve
+understanding was synonymous with the last word in the sybaritism of
+metropolitan life.</p>
+
+<p>Her long experience on the road had served thoroughly to break her in to
+the ways of hotels, however, and she betrayed no diffidence in the
+matter of approaching the room-clerk for accommodations. Nor did she,
+apparently, find anything dismaying in the price she was asked to pay
+for a bedroom with private bath. It was only when, at length relieved
+of the attentions of the bell-boy whose unconcealed admiration alone was
+worth the quarter Joan gave him as a tip, she had inspected first her
+new quarters and then herself in a pier-glass, that the girl gave
+herself over to alternate tremors of self-approval and trepidation.
+These last were only increased when she reckoned up the money she had
+left, and appreciated how much she had spent in that one wild afternoon
+of shopping.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, she reminded herself, a complete new wardrobe was a
+necessity to one whose former outfit was lost beyond recall. Quard would
+never have forwarded the clothing she had left behind in San Francisco,
+even if she could have found the effrontery to write and demand it. And
+if she had expended upwards of five hundred dollars since reaching New
+York, there was less extravagance in that than might have been
+suspected; she had purchased cannily in almost every instance and, at
+worst, but few things that she could well have done without in that
+sphere of life to which she felt herself called.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of unwrapping those parcels which began presently to
+arrive in shoals, and of reviewing such purchases as she had not worn to
+the hotel on her back, in time completely reassured her. It was with the
+composure of restored self-confidence and esteem that she presently went
+down to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Conscious that she was looking her handsome best in a modish afternoon
+gown, she was able to receive the attentions of the head-waiter with
+just the proper degree of indifference, to order a simple meal and
+consume it appreciatively without seeming aware that she dined in
+strange surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>But all the while she was consumed with admiration of herself for her
+audacity, as well as with not a little awe-stricken wonder at the child
+of fortune, who in the space of one brief year&mdash;of less, indeed, than
+that full period&mdash;had risen from the stocking-counter of a department
+store and the squalor and poverty of East Seventy-sixth Street to the
+dignity of a leading woman and the affluence of lodging at the Waldorf!</p>
+
+<p>True, she now lacked an engagement; but she had to support her demands
+for new employment the prestige of a successful season with "The
+Lie"&mdash;"the vaudeville sensation of the year," as Quard had truthfully
+described it.</p>
+
+<p>Need she fret herself with vain questionings of an inscrutable future,
+who had made such amazing progress in so short a time?</p>
+
+<p>Surely she was justified in assuming that the end for her was not yet,
+that she was dedicated to some far richer and more gorgeous destiny than
+any she had ever conceived in her most wild imaginings.</p>
+
+<p>She had only to watch herself: she was her own sole enemy, with her
+fondness for the admiration of men and their society. Let them realize
+that weakness, and she was lost, doomed to the way too many capable
+girls had gone, to the end of infamy and despair. But if only she had
+the wit and art to make men think her weakness theirs....</p>
+
+<p>And that much Joan was sure she possessed: she believed she had learned
+to know Man better than herself.</p>
+
+<p>She meant to go far, now, a great deal farther than she had ever thought
+to go in those quaint, far-off days when the crown of her ambition had
+been to paint her pretty face, wear silken tights upon her pretty legs,
+and beat a drum in the chorus of Ziegfield's Follies.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>After dinner Joan treated herself to the experience of lounging in one
+of the corridors of the hotel, the one (she fancied: she wasn't sure)
+known through the Town as "Peacock Alley."</p>
+
+<p>She pretended to be waiting for somebody, made her gaze seem more
+abstracted than demure. Inwardly she quivered with the excitement, the
+exaltation of forming a part of that rich and sensuous scene.</p>
+
+<p>There were women all about her, many women of all ages and from every
+grade of society, alike in one respect alone, that they were radiantly
+dressed and, like Joan, found pleasure in sunning themselves in the
+soft, diffused glow of the many shaded electric lamps as well as in the
+regard, as a rule less shaded, of that endless parade of men who moved,
+sometimes alone, again with other men, more commonly with women,
+continually from one part to another of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Muted strains from an excellent orchestra, not too near, added the final
+touch of enchantment to this ensemble.</p>
+
+<p>Entranced though, indeed, seeming little more conscious of her
+surroundings than one in a day-dream, Joan was acutely sensitive to all
+that passed in her vicinity. Not a woman came within the range of her
+vision without being critically inspected, dissected, analyzed,
+catalogued, both as to her apparel and as to the foundations for her
+pretensions to social position or beauty. Not a man strolled by, were he
+splendid in evening dress or merely "smart" in the ubiquitous "sack
+suit" of the period, without being scrutinized and appraised with a
+minute attention to detail that would have flattered him had it been
+less covert.</p>
+
+<p>Joan felt the lust for this life burning like a fire through all her
+being: there was nothing she could imagine more desirable than to live
+always as lived, apparently, these hundreds of well-groomed,
+high-spirited, carefree people....</p>
+
+<p>She had been steeping her soul in the blandishments of this atmosphere
+for fully half an hour, and was beginning to think it time to return to
+her room, when she was momentarily startled out of her assumed
+preoccupation by sight of one who hadn't been far from her thoughts at
+any time since her break with Quard.</p>
+
+<p>He came walking her way from the general direction of the bar, with
+another man&mdash;both attired as richly as masculine conventions permit in
+America, and not altogether unconscious of the fact, each in his way
+guilty of a mild degree of swagger. Of the two, the one betraying the
+most ease and freedom from ostentation was one known to Joan, chiefly
+through the medium of his portraits published in <i>The Morning Telegraph</i>
+and other theatrical organs, as "Arlie" Arlington, a producing manager
+locally famous both for his wit and the shrewdness and success with
+which he contrived to gauge, year in, year out, public taste in musical
+comedies. Broadway had tagged him "the only trustworthy friend of the
+Tired Business Man." Infrequently Arlington adventured in plays without
+music or dancing, but as a rule with far less success.</p>
+
+<p>His companion, the man whom, Joan felt, she had been subconsciously
+waiting for ever since entering the hotel, was Vincent Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>She was impressed with the appositeness of his appearance there to her
+unexpressed desire, this man who had been so plainly struck by her
+charms at first sight and who was credited with silent partnership in
+many of Arlington's enterprises. And comprehending for the first time
+fully how much she had been subjectively counting on meeting him again
+and enlisting his sympathies&mdash;his sympathies at least&mdash;she steeled
+herself against the shock of recognition, lest she betray her fast
+mounting anxiety. He must not for a moment be permitted to suspect she
+considered him anything but the most distant of acquaintances or
+believed him to have been the anonymous author of that magnificent gift
+of roses....</p>
+
+<p>But Marbridge passed without seeing her, at all events without knowing
+that he saw her. Rolling a little as he walked, with that individual
+sway of his body from the hips, he leaned slightly toward Arlington and
+gesticulated with immense animation while recounting some inaudible
+anecdote which seemed to amuse both men mightily. And in the swing of
+his narrative his glance, wandering, flickered across Joan's face and on
+without in the least comprehending her as anything more than a lay
+figure in a familiar setting.</p>
+
+<p>But Arlington, less distracted, looked once keenly, and after he had
+passed turned to look again.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this balm to her vanity, Joan flushed with chagrin. She knew
+in her heart that Marbridge had not other than inadvertently slighted
+her; yet she felt the cut as keenly as though it had been grossly
+intentional.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she waited there for many minutes more, in the hope that he
+would return and this time know her.</p>
+
+<p>At length, however, she saw the two men again, at some distance,
+standing by the revolving doors at the Thirty-third Street entrance.
+Both now wore top-coats and hats. Marbridge was still talking, and
+Arlington listening with the same expression of faintly constrained but
+on the whole genuine amusement. And almost as soon as Joan discovered
+them, they were joined by two women in brilliant evening gowns and
+wraps. An instant later the party was feeding itself into the
+inappeasable hopper of the revolving door, and so disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A prey to a sudden sensation of intense loneliness and
+disappointment&mdash;and with this a trace of jealousy; for in spite of the
+distance she had been able to see that both women were very
+lovely&mdash;Joan got up and returned to her room....</p>
+
+<p>An hour later she rose from a restless attempt to go to sleep, went to
+the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to find out whether or
+not Mr. Vincent Marbridge was a guest of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The answer was in the affirmative, if modified by the information that
+the party wasn't in just then.</p>
+
+<p>Intensely gratified, the girl went back to bed and promptly fell asleep
+formulating ingenious schemes to meet Marbridge by ostensible accident.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day she lunched at the hotel, spent two fruitless hours
+in its public corridors between tea time and time to dress for dinner,
+and another in Peacock Alley after dinner, seeing nothing whatever of
+Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>And the day after provided her with a fatiguing repetition of this
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>She began to be tremendously bored by this mode of existence, to sense
+the emptiness, the vapidity of hotel life for a friendless woman.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice she revived and let her fancy play about her project to
+revisit her family in the guise of Lady Bountiful, but only to defer its
+execution against the time when she could go to them with another
+engagement to drive home the stupendous proportions of her success.</p>
+
+<p>Besides (she told herself) they seemed to be worrying along without her,
+all right. If they cared anything about her, they could have written, at
+least; Edna had the West Forty-sixth Street address....</p>
+
+<p>Not once or twice but many a time and oft she found herself yearning
+back to the homely society of the Sisters Dean's salon in the
+establishment of Madame Duprat. And though she held back from revisiting
+the house through fear of meeting Matthias, she wasted many an hour
+promenading Broadway from Thirty-eighth Street north to Forty-eighth,
+in the hope of encountering Maizie or May or one of their friends.</p>
+
+<p>But it was singularly her fate to espy not one familiar face among the
+multitude her wistful eyes reviewed during those dreary mid-afternoon
+patrols.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody she knew, it would seem, was either busy or resting out of
+town.</p>
+
+<p>On her fourth morning at the Waldorf, reading <i>The Morning Telegraph</i>
+over the breakfast tray in her room, Joan ran across an illuminating
+news item that carried a Buffalo date line. It chronicled the first
+performance of Arlington's most recent venture, "Mrs. Mixer," announced
+as a satirical comedy of manners by an author unknown either to Joan or
+to fame, and projected by Arlington as a vehicle to exploit the putative
+talents of Nella Cardrow, "the stage's latest recruit from the Four
+Hundred." The Buffalo performance was, it appeared, the first of a
+fortnight's trial on the road, following which the production was to be
+withdrawn pending a metropolitan début in the Autumn.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the first night was infused with a thinly sarcastic humour.</p>
+
+<p>"After the final curtain," it pursued, "the audience filed reverently
+from the house, omitting flowers, and Arlie Arlington broke a track
+record reaching the nearest Western Union office to summon several
+well-known ante-mortem specialists of New York to the bedside of the
+patient. Meanwhile, Vincent Marbridge was hastily organized into a posse
+of one to prevent Undertaker Cain from laying hands upon the sufferer
+and carting it off to what might prove premature interment in the
+mausoleum of his celebrated storage warehouses...."</p>
+
+<p>Dropping the paper, Joan went directly to the telephone and asked the
+office to have her bill ready within an hour's time.</p>
+
+<p>From this she turned to pack her new possessions in a trunk as new.</p>
+
+<p>It had never occurred to her that Marbridge might have left the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Now she said that it was "just her luck!..."</p>
+
+<p>By one o'clock that afternoon she had shifted bag and baggage to a
+stuffy and poorly furnished bedchamber in a crowded, noisy, and not
+overclean theatrical hotel situated on a corner of Longacre Square.</p>
+
+<p>This establishment consisted of an old and rambling structure of four
+storeys, of which the street floor was given over to tradesmen. An
+all-night drug-store held the corner shop, while other subdivisions were
+occupied by a "tonsorial parlor," a dairy-lunch room in the favour of
+many taxicab chauffeurs, a boot-blacking business, and a theatrical
+hair-dresser's. Next door, off Broadway, stood one of those reticent
+brown-stone residences with perennially shuttered windows and a
+front-door to all appearances hermetically sealed, but negotiable, none
+the less, to those whom fortune had favoured with the password and
+sufficient money and witlessness to make them welcome with proprietors
+of crooked gambling layouts. Across the street rose the side wall of a
+theatre, decorated with an angular iron fire-escape.</p>
+
+<p>The day was almost unseasonably warm, but the hour appointed when the
+city should blossom out in awnings had not arrived. Joan's room was hot
+with sunlight that mercilessly enhanced the shabbiness of all its
+appointments, from the stained and threadbare carpet to the cheap bureau
+with its mottled, dark mirror, and the scorched and blistered edges of
+its top where cigarettes had been suffered to burn out, forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But when Joan had unpacked and disposed of her belongings, she went to
+the window as she was, in a loose kimono generously open at the throat,
+and stood there for a long time, contentedly looking out.</p>
+
+<p>Taxicabs darted or stood with motors sonorously rumbling in the street
+below. Round the corner, Longacre Square roared with the traffic of its
+several lines of surface-cars and its unending procession of
+motor-driven vehicles. The windows of the theatre across the way were
+open, and through them drifted the clatter of a piano with the surge of
+half a hundred feminine voices repeating over and over the burden of a
+chorus&mdash;betraying the fact that a rehearsal was in progress. At one of
+the open fire-escape exits lounged a youth in his shirt-sleeves, smoking
+a cigarette, and conversing amiably with a young woman in a
+stiffly-starched white shirtwaist, ankle-length skirt, and brazen hair:
+principals, Joan surmised, waiting for their turn, when the chorus had
+learned its business acceptably.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer at hand, in the room to the right of Joan's, a woman with a good
+voice was humming absently an aria from "La Tosca," while to the left
+another woman was audible, her strained and nervous accents stuttering
+on in an endless monologue of abuse, evidently aimed at the head of a
+husband who, if he had been "drinking again," retained at least wit
+enough to attempt no sort of interruption or rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>Joan smiled in comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Breathing long and deep of tepid air flavoured strongly with dust and
+the effluvia of dead cigars and cigarettes, she turned away from the
+window, lifted her arms and spread them wide, luxuriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" she murmured with profound sincerity&mdash;"for a place you can
+stretch in!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>With scant delay Joan began to pick up acquaintances: nothing is easier
+in that milieu to which the girl dedicated herself.</p>
+
+<p>The process of widening her circle began with meeting the girl whom Joan
+had heard singing in the adjoining bedchamber. They passed twice in the
+corridors of the Astoria Inn before Joan had been resident there
+twenty-four hours, and on the second occasion the girl with the voice
+nodded in a friendly way and enquired if Joan didn't think the weather
+was simply awf'ly lovely today. Joan replied in the affirmative, and
+their acquaintanceship languished for as long as twelve hours. Then,
+toward six in the evening, the girl presented herself at Joan's door in
+a condition of candid deshabille, wishing to borrow a pair of
+curling-irons. Being accommodated, she came on into the room, perched
+herself on the edge of the bed, and made herself known.</p>
+
+<p>Her name was Minnie Hession and she had been singing in the chorus for
+seven years. Originally a prettyish, plump-bodied brunette, she was at
+present what she herself termed "black-and-tan": in the middle of the
+process of "letting her hair go back." Her father was Chief of Police of
+some Western city (name purposely withheld: Joan was, however, assured
+that she would be surprised if she knew <i>what</i> city) and her folks had
+heaps of money and had been wild with her when she insisted on going on
+the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"But, goodness, dearie, when you've got tempryment, whatcha goin' to do?
+Nobody outsida the business ever understands."</p>
+
+<p>All the same, much as the folks disapproved of her carving out a career
+for herself, whenever she got hard up all she had to do was telegraph
+straight back home....</p>
+
+<p>She was, of course, at present without employment; but Joan was advised
+to wait until Arlie Arlington got back into Town; Arlie never forgot a
+girl who had not only a good voice but <i>some</i> figure, if Miss Hession
+did say it herself.</p>
+
+<p>They went shopping together the following afternoon, and in the evening
+dined together at a cheap Italian restaurant, counterpart of that to
+which Quard had first introduced Joan and the Sisters Dean. Joan paid
+the bill, by no means a heavy one, and before they went home stood treat
+for "the movies."</p>
+
+<p>After that their friendship ripened at a famous rate, if exclusively at
+Joan's expense.</p>
+
+<p>Before it had endured a week Joan had loaned Minnie ten dollars. Toward
+the end of its first fortnight she mortally offended the girl by
+refusing her an additional twenty, and the next day Minnie moved from
+the Astoria Inn without the formality of paying her bill or even of
+giving notice. The management philosophically confiscated an empty
+suit-case which she had been too timorous to attempt to smuggle out of
+the house&mdash;everything else in her room had mysteriously vanished&mdash;and
+considered the incident closed. In this the management demonstrated its
+wisdom in its day and generation: it never saw Miss Hession again.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Joan.</p>
+
+<p>But through the chorus girl, as well as independently, Joan had
+contracted many other fugitive friendships. She never lacked society,
+after that, whether masculine or feminine. Men liked her for her good
+looks and unaffected high spirits; women tolerated her for two reasons,
+because she was always willing to pay not only her own way but
+another's, and because she was what they considered a "swell dresser":
+her presence was an asset to whatever party she lent her countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Frankly revelling in freedom regained, and intoxicated by possession of
+a considerable amount of money, she let herself go for a time, quite
+heedless of expense or consequence. Within a month she had become a
+familiar figure in such restaurants as Burns', Churchill's, and
+Shanley's; and her laughter was not infrequently heard in Jack's when
+all other places of its class boasted closed doors and drawn blinds.</p>
+
+<p>Inevitably she acquired a somewhat extensive knowledge of drink. Most of
+all she learned to love that champagne which Matthias had been too
+judicious to supply her and from which she had abstained out of
+consideration for Quard's weakness. But now there was no reason why she
+should not enjoy it in such moderation as was practised by her chosen
+associates. She preferred certain sweetish and heady brands whose
+correspondingly low cost rendered them more easy to obtain....</p>
+
+<p>But with all this she never failed to practise a certain amount of
+circumspection. In one respect, she refrained from growing too
+confidential about herself. That she had been the leading woman with
+"The Lie" was something to brag about: the very cards which she had been
+quick to have printed proclaimed the fact loudly in imitation Old
+English engraving. But that she had been wife to its star was something
+which she was not long in discovering wasn't generally known. The
+success of the sketch was a by-word of envy among actors facing the
+prospect of an idle summer; and the route columns of <i>Variety</i> told her
+that, in line with her prediction, Quard had somehow surmounted his San
+Francisco predicament and was continuing to guide the little play upon
+its triumphal course. But Quard himself had always been too closely
+identified with stock companies of the second class to have many friends
+among those with whom his wife was now thrown: actors for the most part
+of the so-called legitimate stage, with scant knowledge or experience
+(little, at least, that they would own to) of theatrical conditions away
+from Broadway and the leading theatres of a few principal cities. So
+Joan kept her own counsel about her matrimonial adventure: its
+publication could do her no good, if possibly no harm; and she preferred
+the freedom of ostensible spinsterhood. Her wedding-ring had long since
+disappeared from her hand, giving place to the handsome diamond with
+which Matthias had pledged her his faith.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, such dissipation as she indulged in was never permitted to
+carry her beyond the border-line which, in her understanding, limited
+discretion in her relations with men. She enjoyed leading them on, but
+marriage had made her too completely cognizant of herself to permit of
+any affair going beyond a certain clearly defined point: she couldn't
+afford to throw herself away. And more than once she checked sharply and
+left an undrained glass, warned by her throbbing pulses that she was
+responding a trace too ardently to the admiration in the eyes of some
+male companion of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>But there were only two whom she held dangerous to her peace of mind,
+one because she was afraid of him, the other because she admired him
+against her will.</p>
+
+<p>The first was an eccentric dancer and comedian calling himself Billy
+Salute. A man of middle-age and old beyond his years in viciousness, the
+gymnastic violence of his calling in great measure counteracted the
+effects of his excesses and kept him young in body. He was a constant
+and heavy but what was known to Joan's circle as a safe drinker;
+drunkenness never obliterated his consciousness or disturbed his
+physical equilibrium; in spite of its web of wrinkles, his skin remained
+fair and clear as a boy's, and retained much of the fresh colouring of
+youth. But his eyes were cold and hard and profoundly informed with
+knowledge of womankind. His regard affected Joan as had Marbridge's,
+that day at Tanglewood; under its analysis she felt herself denuded;
+pretence were futile to combat it: the man <i>knew</i> her.</p>
+
+<p>He made no advances; but he watched her closely whenever they were
+together; and she knew that he was only waiting, patient in the
+conviction that he had only to wait.</p>
+
+<p>And thus he affected her with such fear and fascination that she avoided
+him as much as possible; but he was never far out of her thoughts; he
+lingered always on the horizon of her consciousness like the seemingly
+immobile yet portentous bank of cloud that masks the fury of a summer
+storm....</p>
+
+<p>The other man pursued her without ceasing. He was young, not over
+twenty-five or six&mdash;an age to which Joan felt herself immeasurably
+superior in the knowledge and practice of life&mdash;and happened to be the
+one man of her acquaintance who was neither an actor nor connected with
+the business side of the stage. By some accident he had blundered from
+newspaper reporting to writing for cheaply sensational magazines, and
+from this to writing for the stage. It is true that his achievements in
+this last quarter had thus far been confined to collaboration with a
+successful playwright on the dramatization of one of his stories; but
+that didn't lessen his self-esteem and assertiveness. He claimed
+extraordinary ability for himself in a quite matter-of-fact tone, and on
+his own word was on terms of intimacy with every leading manager and
+star in the country. Nobody Joan knew troubled to contradict his
+pretensions, and despite that wide and seasoned view of life she
+believed herself to possess she was still inexperienced enough to credit
+more than half that he told her, never appreciating that, had the man
+been what he claimed, he would have had no time to waste toadying to
+actors.</p>
+
+<p>He might, if not discouraged, prove very useful to her.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, he promised to&mdash;repeatedly.</p>
+
+<p>More than this, his attentions flattered her more than she would have
+cared to confess even to herself. He didn't lack wit, wasn't without
+intelligence, and the power of his imagination couldn't be denied; thus
+he figured to her as the only man of mental attainments she had known
+since Matthias. It was something to be desired by such as this one, even
+though his abnormally developed egotism sometimes seemed appalling.</p>
+
+<p>It manifested itself in more ways than one: in his strut, in the
+foppishness of his dress, in his elaborate affectation of an English
+accent. He was a small person by the average standard, and slender, but
+well-formed, and wore clothing admirably tailored if always of an
+extreme cut. His cheeks were too fleshy, almost plump: something which
+had the effect of making his rather delicate features seem pinched.
+Near-sighted, he wore customarily a horn-rimmed pince-nez from which a
+wide black ribbon dangled like a mourning-band.</p>
+
+<p>His name was Hubert Fowey.</p>
+
+<p>So Joan tolerated him, encouraged him moderately through motives of
+self-interest, checked him with laughter when he tried to make love to
+her, secretly admired him even when his conceit was most fatiguing, and
+wondered what manner of women he had known to make him think that she
+would ever yield to his insistence....</p>
+
+<p>She had been nearly six weeks in New York when she awoke one morning to
+rest in languorous regret of a late supper the preceding night, and to
+wonder whither she was tending, spurred to self-examination by that
+singularly clear introspective vision which not infrequently follows
+intemperance&mdash;at least, when one is young.</p>
+
+<p>She was reminded sharply that, since returning to Town, she had made
+hardly a single attempt to find work, beyond having her professional
+cards printed.</p>
+
+<p>And this was the edge of Summer....</p>
+
+<p>Where would the Autumn find her?</p>
+
+<p>Slipping quickly out of bed, she collected her store of money, and
+counted it for the first time in several weeks.</p>
+
+<p>The sum total showed a shocking discrepancy between cold fact and the
+small fortune she had all along been permitting herself to believe she
+possessed. Even allowing for these heavy initial purchases on returning
+to New York, her capital had shrunk alarmingly.</p>
+
+<p>She began anew, that day, the rounds of managers' offices.</p>
+
+<p>Also, she laid down for her guidance a rigid schedule of economies. Only
+by strict observance thereof would she be able to scrape through the
+Summer without work or financial assistance from some quarter.</p>
+
+<p>Characteristically, she mourned now, but transiently, that she had so
+long deferred going to see her mother and Edna&mdash;something now obviously
+out of the question; they would want money, to a certainty, and Joan had
+none to spare them.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later she moved to share, half-and-half, the expenses of a
+three-room apartment on Fiftieth Street, near Eighth Avenue, with a
+minor actress whom she had recently met and taken a fancy to. Life was
+rather less expensive under this régime; the young women got their own
+breakfasts and, as a rule, lunches that were quite as meagre: repasts
+chiefly composed of crackers, cold meats from a convenient delicatessen
+shop, with sometimes a bottle of beer shared between two. If no one
+offered a dinner in exchange for their society, they would dine frugally
+at the cheaper restaurants of the neighbourhood. But their admirers they
+shared loyally: if one were invited to dine, the other accompanied her
+as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>An arrangement apparently conducive to the most complete intimacy;
+neither party thereto doubted that she was in the full confidence of the
+other. There were, none the less, reservations on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet Morrison, Joan's latest companion, was a girl whose very
+considerable personal attractions and innate love of pleasure were
+balanced by greenish eyes, a firm jaw, and the sincere conviction that
+straight-going and hard work would lead her to success upon the
+legitimate stage. She knew Joan for an incurable opportunist with few
+convictions of any sort other than that she could act if given a chance,
+and that men, if properly managed, would give her that chance. For one
+so temperamentally her opposite, Hattie couldn't help entertaining some
+unspoken contempt. On the other hand, she believed Joan to be decent, as
+yet; and halving the cost of living permitted her to indulge in the
+luxury of a week-end at the seaside once or twice a month.</p>
+
+<p>One day near the first of July the two, happening to meet on Broadway
+after a morning of fruitless search for engagements, turned for luncheon
+into Shanley's new restaurant&mdash;by way of an unusual treat.</p>
+
+<p>They had barely given their order when Matthias came in accompanied by a
+manager who had offices in the Bryant Building, and sat down at a table
+not altogether out of speaking-distance.</p>
+
+<p>To cover her discomfiture, which betrayed itself in flushed cheeks, Joan
+complained of the heat: an explanation accepted by Hattie without
+question, since Matthias had not yet looked their way.</p>
+
+<p>Joan prayed that he might not; but the thing was inevitable, and it was
+no less inevitable that he should look at the precise instant when Joan,
+unable longer to curb her curiosity, raised her eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she fancied that he didn't recognize her. But then his face
+brightened, and he nodded and smiled, coolly, perhaps, but civilly,
+without the least evidence of confusion. They might have been the most
+casual acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, the incident would probably have passed unremarked but for
+the promptings of Joan's conscience. She was sure the glance of Matthias
+had shifted from her face to the hand on which his diamond shone, and
+had rested there for a significant moment.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had happened. Matthias was
+absorbed in negotiations concerning an old play which had caught the
+fancy of the manager. Joan, though he knew her at sight, was now too
+inconsiderable a figure in his world for him to recall, off-hand, that
+he had ever made her a present.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the girl coloured furiously, and blushed again under the
+inquisitive stare of her companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" Joan muttered sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"The fellow who bowed to you just now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that?" Joan made an unconvincing effort at speaking casually: "A
+man named Matthias&mdash;a playwright, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said the other girl quietly. "Never done anything much, has he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know him very well?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a touch of irony in the question that struck sparks from
+Joan's temper.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my business!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I <i>beg</i> your pardon," Hattie drawled exasperatingly.</p>
+
+<p>And the incident was considered closed, though it didn't pass without
+leaving its indelible effect upon their association.</p>
+
+<p>With Joan it had another result: it made her think. Retrospectively
+examining the contretemps, after she had gone to bed that night, she
+arrived at the comforting conclusion that she had been a little fool to
+think that Matthias "held that old ring against her." He hadn't been her
+lover for several weeks without furnishing the girl with a fairly clear
+revelation of his character. He was simple-hearted and sincere; she
+could not remember his uttering one ungenerous word or being guilty of
+one ungenerous action, and she didn't believe he could make room in his
+mind for an ungenerous thought.</p>
+
+<p>Now if she were to return it, he would think that fine of her....</p>
+
+<p>Of course, she must take it back in person. If she returned it by
+registered mail, he would have reason to believe her afraid to meet
+him&mdash;that she had been frightened by his mere glance into sending it
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she hadn't every right in the world to keep it, if she liked:
+there was no law compelling a girl to return her engagement ring when
+she broke with a man.</p>
+
+<p>But Matthias would admire her for it.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it was just possible that he hadn't as yet arrived at the
+stage of complete indifference toward her. And he had "the ear of the
+managers."</p>
+
+<p>Nerving herself to the ordeal, two days later, she dressed with
+elaborate care in the suit she had worn on her flight from Quard. Newly
+sponged and pressed, it was quite presentable, if a little heavy for the
+season; moreover, it lacked the lustre and style of her later
+acquisitions. It wouldn't do to seem too prosperous....</p>
+
+<p>It was a Saturday afternoon, and Hattie had taken herself off to a
+nearby ocean beach for the week-end; something for which Joan was
+grateful, inasmuch as it enabled her to dress her part without exciting
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>To her relief, a servant new to the house since her time, answered her
+ring at the bell of Number 289, and with an indifferent nod indicated
+the door to the back-parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Behind that portal Matthias was working furiously against time,
+carpentering against the grain that play to discuss which he had lunched
+at Shanley's; the managerial personage having offered to consider it
+seriously if certain changes were made. And the playwright was in haste
+to be quit of the job, not only because he disapproved heartily of the
+stipulated alterations, but further because he was booked for some weeks
+in Maine as soon as the revision was finished.</p>
+
+<p>Humanly, then, he was little pleased to be warned, through the medium of
+a knock, that his work was to suffer interruption.</p>
+
+<p>He swore mildly beneath his breath, glanced suspiciously at the
+non-committal door, growled brusque permission to enter, and bent again
+over the manuscript, refusing to look up until he had pursued a thread
+of thought to its conclusion, and knotted that same all ship-shape.</p>
+
+<p>And when at length he consented to be aware of the young woman on his
+threshold, waiting in a pose of patience, her eyes wide with doubt and
+apprehensions, his mind was so completely detached from any thought of
+Joan that he failed, at first, to recognize her.</p>
+
+<p>But the alien presence brought him to his feet quickly enough.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said with an uncertain nod. "You wished to see
+me about something?"</p>
+
+<p>Closing the door, Joan came slowly forward into stronger light.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't remember me?" she asked, half perplexed, half wistful of
+aspect. "But I thought&mdash;the other day&mdash;at Shanley's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But of course I remember you," Matthias interrupted with a constrained
+smile. "But I wasn't&mdash;ah&mdash;expecting you&mdash;not exactly&mdash;you understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," Joan replied in subdued and dubious accents&mdash;"I understand."</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment, watching narrowly under cover of assumed
+embarrassment, the signs of genuine astonishment which Matthias felt too
+keenly to think of concealing. Then she added an uneasy:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course...."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" Matthias echoed witlessly. "You wanted to see me about
+something," he iterated, wandering. With an effort he pulled himself
+together. "Won't you sit down&mdash;ah&mdash;Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the girl. "But I'm afraid I'm in the way," she
+amended, dropping back into the old, worn, easy-chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The insincerity of his disclaimer was manifest in an apologetic glance
+toward the manuscript and a hasty thrust of fingers up through his hair.
+Joan caught him up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I know I am, so I shan't stay," she said, settling herself
+comfortably. "I only ask a minute or two of your time. You don't mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mind? Why, I&mdash;certainly not."</p>
+
+<p>She looked down as if disconcerted by his honest, perplexed, questioning
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid you might, after&mdash;after what's happened&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He fumbled for a cigarette, beginning to feel more calm, less nervous
+than annoyed. The fact of her unruffled self-possession had at length
+penetrated his understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said slowly, rolling the cigarette between his palms, "I don't
+mind in the least, if I can be of service to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was very foolish," Joan persisted, "and&mdash;and unkind. I've been
+sorry ever since...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be," Matthias begged, his tone so odd that she looked up swiftly
+and coloured.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far everything had gone famously, quite as rehearsed in the theatre
+of her optimistic fancy; but the new accent in his voice made her
+suddenly fear lest, after all, the little scene might not play itself
+out as smoothly as it had promised to.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be," Matthias repeated coolly. "It's quite all right. Take my
+word for it: as far as I'm concerned you've nothing at all to reproach
+yourself with."</p>
+
+<p>Her flush deepened. "You mean you didn't care&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Matthias smiled, but not unkindly. "I mean," he said slowly&mdash;"neither of
+us really cared."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak for yourself&mdash;" Joan cut in with a flash of temper; but he
+obtained her silence with a gentle gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Please ... I mean, we both lost our heads for a time. That was all
+there was to it, I think. Naturally it couldn't last. You were wise
+enough to see that first and&mdash;ah&mdash;did the only thing you decently could,
+when you threw me over. I understood that, at once."</p>
+
+<p>"But I," she began in a desperate effort to regain lost ground&mdash;"I was
+afraid you'd hate and despise me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, Joan&mdash;believe me, not for an instant. When I had had time to
+think it all out, I was simply grateful. I could never have learned to
+hate or despise you&mdash;as you put it&mdash;whatever happened; but if you hadn't
+been so sensible and far-sighted, the affair might have run on too far
+to be remedied. In which case we'd both have been horribly unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>This was so far from the attitude she had believed he would adopt, that
+Joan understood her cause to be worse than forlorn: it was lost; lost,
+that is, unless it could be saved by her premeditated heroic measure.</p>
+
+<p>Fumbling in her bag, she found his ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you're right," she said with a little sigh. "Anyhow, it's like
+you to put it that way.... But what I really came for, was to return
+this."</p>
+
+<p>She offered the ring. He looked, startled, from it to her face,
+hesitated, and took it. "O&mdash;thanks!" he said, adding quite truthfully:
+"I'd forgotten about that"; and tossed it carelessly to his work-table
+where, rolling across the face of a manuscript, it oscillated
+momentarily and settling to rest, seemed to wink cynically at its late
+possessor.</p>
+
+<p>Joan blinked hastily in response: there was a transient little mist
+before her eyes; and momentarily her lips trembled with true emotion.
+The scene was working out more painfully than she had ever in her
+direst misgivings dreamed it might.</p>
+
+<p>Deep in her heart she had all along nursed the hope that he would insist
+on her retaining the ring. That would have been like the Matthias of her
+memories!</p>
+
+<p>But now he seemed to think that she ought to be glad thus to disburden
+her conscience and by just so much to modify her indebtedness to him!</p>
+
+<p>Struck by this thought, Joan gasped inwardly, and examined with startled
+eyes the face of Matthias. It was her first reminder of the fact that he
+had left her one hundred and fifty unearned dollars. She had forgotten
+all about that till this instant. Otherwise, she would have hesitated
+longer about calling. She wondered if he were thinking of the same
+thing; but his face afforded no index to his thoughts. He wasn't looking
+at her at all, in fact, but down, in abstraction, studying the faded
+pattern of the carpet at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered if perhaps it would advance her interests to offer to
+return the money, to pay it back bit by bit&mdash;when she found work. But
+wisely she refrained from acting on this suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I was so long about bringing it back," she resumed with an
+artificial manner. "I was always meaning to, you know, and always kept
+putting it off. You know how it is when you're on the road: one never
+seems to have any time to one's self."</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand," Matthias assured her gravely.</p>
+
+<p>She grew sensitive to the fact that he was being patient with her.</p>
+
+<p>"But I really mustn't keep you from your work," she said, rising.
+"You&mdash;you knew I was working, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard," Matthias evaded&mdash;"in a roundabout way&mdash;that you were playing
+in vaudeville."</p>
+
+<p>The girl nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes; I was all over, playing the lead
+in a sketch called 'The Lie.' It was a regular knock-out. You ought to
+have seen how it got over. It's still playing, somewhere out West, I
+guess."</p>
+
+<p>"You left it, then?" Matthias asked, bored, heartily wishing her out of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>She was aching to know if he had learned of her marriage. But then she
+felt sure he couldn't possibly have heard about it. Still, she wondered,
+if he did know, would it modify his attitude toward her in any way?</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she resumed briskly, to cover her momentary hesitation, "I left
+it the week we played 'Frisco. I had to. The star and I couldn't seem to
+hit it off, somehow. You know how that is."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you must have managed to agree with him pretty well, from all I
+hear."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>(Did he really know, then?)</p>
+
+<p>"Why," Matthias explained ingeniously, "you must have been with the
+sketch for several months, by your own account. You couldn't have been
+bickering all that time."</p>
+
+<p>Confidence returned.... "Oh, that! Yes, of course. But I could see it
+coming a long ways ahead. So I quit, and came back to look for another
+engagement. You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off, stammering.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon?" Matthias queried curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed again. "You don't know of anything I could do, just now, I
+suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "Not at present, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"If you should hear of anything, it would be awful' good of you to let
+me know."</p>
+
+<p>"Depend upon me, I shall."</p>
+
+<p>"Care of The Dramatic Mirror will always get me."</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't forget."</p>
+
+<p>"Well...." She offered him her hand with a splendidly timid smile. "I
+suppose it's good-bye for good this time."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias accepted her hand, shook it without a tremor, and released it
+easily.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a notion it is, Joan," he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward the door, advanced a pace or two, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>"They say Arlington's going to make a lot of new productions next
+Fall...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind putting in a good word for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I would be glad to, but unfortunately I don't know Mr. Arlington."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know Mr. Marbridge, and everybody says he's Arlington's silent
+partner."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias looked as uncomfortable as he felt.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that is true," he said slowly, "and&mdash;well, to tell the
+truth, Marbridge and I aren't on the best of terms. I'm afraid I
+couldn't influence him in any way&mdash;except, perhaps, to prejudice him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Joan said blankly....</p>
+
+<p>It came to her, in a flash, that the two men might have quarrelled about
+her, thanks to the obvious fascination she had exerted over Marbridge,
+that age-old day at Tanglewood.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she ventured pensively, "I might go to see him&mdash;Mr.
+Marbridge&mdash;myself&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't advise you."</p>
+
+<p>This time the accent of finality was unmistakable. Joan bridled with
+resentment. After all, he'd no real call to be so uppish, simply because
+she hadn't let him stand between her and her career....</p>
+
+<p>"You don't really think I ought to go and see him, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't ask me, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"But I've got no one to advise me.... If you don't think it wise, I wish
+you'd say so. I thought perhaps it was a chance...."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias shrugged, excessively irritated by her persistence. "I can only
+say that I wouldn't advise any woman to look to Marbridge for anything
+honourable," he said reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" the girl said in a startled tone.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I'm sorry you made me say that. It's none of my affair. Please
+forget I said it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you make it so hard for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I?" he cried indignantly&mdash;"<i>I</i> make it hard for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I come to you for advice&mdash;friendly advice&mdash;and you close in my
+very face the only door I can see to any sort of work. It's&mdash;it's pretty
+hard. I can act, I know I can act! I guess I proved that when I was with
+Charlie&mdash;Mr. Quard&mdash;the star of 'The Lie,' you know. I couldn't've stuck
+as long as I did if I hadn't had talent.... But back here in New York,
+all that doesn't seem to count. Here I've been going around for two
+months, and all they offer me is a chorus job with some road company.
+But Arlington ... he employs more girls than anybody in the business. I
+know he'd give me a chance to show what I can do, if I could only get to
+him. And then you tell me not to try to get to him the only way I know."</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly Joan ceased, breathing heavily after that long and, even to
+her, unexpected speech. But it had been well delivered: she could feel
+that. She clenched her hands at her sides in a gesture plagiarized from
+a soubrette star in one of her infrequent scenes of stage excitement;
+and stood regarding Matthias with wide, accusing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His own were blank....</p>
+
+<p>He was trying to account to himself for the fact that this girl seemed
+to have the knack of making him feel a heartless scoundrel, even when
+his stand was morally impregnable, even though it were unassailable.</p>
+
+<p>Here was this girl, evidently convinced that he had not dealt squarely
+with her, believing that he deliberately withheld&mdash;out of pique,
+perhaps&mdash;aid in his power to offer her....</p>
+
+<p>He passed a hand wearily across his eyes, and turned back toward his
+work-chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better sit down," he said quietly, "while I think this out."</p>
+
+<p>Without a word the girl returned to the arm-chair and perched herself
+gingerly upon the edge of it, ready to rise and flee (she seemed)
+whenever it should pardonably suggest itself to Matthias that the only
+right and reasonable thing for him to do was to rise up and murder
+her....</p>
+
+<p>On his part, sitting, he rested elbows upon the litter of manuscript,
+and held his head in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>He was sorry now that he had yielded to the temptation to be
+plain-spoken about Arlington and Marbridge. But she had driven him to
+it; and she was an empty-headed little thing and ought really to be kept
+out of <i>that</i> galley. On the other hand, he was afraid that if he
+allowed himself to be persuaded to help her find a new engagement, she
+would misunderstand his motives one way or another&mdash;most probably the
+one. He couldn't afford to have her run away with the notion that his
+affection for her had been merely hibernating. He had not only himself,
+he had Venetia to think of, now. To her he had dedicated his life, to a
+dumb, quixotic passion. Some day she might need him; some day, it seemed
+certain, she would need him. She was presently to have a child; and
+Marbridge was going on from bad to worse; things could not forever
+endure as they were between those two. And then she would be friendless,
+a woman with a child fighting for the right to live in solitary
+decency....</p>
+
+<p>But Joan!... If she were headed that way, toward the Arlington wheel
+within the wheel of the stage, even at risk of blame and
+misunderstanding Matthias felt that he ought to do what could be done to
+set her back upon the right road. It was too bad, really. And it was
+none of his business. The girl had given herself to the theatre of her
+own volition, after all. Or had she? Had the right of choice been
+accorded her? Or was it simply that she had been designed by Nature
+especially for that business, to which women of her calibre seemed so
+essential? Was she, after all, simply life-stuff manufactured hastily
+and carelessly in an old, worn mould, because destined solely to be fed
+wholesale into the insatiable maw of the stage?</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head in weary doubt, and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," he said, fumbling with a pen and avoiding her eyes&mdash;"I
+presume&mdash;you'd better come back in a day or two&mdash;say Tuesday. That will
+give me time to look round and see what I can scare up for you. Or
+perhaps Wednesday would be even better...."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped the pen and rose, his manner inviting her to leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Wednesday?" she repeated, reluctantly getting up again.</p>
+
+<p>"At four, if that's convenient."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, it is. And ... thank you so much ... Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," Matthias expostulated wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I mean it," she insisted. "You're awf'ly sweet not to be&mdash;unkind to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, I could never be that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;g'dafternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from
+a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence
+there assorted ill with his latest assurance to the girl. Catching it
+up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go.</p>
+
+<p>"And this," he said, smiling&mdash;"don't forget it, please."</p>
+
+<p>Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes
+widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you don't mean it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I've really no use for it, Joan,
+and&mdash;well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned
+awry. "It might be of service to you some day."</p>
+
+<p>With a cry of gratitude that was half a sob, but with no other
+acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in
+a daze, and so from the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the
+man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had
+no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as
+a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of
+prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone
+of an ichthyosaurus....</p>
+
+<p>They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you
+knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference
+in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their
+sentiments, or their appetites, and if these failed you appealed to
+their pride in their self-assumed rôle of the protectors.</p>
+
+<p>It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it.</p>
+
+<p>By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and
+that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world destitute of a
+single human soul that commanded her respect.</p>
+
+<p>She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate
+chivalry....</p>
+
+<p>As if she didn't know what Arlington's companies were like! The facts
+were notorious; nobody troubled to blink them; Arlington's employees
+least of all. It wasn't their business to blink the facts; a girl
+without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his
+choruses as a girl without a pretty figure.</p>
+
+<p>But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure....</p>
+
+<p>Joan glanced in a shop window, en passant; but she saw nothing of the
+display of wares. The plate glass made a darkling mirror for the
+passers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted
+her becomingly, even though it was a trifle passé.</p>
+
+<p>She hurried home and changed it, and hurried forth again to keep an
+appointment with Hubert Fowey.</p>
+
+<p>They dined at a pretentious hotel, in an "Orange Garden" whose false
+moonlight and tinkling, artificial fountain manufactured an alluring
+simulacrum of romantic night, despite the incessant activities of a
+ragtime-bitten orchestra and the inability of the ventilating system to
+infuse a hint of coolness into the heavy, superheated air.</p>
+
+<p>Joan had little appetite&mdash;the day had been too over-poweringly hot&mdash;but
+she was very thirsty; and Fowey provided a brand of champagne less sweet
+and heady than she would have chosen, and consequently more insinuative.</p>
+
+<p>During the meal Billy Salute appeared at a table across the room and
+invisible to Fowey, whose back was toward it, but still not far enough
+removed to prevent Joan from recognizing that look in the dancer's eyes
+which she resented so angrily. She didn't once look at the man; but she
+never quite lost sight of him, and was well aware that he was ridiculing
+Fowey to his companion&mdash;an actor, by many an indication, but a stranger
+to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Provoked, she demonstrated her contempt of Salute by flirting
+outrageously with Fowey. Unconscious of her motive, that aspiring little
+dramatic author lost his head to some extent. Now and again his voice
+trembled when he spoke to her, and once he mumbled something about
+marriage, but checked at discretion, and let his words trail off
+inarticulately.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was not to be denied.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?" she demanded, with her most distracting smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing of any importance," muttered Fowey, his face reddening.</p>
+
+<p>"But you did say something. I only caught part of it. Hubert, I want to
+know!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had used his given name.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I only wondered if you were married," he stammered. "You talk so
+cursed little about yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it matter?" she parried, surrender in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He choked and gulped on his champagne.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not, are you?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to you?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated and changed the subject, fearful lest his tongue compromise
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do now? Don't say a roof garden. Let's get out of this
+infernal smother. I vote for a taxi ride to Manhattan Beach."</p>
+
+<p>Joan assented.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving, they passed Salute's table. Joan gave the dancer a distant and
+chilling greeting, and swept haughtily past, ignoring his offer to rise.
+The insolent irony of his eyes was incredibly offensive to her. They
+said: "I am waiting, I am patient, I make no effort, I am inevitable."</p>
+
+<p>She swore in her soul that she would prove them wrong.</p>
+
+<p>In the taxicab Fowey made some slighting reference to the dancer.</p>
+
+<p>"He's the devil!" Joan declared with profound conviction.</p>
+
+<p>But she wouldn't explain her reasons for so naming him.</p>
+
+<p>When occasion offered, in the more shadowed stretches of their course to
+the sea, Fowey attempted to kiss her. But she would have none of him
+then, fending him off by main strength and raillery; and she was pleased
+with the discovery that she was stronger than he. Yet another evidence
+of the inferiority of man!</p>
+
+<p>At the beach, Fowey ordered a claret cup. Joan demanded an ice and drank
+sparingly; but when again in the motor-car, homeward-bound, she was
+abruptly smitten with amazement to find herself in Fowey's arms,
+submitting to his kisses if not returning them.</p>
+
+<p>For a time she remained so and let him talk love to her.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant, to be&mdash;wanted....</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the little flat, she had to prevent Fowey's following her in,
+again by main strength, slamming the door in his face.</p>
+
+<p>Bolting the door, she turned to a mirror "to see what a fright she must
+have looked." But it seemed a radiant vision that smiled back at her.</p>
+
+<p>She thought hazily of Hubert Fowey.</p>
+
+<p>"That kid!" she murmured, not altogether in contempt, but almost
+compassionately.</p>
+
+<p>It was a shame to tease him so....</p>
+
+<p>Not until the next day, that dawned upon her consciousness amid the
+thunders of a splitting headache, did she appreciate how far the affair
+had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Penitent, she vowed reformation. She wasn't going to let any man think
+he could make a fool of her, much less that conceited little
+whippersnapper.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, she didn't see the amateur dramatist again for some
+days. He, too, had vowed reformation, and on much the same moral
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p>Her appointment with Matthias, for Wednesday at four, Joan failed to
+keep. And since that was her own affair, and since she had not left him
+her address, Matthias kept to himself the word that he had for her and,
+in accordance with his original intention, boarded the Bar Harbor
+Express that same evening, and forgot New York for upwards of ten weeks.</p>
+
+<p>It had rained all day Tuesday, and Wednesday was overcast but dry and,
+by contrast with what had been, cool. Dressing for her interview with
+Matthias, Joan donned a summery gown of lawn, liberally inset with
+lacework over her shoulders and bosom: a frock for the country-house or
+the seashore, never for the Broadway pavements. None the less it was
+quite too pretty to be wasted on Matthias alone. She set out to keep her
+appointment with an hour to spare, purposing to employ the interval by
+running, at leisure, the gauntlet of masculine admiration on Broadway as
+far south as Thirty-eighth Street. For this expedition she would have
+preferred company; but Hattie, having looked her over, announced that
+she couldn't dress up to Joan's style, didn't mean to try, and didn't
+care to be used as a foil; furthermore, it was much more sensible to
+loaf round the flat in little or no clothing at all, and read up on
+Pinero.</p>
+
+<p>From the Astor Theatre corner Joan struck across Broadway to the eastern
+sidewalk, chiefly to avoid the throng of loungers in front of the Bryant
+Building: it is good to be admired, but Joan had little taste for the
+form of admiration that becomes vocal at once intimately and publicly.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way down the New York Theatre Building block, she turned abruptly
+and scuttled like a frightened quail into the lobby, from the back of
+which, turning, she was able to see, without being seen by, Quard.</p>
+
+<p>Brief as the term of their dissociation was, in mere point of elapsed
+time, Joan had so completely divorced herself from her husband that she
+was actually beginning to forget him; physically no less than mentally
+she was beginning to forget him. An outcast from her life, he no longer
+had any real existence in her world. By some curious freak of sophistry
+she had even managed to persuade herself she was never to see him again.
+Thus it seemed the most staggering shock she had ever experienced, to
+recognize the man's head and shoulders looming above the throng before
+the entrance to the moving-picture show, just south of the lobby to the
+New York Theatre proper.</p>
+
+<p>But Quard hadn't seen her. He was with companions, a brace of vaudeville
+actors whom Joan knew through him. But while she waited for them to
+pass, two other friends accosted the three, directly before the lobby
+entrance, and they paused to exchange greetings. Quard slapped both
+newcomers on their shoulders, and kept his hand on the last he slapped,
+bending forward and engaging their interest with some intimate bit of
+ribaldry. He had been drinking&mdash;Joan saw that much at a glance&mdash;not
+heavily, but enough to render his good-fellowship boisterous.</p>
+
+<p>Otherwise he looked well. He was hardly to be identified with that
+sodden wreck which had been brought from the Barbary Coast back to the
+woman he had insulted and abused. His colour was good, his poise
+assured. He was wearing new clothing&mdash;a loud shepherd's-plaid effect
+which Joan couldn't possibly have forgotten. No one could possibly have
+forgotten it. And he had acquired a dashing Panama hat which at least
+looked genuine at that slight distance. Useless to have wasted pity on
+the man: he had fallen, but not far, and he had fallen on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Joan eyed him with fear, despair, and loathing.</p>
+
+<p>Had he come to render New York too small to contain them both?</p>
+
+<p>She skulked in the farthest corner of the lobby, in shadows, not quite
+round the corner of the elevator shaft&mdash;where she could just see and ran
+least risk of being seen&mdash;and waited. But the group on the sidewalk
+seemed to have settled down to a protracted session. When Quard had
+finished talking, and the laughter had quieted down, another fixed the
+attention of the group with a second anecdote, of what nature Joan could
+well surmise.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it was only a question of time before Quard would propose a
+drink.</p>
+
+<p>Then she would be free to proceed to her appointment.</p>
+
+<p>But through some oversight the suggestion remained temporarily in
+abeyance; and Joan was unlucky in that none of the policemen appeared,
+who are assigned to the business of keeping actors moving in that
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two Quard shifted his position so that he could, by
+simply lifting his eyes, have looked directly into the lobby.</p>
+
+<p>At this Joan turned in desperation and entered the cage of an elevator,
+which happened just then to be waiting with an open gate.</p>
+
+<p>There were several theatrical enterprises with offices on one of the
+upper floors: no reason why Joan shouldn't wait in one of these until it
+would be safe to venture forth again. There was Arlington's, for
+instance.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's was no strange figure there. She had long since made several
+attempts to see Arlington or one of his lieutenants; but her
+professional cards, borne in to them by a disillusioned office-boy, had
+educed no other response than "Mist' Arlington says they's nothin' doin'
+just' present."</p>
+
+<p>But it was as good a place as any for Joan's purpose, and there could be
+no harm trying again.</p>
+
+<p>The same world-weary boy received her card when she entered the suite of
+offices. He considered it, and Joan as well, dispassionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoja wanna see?" he mumbled with patent effort.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's prettiest smile was apparently wasted upon the temperament of an
+anchorite.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Arlington, please."</p>
+
+<p>The boy offered to return the card: "He ain't in."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what you always tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't never in."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Joan sweetly: "I'll wait."</p>
+
+<p>The boy started to say something pointed, hesitated, regarded her with
+dull suspicion, and suddenly enquired:</p>
+
+<p>"Whaja wanna see 'm 'bout?"</p>
+
+<p>"A matter of private business."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," drawled the boy with infinite disgust, "tha's what they all say!"
+An embittered grimace shaped upon his soiled face. "Lis'n!" he said,
+almost affably&mdash;"if yuh'll think up a good one, I'll fetch this inta his
+sec't'ry. Now cud anythin' be fairer 'n that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go you," Joan retorted, falling in with his spirit. "Tell him a
+friend of Mr. Marbridge's wants to see him."</p>
+
+<p>She esteemed this a rather brilliant bit of diplomacy, and at the same
+time considered herself stupid not to have thought of it before. But it
+failed to move the office-boy. His head signalled a negative.</p>
+
+<p>"Havta do better'n that," he announced. "If I fell for ev'ry wren what
+claims she's a nintimate frien' of Mista Marbridge&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I am a friend of his&mdash;truly I am!" Joan insisted warmly.</p>
+
+<p>The boy rammed a hand into a trouser's-pocket. "Betcha&mdash;" he began; but
+reconsidered. "Yuh never can tell 'bout a skirt," he reminded himself
+audibly. "But, jus' to prove I'm a sport, I'll go yuh."</p>
+
+<p>Motioning Joan through the door of the reception room, he shambled off
+with an air of questioning his own sanity.</p>
+
+<p>The reception room was perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen wide: an
+interior room, lighted, and none too well, by electricity, ventilated,
+when at all, through the doorways of adjoining offices. A row of
+cane-seated chairs was aligned against the inner wall. In the middle of
+the floor stood a broad and substantial table of oak; it was absolutely
+bare. Here and there a few unhappy lithographs, yellowing "life-size"
+photographs of dead or otherwise extinguished stars, and a framed
+play-bill or two of Arlington's earlier ventures, decorated the dingy
+drab wall. There was no floor-covering of any description.</p>
+
+<p>In this room herded some two-score people of the stage, waiting
+hopefully for interviews that were, as a rule, granted to not more than
+one applicant in ten: a heterogeneous assemblage, owning a single
+characteristic in common: whenever, at the far end of the room, the
+door opened leading to the offices of the management, every head turned
+that way, and every voice was hushed in reverence.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was seldom that the door disclosed anything more unique than a
+second office-boy, even more dejected than the first, who, peering
+through, would, after examining the card in his hand for the name of the
+applicant, painfully recite some stereotyped phrase worn smooth&mdash;"Mista
+Brown? Y'ur party says t' come back next week!" "Miss Holman? Y'ur
+party's went out 'n' won't be back th'safternoon!" "Miss Em'rson? Mista
+Arlington says ever'thin's full up just'present. Call 'n ag'in!" or more
+infrequently: "Mista Grayson's t' step in, please...."</p>
+
+<p>Joan found a vacant chair.</p>
+
+<p>She had no hope whatever of being admitted to the Presence, despite the
+unexpected condescension of the office-boy. Marbridge's name might prove
+the Open Sesame; but she doubted that vaguely: "it wouldn't be her if
+<i>that</i> happened!"</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere was stifling with heat complicated by stale human breath
+and the reek of perfumery, all stratified with layers of tobacco smoke
+which entered over the transoms of the communicating offices. Above the
+muted murmurings of the unemployed's apprehensive voices could be heard
+the brisk chattering of two or three type-writing machines; and
+telephone bells rang incessantly, near and far, one taking up the tune
+as soon as another ended. The throng of applicants shuffled their feet
+uneasily, expectantly, morosely.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was so uncomfortable and oppressed that she was tempted to rise and
+go without waiting for the discounted answer. Only dread of encountering
+Quard restrained her. The longer she delayed, the slighter the chance of
+finding him still in front of the theatre....</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts drifted into reverie dully coloured with misgivings. She
+thought of Charlie Quard as a bird of ill-omen whose appearance could
+presage nothing but suffering and disaster; ignoring altogether the
+truth, that through his good offices alone, however tainted with
+self-interest, she had been suffered to enter into the profession whose
+ranks she had elected to adorn; with that other truth, that she owed him
+for the clothing she wore, the food she ate, the very roof that
+sheltered her&mdash;and meant never to repay....</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the second office-boy chanted her name twice before she
+heard it.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursd'y?... Miss Joan Thursd'y?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan started to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Th' party you ast for says please t' step this way!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Between gratification and misgivings, Joan followed her guide in a
+flutter of emotion. When intending nothing more than to provide an
+excuse for using the anteroom as a temporary refuge, she hadn't for an
+instant questioned her right to use Marbridge's name. But now that it
+appeared she was to gain thereby the boon of an audience with Arlington,
+she was torn by doubts.</p>
+
+<p>After all, her acquaintance with Marbridge had been one of the most
+tenuous description. True, the man had seemed attracted by her at the
+time; but that was many months ago; and only recently he had looked her
+fair in the face without knowing her. She had really gained her
+advantage through false pretences. And when Marbridge learned of this,
+would he not resent it? Had she not, through her presumption, put
+herself in the way of defeating her own ends?</p>
+
+<p>She brought up before a closed door in a state of nervousness not
+natural with her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to wait a minute," her guide advised.</p>
+
+<p>She was thankful he wasn't the guardian of the outer defences: just at
+present she was in no fit mood to bandy persiflage successfully.</p>
+
+<p>But she was uncomfortably conscious that this present boy eyed her
+curiously as he threw open the office door.</p>
+
+<p>She entered, and he closed it after her.</p>
+
+<p>The room was untenanted, but a haze of cigar smoke in the air indicated
+that it had been only recently vacated. It was handsomely furnished,
+carpeted and decorated. The broad, flat-topped desk in one corner
+boasted an elaborate display of ornate desk hardware. In the middle of
+the blotting-pad a sheaf of letters lay beneath a bronze paperweight of
+unique design. All in all, an office owning little in common with the
+generality of those to which Joan had theretofore penetrated....</p>
+
+<p>She sat herself down uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>A door communicating with the adjoining office, though a solid door of
+oak, was an inch or so ajar. Through it penetrated sounds of masculine
+voices in conversation&mdash;but nothing distinguishable.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes passed. Then the conference in the next room broke up amid
+laughter; the doorknob rattled; and Joan rose automatically.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge entered.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, in her surprise and consternation, Joan could only stare
+and stammer. But obvious though her agitation was, Marbridge ignored it
+gracefully. Shutting the door tight, he advanced with an outstretched
+hand and a smile there was no resisting&mdash;with, in short, every normal
+evidence of friendly pleasure in their meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Thursday!" he said, gratification in his carefully modulated
+voice. "This is public-spirited of you!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook hands limply, her face crimson beneath his pardonably
+admiring stare.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;thank you&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Really," he went on smoothly, "I consider it mighty nice of you to look
+me up. Fancy your remembering me! Do sit down. We must have a chat.
+Fortunately, you've caught me in an off-hour."</p>
+
+<p>Retaining her hand coolly enough, he introduced the girl to a capacious
+lounge-chair beside the desk, then settled himself behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her wits together.</p>
+
+<p>"You're awf'ly kind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;kind?" Marbridge denied the implication with an indulgent smile. "My
+dear Miss Thursday, if you get to know me well&mdash;and I sincerely hope you
+will some day&mdash;you'll find there's not a spark of human generosity in
+my system. I think only of my own pleasure. How can there be kindness to
+you in my seizing this chance to improve our acquaintance? I declare, I
+thought you'd forgotten me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" Joan protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Really? That's charming of you. But tell me about yourself. How long
+have you been back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not long," Joan replied instinctively to the first stock question that
+marks every other similar meeting in the theatrical district of New
+York. "That is&mdash;I mean&mdash;a couple of months."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then you didn't stay with 'The Lie'?"</p>
+
+<p>"You knew about that?"</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge nodded briskly. "Indeed, I did! Pete Gloucester told me all
+about you&mdash;how splendidly you were doing at rehearsals&mdash;and then, one
+afternoon in Chicago, I saw the sketch billed and dropped in at the
+theatre for the sole purpose of seeing you. And if I hadn't had a train
+to catch, I'd have come right round back to congratulate you. Fact! You
+were wonderful. You were more than wonderful: you were downright
+adorable, and no mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>Under the tonic stimulus of his flattery, Joan recovered her
+self-possession with surprising readiness&mdash;so swiftly that she almost
+forgot to cover the phenomenon with prolonged evidences of pretty
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>She looked down, her colour high, and smiling traced with a gloved
+forefinger an invisible seam in her skirt; and then, looking up shyly,
+she appraised Marbridge with one quick, shrewd, masked glance.</p>
+
+<p>Her instinct had not misled her: this man esteemed her at a high value.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awf'ly kind of you to say so," she murmured demurely.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge bent forward, leaning on the desk, his gaze ardent.</p>
+
+<p>"I only say what I think, Miss Thursday. I watched you act that
+afternoon&mdash;and so far as I was concerned, you were the whole
+sketch!&mdash;and made up my mind then and there you were a girl with a great
+big future."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but really, Mr. Marbridge&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Give you my word! I said to myself then and there: 'Here's a little
+woman worth watching, and if ever I get a chance to lend her a helping
+hand and don't do it, I'd better quit fussing with this theatrical
+game.' And that was the effect of seeing you play just once, mind you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you're a dreadful kidder, Mr. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<p>His injured look was eloquent of the injustice that she did him.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe me? Very well, Miss Thursday&mdash;wait! Some day I'll
+surprise you." He swung back in his chair, smiling genially. "Some one
+of these days you'll set your heart on something I have the say in&mdash;and
+then you'll be able to judge of my sincerity."</p>
+
+<p>"If I dared believe you," Joan told him boldly, "I might put you to the
+test sooner than you think."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and why not? I'm ready."</p>
+
+<p>But as Joan would have gone on, the desk-telephone rang sharply, and
+Marbridge, excusing himself with a mumbled apology, turned to the
+instrument and lifted the receiver to his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello.... Who?... Oh, send her in to see Mr. Arlington.... Oh, he did,
+eh?... Well, say I'm not in either.... Yes, gone for the day."</p>
+
+<p>Replacing the instrument, he swung round again. "There's proof already,"
+he informed her cheerfully. "That was Nella Cardrow&mdash;one of the biggest
+propositions on our list&mdash;star of 'Mrs. Mixer.' And I'm putting her off
+solely to show you how sincerely I'm interested in what you have to say
+to me." He bent forward again, confidentially. "Now tell me: what can I
+do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a job," Joan informed him honestly. "That's all I want just
+now&mdash;work&mdash;a part in anything you have influence with."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>have</i> left 'The Lie'?" Marbridge persisted incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded. "I had to. I couldn't stand it any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;without you&mdash;why, I don't know what they were thinking of, to let
+you go!"</p>
+
+<p>"I just couldn't get along with the star, and that's all there was to
+it," Joan declared. "He was a boozer and&mdash;well, I had to quit."</p>
+
+<p>"And the sketch&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it went on, all right, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Without you! Well, that's hard to credit. However...." Marbridge leaned
+back and for a moment stared thoughtfully out of the window. "I really
+can't think of anything we've got open just now that's good enough to
+offer you."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't think of me that way, Mr. Marbridge," Joan pleaded
+earnestly, more than half deceived. "I'm ready for anything, to get a
+chance to show these people what I can do. Anything&mdash;however small&mdash;just
+so it gives me a show&mdash;I don't care what!"</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge preserved admirably his look of intent gravity. "Let me think
+a moment," he requested, pursing his full lips.</p>
+
+<p>Joan watched him closely through that brief silence, her mood one of
+curious texture, compounded in almost equal parts of hope and doubt, of
+wonder and misgivings, of appreciation of her own courage and
+shrewdness, and of admiration for Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>He was by no means what she would have termed handsome, but he was
+uncommonly individual, a personality that left an ineffaceable
+impression of strength and masculinity; and with this he had an air of
+being finished and complete, as though he not only knew better than most
+how to take care of himself in all ways, but slighted himself in none.
+She thought his mode of dress striking, combining distinction and taste
+to an extraordinary degree.... And when in his abstraction he pinched
+his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, she was impressed with the
+discovery that a man's hand could be at once well-manicured and
+muscular....</p>
+
+<p>He turned back abruptly with a sparkle of enthusiasm in his bold and
+prominent eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"By George, I think I have it!..."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;?" she breathed excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>He considered an instant longer, shook his head, and jumped up. "I must
+consult Arlington first," he declared. "I wouldn't care to commit him
+without his consent. No&mdash;don't get up. Just excuse me one minute. I'll
+be right back."</p>
+
+<p>And before she could protest&mdash;had she entertained the faintest idea of
+doing anything of the sort&mdash;he left the room by the same door which had
+admitted him.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately she was again aware of a rumble of voices in the next
+office, but now it was even more indefinite.</p>
+
+<p>And again she waited a full five minutes alone....</p>
+
+<p>When Marbridge rejoined her, it was with an air apologetic and
+disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too bad," he announced, aggrieved, "but it seems Arlington has
+really gone for the day. I shan't see him before evening, likely,
+possibly not until tomorrow. So I must ask you to trouble yourself to
+come back, if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Mind!" Joan laughed, rising. "Oh, I guess not."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Marbridge assured her, "I don't think you'll have any wasted
+time to regret. But I can't promise anything until I'm sure Arlington
+hasn't made other arrangements, or until I've managed to put a crimp
+into 'em if he has."</p>
+
+<p>"But you mustn't do that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" Marbridge paused to chuckle infectuously. "There's one trouble,"
+he amended, more gravely, "and that is, I haven't got any too much time.
+I'm booked to sail for Europe Saturday, and have got so many little
+things to attend to, I'm running round in circles. But don't you fret:
+I've got this matter right next to my heart, Miss Thursday, and I'm
+going to put it through if it humanly can be done. Now let me think when
+I can ask you to call again."</p>
+
+<p>"Any time that suits your convenience, Mr. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's a question. I'd like mighty well to have you lunch with me
+before I go, but.... The truth is, I haven't got hardly a minute
+unengaged. You just happened to catch me right, today.... I wonder if
+you could call in Friday, say, about half-past three?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can, but I don't want you to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I tell you, <i>hush</i>!" Marbridge interrupted, mock-impatient. "Not
+another word. Remember what I told you about how I felt that day I saw
+you act, out in Chicago. The time's coming when I'm going to be
+powerful' glad you gave me this chance to give you a lift, Miss
+Thursday. And then"&mdash;he paused in the act of opening the door, and took
+Joan's hand, subjecting it to a firm, friendly pressure before
+continuing&mdash;"and then, perhaps, I'll be coming round and begging favours
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Joan's eyes endured, without a tremor, the quick
+searching probe of the man's.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded quietly, saying in a grave voice: "I guess you won't have to
+beg very hard&mdash;not for anything I could ever do for you, Mr. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<p>His smile was as spontaneous and bright as a child's. "It's a bargain!"
+he declared spiritedly. "And you can bet your life I won't forget my end
+of it!... Good afternoon, Miss Thursday. Remember&mdash;Friday at
+three-thirty...."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>As one result of her interview with Marbridge, Joan returned to her
+quarters in a state of thoughtfulness which was responsible not only for
+her forgetting the appointment with Matthias and the risk she ran of
+encountering Quard at every corner, but also for her unquestioning
+acceptance of Hattie's absence from the flat in the face of her
+expressed determination not to go out that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Hattie, however, was nothing loath to explain her change of mind when
+she blew in cheerfully shortly before dinner-time.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" she exclaimed, tossing her hat one way and her parasol another.
+"Did you miss me?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked up blankly from the depths of her musing. "No," she said
+dully. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you went off half-peeved because I wouldn't go trapesing with
+you&mdash;and then I went out after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I'd forgotten," Joan admitted without much interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't mean to go out, but Billy Emerson sent me a tip and ...
+I bet you can't guess who I've seen."</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Arlington!"</p>
+
+<p>"Arlington!" Joan exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;only I thought you weren't looking for anything in musical
+shows."</p>
+
+<p>"No more am I, and it wasn't a musical show I went to see him about.
+Billy sent me a card of introduction with the tip, and Arlington saw me
+and&mdash;well, I guess it's just about settled. I'm to understudy Nella
+Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Arlington wouldn't promise, but told me to come
+in Saturday morning, and the understanding is he'll have contracts ready
+to sign then. I do believe my luck's turned at last!"</p>
+
+<p>"But," Joan argued, perplexed, "I don't understand.... Of course, it's
+fine to get the job, and all that&mdash;and I'm awf'ly glad for you,
+Hattie&mdash;but you act as excited as if it was the title rôle you expected
+to play."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I do," Hattie retorted. "That's what an understudy's for, isn't
+it&mdash;to play the star part in case of an emergency?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, I don't mind telling you that's what I'm looking forward to."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you think Mrs. Cardrow&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't you ask me any questions; I can't tell you what I think; it's
+a secret." Having made this statement, Hattie sat down on the edge of
+the bed, lighted a cigarette, vacillated one second, and proceeded to
+divulge the secret: "You see, I called around to thank Billy Emerson,
+after my talk with Arlington, and he told me the whole story in
+confidence. Nobody's to know it yet, so you mustn't breathe a word to
+anybody; but the thing's all fixed, and Nella Cardrow's never going to
+play 'Mrs. Mixer' before a Broadway audience. She couldn't play it
+anyhow&mdash;'s just a plain-boiled dub&mdash;never did anything before she
+persuaded Marbridge to put her on in this show. It's <i>his</i> money that's
+behind it, mostly&mdash;Arlington's too wise to risk much on an uncertain
+proposition like the Cardrow. Marbridge just hides behind Arlington."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess he figures home would be none the happier if Friend Wife
+knew he was footing the bills for Nella Cardrow's show. He and Cardrow,
+Billy Emerson says, are just about as friendly as the law allows&mdash;and
+that isn't all."</p>
+
+<p>"But," Joan persisted stupidly, "if that's the case, I don't see what
+makes you think he'll throw her down to give you the part&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If they ever caught anybody on Broadway as innocent as you pretend to
+be," Hattie commented with a scorn for grammar as deep as for Joan's
+obtuseness&mdash;"they'd arrest 'em, that's all! Who ever told you Marbridge
+was the kind of a guy to stick to a woman forever&mdash;not to say when she's
+losing money for him? Billy Emerson saw the show when they put it on up
+in Buffalo, a while ago, and he says the play's a wonder but Cardrow
+can't even look the part, much less act it. He says if they ever let her
+loose on the stage of a Broadway theatre&mdash;well, Marbridge and Arlington
+can just kiss their investment a fond farewell. For reasons of his own,
+Marbridge isn't ready to break with Cardrow yet, but he knows he's got a
+big success on his hands in this 'Mrs. Mixer' with her out of it. So
+they're going right ahead, just as if she was to be the star, but when
+the show opens it'll be little Miss Understudy who'll do all the
+acting."</p>
+
+<p>The actress tossed aside her cigarette and bent forward, regarding Joan
+with mock solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Does it begin to penetrate, dearie?"</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds to me like a pretty mean trick to play on Mrs. Cardrow," Joan
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry about her. She'll survive, all right. And anyhow, when
+you've been as long in this game as I have, you'll realize that the
+motto of the profession is 'Everybody for himself and the devil take the
+hindermost'! I've waited seven years for this chance, and I'm not going
+to let it get past me through any sentimental considerations, not if I
+know myself. And you'd do just the same thing in my place, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what right you've got to say that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't know yourself as well as I know you," Hattie laughed.
+"But listen: I oughtn't to have told you all this. You won't say
+anything, will you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't say anything...."</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Joan consider it necessary to repay confidence with confidence
+by confessing the fact of her coincidental interview with Marbridge. The
+reflection that they must have been in adjoining offices at much the
+same time, in spite of Marbridge's assertion that Arlington was out,
+counselled reticence, even if envy hadn't served to impose silence upon
+Joan. And she was profoundly envious of Hattie's good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Why could it not have been her own, instead?</p>
+
+<p>If Marbridge honestly esteemed her abilities one-half as highly as he
+had pretended to, why could he not have seen to it that Joan Thursday
+rather than Hattie Morrison was selected for Mrs. Cardrow's understudy?</p>
+
+<p>Still, the matter was not yet definitely settled. Hattie's contract
+remained a thing of the future, and she might be congratulating herself
+prematurely.</p>
+
+<p>Struck by this reflection, Joan withdrew even more jealously into her
+reserve....</p>
+
+<p>But she anticipated her appointment for Friday afternoon with an
+impatience that lent each hour the length of three, and when the time
+drew near prepared herself for it with such exacting attention to the
+minutiæ of her toilet that a final survey in a cheval-glass sent her
+forth radiant with consciousness that she had never looked more
+charming.</p>
+
+<p>To her surprise and somewhat to her disappointment, Marbridge didn't
+receive her alone. She was shown into Arlington's office, finding there
+Marbridge in company with the great man himself.</p>
+
+<p>Entrenched behind his desk, Arlington didn't move when she entered, and
+only when Marbridge formally presented Joan deigned to rise half out of
+his chair and extend to her, across the mahogany barrier, a hand almost
+effeminately white, soft, and bedizened with rings.</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Thursday, I'm sure," he drawled, his clasp
+as languid as the glance with which he looked Joan over; and sank
+wearily back into his chair. "I've been hearing wonderful things about
+you&mdash;ah&mdash;from Mr. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"He's very kind," said Joan in her best manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," Marbridge protested. "I've only been describing how
+splendid your work was in 'The Lie.' But Mr. Arlington is the original
+of the gentleman from Missouri: you've got to show him. However, I know
+you can&mdash;so that's all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope so," Joan replied with becoming diffidence&mdash;"if I ever get a
+chance."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get that, never fear," Arlington observed dispassionately.
+"Marbridge has fixed it all up for you. It's a risk, a pretty big risk
+to take with an actress of your&mdash;ah&mdash;comparative inexperience, but as a
+rule I find it advisable to give Marbridge his head when he sets his
+heart on anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You're awf'ly good," Joan murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think it," Arlington returned in a tone of remote amiability,
+teetering in his chair. "I've nothing whatever to do with it, beyond
+engaging you and being responsible for your salary. It's all Marbridge's
+doing."</p>
+
+<p>He examined with a perplexed air his highly polished fingernails....</p>
+
+<p>"You're to have a small part in a new comedy we're putting on next
+September," he announced, "and at the same time you will understudy the
+star&mdash;Nella Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Your salary will be sixty a week
+unless through some accident you're called upon to play the title rôle
+regularly&mdash;and accidents will happen in the best regulated theatrical
+enterprises. In which case you'll draw one-hundred a week for the first
+season. There are some details which Marbridge will explain to you&mdash;and
+if you'll drop in any time Monday and ask for Mr. Grissom he will have
+your contracts ready. And now if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment."</p>
+
+<p>Consulting his watch, he rose and moved round from behind his desk.
+"Good day, Miss Thursday," he said with a shadow of a formal smile. "I
+shall see much of you, no doubt, when the rehearsals begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you&mdash;thank you!" Joan cried.</p>
+
+<p>Arlington disclaimed title to her gratitude with a weary gesture. "Don't
+thank me, please&mdash;thank Marbridge.... You won't be long, Vin?" he added,
+at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be with you in ten minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are. Good afternoon, Miss&mdash;ah&mdash;Thursday...."</p>
+
+<p>Alone with Marbridge, Joan began impulsively to protest her thanks, but
+on glancing up, fell silent, abashed by an expression that glowed in the
+man's eyes like a reflection of firelight.</p>
+
+<p>She lowered demure lashes to cloak her confusion, a smile about her lips
+at once sophisticated and timid: a distractingly pretty woman fully
+conscious of her allure and of his attraction for her: a vision of
+provoking promise.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>"If you persist in looking like that," he said in a voice that trembled
+between laughter and a sigh&mdash;"don't blame me if I forget myself and take
+you in my arms and kiss you. There are limits to my endurance...."</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked up, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;" she said with a little nervous laugh&mdash;"Well, what of it?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before Joan left Marbridge, they had arrived at an understanding which
+was not less complete and satisfactory in that it was largely implicit.</p>
+
+<p>Without receiving any definite explanation of the circumstances
+complicating the production of "Mrs. Mixer," Joan carried away with her
+a tolerably clear notion thereof, both confirming and supplementing the
+second-hand information of Hattie Morrison.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cardrow owned a heavy interest in the play, Joan had gathered; and
+there existed, as well, a contract between her and Arlington which would
+have to be eliminated before it would be possible to go ahead and make
+the production with another actress in place of the erstwhile star. Some
+very delicate diplomatic man&oelig;uvring was indicated....</p>
+
+<p>Interim, Joan was to be privately drilled by Peter Gloucester for some
+weeks prior to calling together the full company to rehearse for the
+September production. Gloucester was just then out of Town, but she
+would be advised when and where to meet him on his return.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge was to be absent from New York until the middle of September
+or longer; but he promised to be back a week or two before the opening
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>There were other promises exchanged....</p>
+
+<p>With her future thus schemed, the girl was very well content, who had
+attained by easy stages to one of mental development in which those
+primary moral distinctions upon which she had been reared were no longer
+perceptible&mdash;or, if perceptible, had diminished to purely negligible
+stature.</p>
+
+<p>It was not in nature for her to disdain or reject her bargain on moral
+grounds: she knew, or recognized, none that applied.</p>
+
+<p>For over a year during the most impressionable period of her life, Joan
+Thursday had breathed the atmosphere of the stage. She had become
+thoroughly accustomed to recognize without criticism those irregular
+unions and regular disunions that characterized the lives of her
+associates. She had observed many an instance where the most steadfast
+and loyal love existed without bonds of any sort, and as many where it
+existed in matrimony, and as many again where neither party to a
+marriage made aught but the barest pretence of fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>She had remarked that material and artistic success seemed to depend
+upon neither the observance nor the disregard of sexual morality. She
+knew of husbands and wives against whom scandal uttered no whisper and
+whose talents were considerable, but who had struggled for years and
+would struggle until the end without winning substantial recognition.
+And she knew of the reverse. The one unpardonable sin in her world was
+the sin of drunkenness, and even it was venial except when it "held the
+curtain" or prevented its rising altogether.</p>
+
+<p>As far as concerned her attitude toward herself, she considered Joan
+Thursday above reproach, seeing that she had withdrawn from her marriage
+long before even as much as contemplating any man other than her
+husband. She held that she was now free, at liberty to do as she liked,
+untrammelled by opinion whether public or private: that she had outgrown
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p>True, Quard might divorce her. But what of that? If he did, Joan
+Thursday wouldn't suffer. If he didn't, he himself would be the last to
+pretend he was leading a life of celibacy because of her defection.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge she really liked; his appeal to her nature was stronger than
+that of any man she had as yet encountered. He attracted her in every
+way, and he excited her curiosity as well. He was a new type&mdash;but in
+what respect different from other men? He was famously successful with
+women: why? He had wealth, cultivation of a certain sort (real or
+spurious, Joan couldn't discriminate) and social position; and this
+flattered, that such an one should reject the women of his own sphere
+for Joan Thursday&mdash;late of the stocking counter.</p>
+
+<p>And if she could turn this infatuation of his to material profit, while
+at the same time satisfying the several appetites Marbridge excited in
+her: why not? Other women by the score did as much without censure or
+obvious cause for regret. Why not she?</p>
+
+<p>How many women of her acquaintance&mdash;women whose interests, running in
+grooves parallel to hers, were intelligible to Joan&mdash;would have refused
+the chance that was now hers through Marbridge? Not one; none, at least,
+who was free as Joan was free; not even Hattie Morrison, whose views
+upon the subject of such arrangements were strong, whom Joan considered
+straitlaced to the verge of absurdity. Hattie, Joan believed, would have
+jumped at the opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>But of course, denied, Hattie would be sure to decry it, and with the
+more bitterness since Joan had won it in the wreck of Hattie's hopes.</p>
+
+<p>And here was the only shadow upon the fair prospect of Joan's
+contentment. She who had questioned Hattie's right to become a party to
+the conspiracy against Mrs. Cardrow&mdash;how could she ever go home and face
+the girl, with this treachery on her conscience?</p>
+
+<p>True: Hattie didn't know, wouldn't know before morning, might never
+learn the truth during the term of their association.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, to be with Hattie that night would be to sit with a
+skeleton at the feast of her felicity....</p>
+
+<p>On impulse Joan turned to the left on leaving the New York Theatre
+building, and moved slowly, purposelessly, down Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>It was an afternoon of withering heat: the pavements burning palpably
+through the paper-thin soles of her pretty slippers, and the air close
+with the smell of hot asphaltum. The rays of the westering sun made
+nothing of the fabric of Joan's white parasol, their heat penetrating
+its sheer shield as though it were glass. Mankind in general sought the
+shadowed side of the street and moved only reluctantly, with its coat
+over its arm, a handkerchief tucked in between neck and
+collar&mdash;effectually choking off ventilation and threatening
+"sun-stroke."</p>
+
+<p>Waiting upon the northeast corner of Forty-second Street for the traffic
+police to check the cross-town tide, Joan felt half-suffocated and
+thought longingly of the seashore....</p>
+
+<p>Once across the street, she turned directly in beneath the permanent
+awning of the Knickerbocker Hotel, and entered the lobby, making her way
+round, past the entrance to the bar, to the recess dedicated to the
+public telephone booths.</p>
+
+<p>A semi-exhausted and apathetic operator looked up reluctantly as Joan
+approached, with one glance appraising her from head to heels. At any
+other time the dainty perfection of Joan's toilet would have roused
+antagonism in the woman; today she found energy only sufficient for a
+perfunctory mumble.</p>
+
+<p>"What numba, please?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan hesitated, feeling herself suddenly upon the verge of dangerous
+indiscretion, but stung by the operator's look of jaded disdain, took
+her courage in hand and pursued her original intention.</p>
+
+<p>"One Bryant," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her
+and iterated the number mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths.</p>
+
+<p>"Numba five&mdash;One Bryant," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello&mdash;Lambs' Club?" she enquired.... "Is Mr. Fowey in the club?... Will
+you page him, please.... Miss Thursday.... Yes, I'll hold the wire."</p>
+
+<p>The booth was hermetically sealed. Perspiration was starting out all
+over her body. And somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet,
+lurked a long unburied cigar. She thrust the door ajar, but only to
+close it immediately as Fowey's voice saluted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Hubert," Joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery
+in her accents.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Joan&mdash;really?" the voice demanded excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Real-ly!" she affirmed. "What're you doing there, shut up all alone by
+yourself in that stupid club, Hubert?"</p>
+
+<p>Prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came
+briskly: "Where are you now, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't matter," she retorted. She had meant to ask him to meet
+her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest Marbridge might chance
+to see them. "What really matters is that this is my birthday and I'm
+going to give a party. Have you got anything better to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the Sixth
+Avenue L at Battery Place."</p>
+
+<p>"Battery Place! What in thunder&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind&mdash;tell you all about it when we meet. Will you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will I! Well, rawther!"</p>
+
+<p>"Half an hour, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be there, with bells on!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then good-bye for a little&mdash;Hubert."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than Joan.</p>
+
+<p>As he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to
+join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight,
+dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so
+ultra-English in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger
+brother. And the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager
+countenance seemed little short of offensive. She was sorry now that she
+had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so
+insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of
+the man who now filled all her thoughts&mdash;Marbridge; and so transparent
+that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible
+doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had
+at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her
+requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>But she permitted nothing of her thoughts to become legible in her
+manner. After all, she had only wanted an escort for the evening, an
+excuse to postpone that unavoidable return to the company of the girl
+she had betrayed; and Fowey had seemed the most convenient and the least
+dangerous man she could think of. If in the inflation of his
+insufferable conceit he dreamed for an instant another thing.... Well,
+Joan promised herself, he'd soon find out his mistake!...</p>
+
+<p>Keeping up the fiction of her imaginary birthday, she outlined her
+plans: they would take one of the Iron Steamboat Company's boats from
+Pier 1, North River&mdash;a short walk from the station&mdash;to Coney Island.
+When that resort palled, they would drive to Manhattan Beach and dine,
+perhaps "take in" Pain's Fireworks; and return to New York by the same
+route.</p>
+
+<p>Fowey's objections were instant and sincere and well-grounded: the boats
+would be crowded beyond endurance with an unwashed rabble liberally sown
+with drunks and screaming children. If she would only let him, he'd get
+a taxicab&mdash;or even a touring-car.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly but firmly Joan overruled him. It must be her party or no party,
+as she proposed or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>He yielded in the end, but the event proved him right in all he had
+foretold. Joan was very soon made sorry she hadn't suffered herself to
+be gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>They had half an hour to wait for the boat, and the waiting-room upon
+the second-storey of the pier was like an oven, packed with a milling,
+sweating mob exactly fulfilling Fowey's prediction. They were elbowed,
+shouldered, walked upon, and at one time openly ridiculed by a gang of
+hooligans, any one of whom would have made short work of Fowey had he
+dared show any resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the boat, when at length it turned up tardily to receive them,
+conditions were little better, save that the open air was an
+indescribable relief after the reeking atmosphere of the pier. Fowey
+managed to secure two uncomfortable folding stools, upon which they
+perched, crowded against the rail of the upper deck; a wretched
+"orchestra" wrung infamous parodies of popular songs from several
+tortured instruments; children scuffled and howled; burly ruffians in
+unclean aprons thrust themselves bodily through the throng, balancing
+dripping trays laden with glasses of lukewarm beer and "soft drinks" and
+bawling in every ear their seductive refrain&mdash;"Here's the waiter! Want
+the waiter? <i>Who</i> wants the waiter?"&mdash;and an alcoholic, planting his
+chair next to Joan's, promptly went to sleep, snoring atrociously, and
+threatened every instant to topple over and rest his head in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>A single circumstance modified in a way Joan's regret that she hadn't
+heeded Fowey's protests.</p>
+
+<p>As the boat swung away from the pier, a larger steamship of one of the
+coastwise lines, outward bound from its dock farther up the North River,
+passed with leeway so scant that the dress and features of those upon
+its decks were clearly to be discerned. And at the moment when the two
+vessels were nearest, Joan discovered one who stood just outside an open
+cabin door, leaning upon the rail with an impressively nonchalant pose,
+and smoking a heavy cigar. He wore clothing of a conspicuous
+shepherd's-plaid, and his pose was an arrested dramatic gesture.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment a woman emerged from the open door behind him and joined him
+at the rail, placing an intimate hand on his forearm and saying
+something which won from him a laugh and a look of tender admiration: a
+handsome, able-bodied woman, expensively but loudly dressed, her
+connection with the stage as unquestionable as was his.</p>
+
+<p>Joan dissembled the odd emotion with which she recognized the man, and
+turned to Fowey.</p>
+
+<p>"What boat is that, do you know, Hubert?"</p>
+
+<p>Fowey raked her with an indifferent glance, fore and aft. "Belongs to
+the New Bedford Line," he announced&mdash;"can't make out her name&mdash;connects
+at New Bedford for the boats to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Ever
+been up that way?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. What's it like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty islands. Don't know Martha's Vineyard very well, but Nantucket's
+my old stamping-ground. Go up there in the middle of the summer&mdash;about
+now&mdash;and you'll find every actor and actress you ever heard of, and then
+some. Great place. Wish we were going there."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly...."</p>
+
+<p>The boats were drawing apart. Joan looked back for the last sight she
+was ever to have of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Though she couldn't have known this, she sighed a little, in strange
+depression.</p>
+
+<p>Perplexed, she tried vainly to analyze her emotion: was it regret&mdash;or
+jealousy?</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, in the heart of that immense crowd, with Fowey attentive at
+her elbow, she was conscious of a feeling of intense loneliness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>When, after a long and tedious voyage over a sea as flat as a plate and
+unflawed by a single cooling drift of air, the steamboat was made fast
+to the end of that long iron pier which juts out from the flat, low
+coast of Coney Island, its passengers rose en masse and crowded toward
+the gangways. Joan and Fowey, attempting to hang back until the crowd
+had thinned out sufficiently to enable them to go ashore in comfort,
+were caught in the swirl of it and swept along willy-nilly.</p>
+
+<p>Once on the pier-head the multitude had more elbow room and spread out,
+the main body streaming headlong shorewards, keen-set for the delights
+promised by the two great amusement parks which had grown up in the
+heart of that frontier settlement of gin-mills, dance-halls, side-shows,
+eating-houses, and dives unspeakable.</p>
+
+<p>Joan and Fowey followed more at their leisure, constraint and silence
+between them like a wall. The girl was deeply disappointed with the
+expedition, as far as it had gone, doubting whether anything better
+would follow, and still labouring under that unaccountable depression
+which had settled down upon her spirits at sight of Quard on the New
+Bedford boat. Fowey, no less disgusted, was puzzled by his companion's
+attitude, at once tolerant and aloof, keenly watchful for an opening
+through which to pursue his conquest, and wondering how it would end. If
+she were simply bent on tantalizing him again, for her own amusement....</p>
+
+<p>He swore angrily but inaudibly.</p>
+
+<p>Near the shore end of the pier they delayed to watch the antics of the
+hundreds of bathers churning the shallows in front of huge and hideous
+bathing establishments. In countless numbers, they dotted the sea like
+flies and darkened the sun-baked, unclean sands, into which their feet
+had trodden the wreckage of ten thousand lunches.</p>
+
+<p>Fowey said something inexpressively cynical about the resemblance of the
+scene below to a congregation of bacilli crawling upon a slide beneath a
+microscope.</p>
+
+<p>Joan heard without response, either vocal or mental. She resented
+bitterly the superior attitude adopted by her companion. For her part,
+she would have asked nothing better than to mingle with the throng and
+taste those crude pleasures so dear to its simple heart and, had she but
+dared admit it, to her own. But she had Fowey to live up to.</p>
+
+<p>Very heartily she regretted the impulse which had dictated her
+invitation. She had been far happier alone&mdash;though it would have been
+strange had she been suffered to remain long alone.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they left the pier, the evening was so far advanced that the
+myriad lights of the tawdry town were flashing into being. They
+debouched into a roaring mob which filled the wide avenue from curb to
+curb, packed so densely, though in constant motion, that trolley cars
+and automobiles forced a way through it only at a snail's pace and with
+great difficulty. Encouraged by the excessive heat which rendered Town
+intolerable to all who had the means to escape it, the week-end swarming
+had begun in all sincerity. In spite of the terrific congestion which
+already obtained in all the streets and avenues and beaches, piers,
+amusement parks, catch-penny shows, saloons, and restaurants, scarcely a
+minute passed without the arrival at some one of the trolley terminals
+of a car packed to the guards with more visitors.</p>
+
+<p>A good-natured if rowdy mob, for the most part, with only a minimum
+element of the downright vicious in its composition, it was none the
+less bent on amusement in its cheapest form, that is to say, at somebody
+else's expense. It gathered thickest round the places of free
+entertainment, where acrobats performed on open-air stages or crawled
+upon high, invisible wires, or where slides were supplied gratis for
+public diversion: grinning always, but howling with delight when treated
+to real misadventure, as when some girl, negotiating a bamboo slide upon
+a grass mat, her skirts wrapped tight about her, would lose balance and
+shoot headlong, sprawling, to the level; the greater the exposure, the
+greater the diversion....</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Fowey permitted to escape unteased: his conspicuous clothing,
+and the broad black ribbons dangling from his horn-rimmed glasses were
+too tempting to be resisted. Once his Panama was smashed down over his
+eyes; and his glasses were so frequently jerked by their moorings from
+his nose that he was fain at length to pocket them and poke owlishly
+along at Joan's guidance.</p>
+
+<p>Dazzled to blindness by those ten million glaring bulbs which lifted up
+tier upon tier against the blank purple skies; deafened by an
+indescribable cacophony of bands, organs, bells, horns, human tongues
+incessantly clattering; suffering acutely from the collective heat of
+the multitude added to that of the still and muggy night; buffeted and
+borne hither and yon at the will of the mass: they contrived in the end
+to engage an open, horse-drawn vehicle, of the type colloquially known
+in those days as "low-neck hack," and ordered themselves driven to the
+Manhattan Beach Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>When presently they had gained the darkling peace of a long road between
+marsh-lands, Fowey resumed with his glasses his hateful cynicism.</p>
+
+<p>"That was considerable treat, all right," he said pensively.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad you liked it," Joan replied with the curtness of chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go back and have some more after dinner," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks&mdash;I've had plenty."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but really!" he insisted. "We haven't seen half of it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up!"</p>
+
+<p>Her anger was real; and when he would have mollified the girl with soft
+words and an arm that sought to steal round her waist, she repeated her
+injunction with added coarseness and struck his hand away with a force
+that he felt.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this, he schooled himself to patience.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner, served perfunctorily by a weary waiter and consumed upon the
+verandah of the hotel at a table, the best they could command, far
+removed from the comparative coolness and ease of those beside the
+railing, did little if anything to modify Joan's temper.</p>
+
+<p>She, who had set out, believing herself the happiest of mortals, to
+spend an evening of real enjoyment, felt utterly wretched and forlorn.</p>
+
+<p>Moment by moment her distaste for Fowey was gaining strength. She was
+put to it to listen to his bragging and to make response civilly. She
+did not relish her food, her company, or her surroundings; and in utter
+ennui tried to stimulate herself with her favourite brand of sweet
+champagne, insisting on another bottle when they had emptied one between
+them. It served only to stimulate a fictitious gaiety in her, one swift
+to wane.</p>
+
+<p>For all this, she was reluctant to contemplate going home. Anything were
+preferable to that&mdash;at least until she could feel reasonably sure of
+finding Hattie abed and asleep.</p>
+
+<p>They finished their meal at an hour too late to make it worth while to
+patronize one of the open-air entertainments with which she had promised
+herself diversion; and since she would neither go home nor, at Fowey's
+mischievous suggestion, return to Coney Island, they moved to another
+table, nearer the railing, and whiled away one more hour listening to
+the band music over their cigarettes and liqueurs.</p>
+
+<p>Toward eleven o'clock, Joan suddenly announced that she was sick of it
+all and ready to go. Fowey revived his preference for a motor-car, and
+got his way against scanty opposition. In a saner humour, Joan would
+have stuck to her original plan. As it was, she accepted the motor ride
+with neither gratitude nor graciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, once established in the car, her hat off, the swift
+rush of night air cooling her moist brows, her head resting back against
+the cushions, she permitted Fowey to repeat his ardent love-making which
+had made their previous ride together memorable. Her dislike of him was
+no less thorough-paced, but had passed from an active to a passive
+stage; she was at once too indifferent to resist him and so bored that
+she welcomed anything that promised excitement. She suffered his kisses,
+confident in her power to control him, and drew a certain satisfaction
+from reminding him, now and again forcibly, that there were limits to
+her toleration. But for the most part she lay in his arms in passive
+languor, her eyes half closed, and tried to forget him, or rather to
+believe him someone else, one whose embraces she could have welcomed....</p>
+
+<p>When they came to lighted streets, she bade Fowey "behave," and would
+not permit him even so slight a lapse from decorum as that of "holding
+hands."</p>
+
+<p>She sat up, rearranging the disorder of her hair, adjusted her hat,
+surreptitiously restored the brilliance of her lips with a stick of
+rouge.</p>
+
+<p>The man drew back sullenly into his corner, fuming....</p>
+
+<p>At her door, dismissing the car, he followed her up to the stoop.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan&mdash;" he began angrily.</p>
+
+<p>She turned back from using her latch-key, with a wondering, child-like
+stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Hubert?" she enquired with hidden malice.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not&mdash;you're not going to send me off like this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" she demanded with fine assumption of simplicity. "It's awful'
+late."</p>
+
+<p>Fowey seized her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, listen to me!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan broke his grasp with little or no effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Silly boy!" she said. "Do you really want to come in and visit a while
+before you say good night?"</p>
+
+<p>Her look was false with a winning softness. Fowey stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then come along!" she said, with a laugh; and turning fled lightly
+before him up the darkened stairway.</p>
+
+<p>She had opened the door to the tiny private hallway of the flat when he
+overtook her, panting. She paused, with a warning finger to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"S-sh!" she warned. "Don't wake Hattie!"</p>
+
+<p>He swore viciously, discountenanced; and she laughed and, leaving the
+door wide, went on into the small sitting-dining-room, meanly exulting
+in the discomfiture she had planned, knowing quite well that he had
+either forgotten Hattie or believed her to be spending this week-end out
+of Town, as before.</p>
+
+<p>In the act of lighting the gas, she heard the door close and saw Fowey
+come, white and shaken, into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" she said gaily. "I'll make sure she isn't awake&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Removing her hat, she passed on into the adjoining bedroom, and stopped
+short with a sensation of sinking dismay. The room was empty, the bed
+she shared with Hattie untouched. So much was visible in the faint light
+entering through windows that opened on a well.</p>
+
+<p>Wondering, Joan struck a light. Its first glimmer revealed to her the
+fact that Hattie's trunk was gone. The flare of the gas-jet disclosed
+greater changes in the aspect of the room, due to the disappearance of
+Hattie's toilet articles and knick-knacks.</p>
+
+<p>Hattie had left, bag and baggage&mdash;had gone for good!</p>
+
+<p>But why?</p>
+
+<p>Had she discovered Joan's treachery? Or what had happened?</p>
+
+<p>And in her surprise and perplexity, the girl was conscious anew of that
+sense of loneliness. She had been afraid to return to the one whom she
+had betrayed so lightly; but now she was afraid to be without her.</p>
+
+<p>Going back to the adjoining room, she found Fowey standing beside the
+table and with a slight smile examining a sheet of paper.</p>
+
+<p>"I found this lying here," he announced, handing it over&mdash;"didn't
+realize it was anything until I'd read half of it."</p>
+
+<p>His smile was again confident, bright with premature pride of conquest.
+But Joan didn't heed it. She was reading rapidly what had been written,
+swiftly and in a sprawling hand, upon the half sheet of note-paper.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"By rights I ought to stay until you come back, whenever you
+have the cheek to, and tell you what I think of you&mdash;I saw B.
+E. this evening and he told me all about it&mdash;but I want never
+to see you again&mdash;the rent's paid up till next Wednesday&mdash;then
+you can stick or get out&mdash;I don't care which&mdash;and I wish you
+joy of your bargain!&mdash;H. M."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"You've been scrapping with Hattie, eh?" Joan heard Fowey say in an
+amused voice.</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, she let the sheet of paper fall to the table, and
+stood with head bowed in thought, suffering acutely the humiliation
+inspired by Hattie's contemptuous dismissal.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of
+opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ..." she said blankly.</p>
+
+<p>Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him
+off.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now&mdash;of
+course. I'm sorry. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with passion; his small
+eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides,
+but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body
+trembling and shaken beyond control.</p>
+
+<p>She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of
+pity for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm damned if I do. You asked me up here&mdash;I know now&mdash;just to tease
+me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone
+and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged&mdash;"don't treat me so
+cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you,
+more than a chance to torment me? My God! what kind of a woman are you?
+I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this
+week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What am I?" Joan cut in quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Fowey choked again, with a gesture of impotent exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"You," he almost shouted&mdash;"you're the woman I love and who's driving me
+mad&mdash;mad I tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hubert! You mean that? You really love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know I do. You know I'm crazy about you. Haven't you seen it from
+the first?"</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating, Joan experienced a sense of one in deep waters. There was a
+sound as that of distant surf in her ears. All through her body pulses
+were throbbing madly.</p>
+
+<p>She struggled still a little, instinctively; but Fowey advantaged
+himself of that instant of indecision. He held her in his arms, now; her
+face was stinging beneath his kisses.</p>
+
+<p>Almost unconsciously, she lifted her arms and clasped them round his
+neck, drawing his face to hers.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor kid!" she murmured fondly, her eyes closed.... "You poor
+kid...."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Without knowing how she had come there, Joan found herself standing
+beside the outer doorway, in the narrow hall; one hand hugging about her
+the kimono she must have snatched up by instinct, while yet not fully
+wakened, the other hand fumbling with the lock; sleep clouding her brain
+like a fog, fatigue weighting her eyelids and chaining her limbs, panic
+hammering in her bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead the doorbell was ringing imperatively, without interruption,
+even as it must have been ringing for many minutes before she was
+consciously awake.</p>
+
+<p>Dimly she felt that this alarm by night must portend something strange
+and terrible.</p>
+
+<p>And still she held her hand, wondering. Who could it be? Not Quard: for
+she had seen him leave New York. Never Marbridge: that were unthinkable!
+Hattie Morrison, perhaps.... And that meant....</p>
+
+<p>The bell ground on implacably.</p>
+
+<p>At length she found courage to adjust the chain-bolt and open the door
+to the limit permitted by that guard.</p>
+
+<p>In the outer hallway a gas-jet burned, turned low, diffusing just enough
+illumination to show her the figure, somehow indefinitely familiar in
+spite of its style, of a man in a chauffeur's uniform: a young and wiry
+man clothed in khaki coat and breeches and leather leggins, and wearing
+a cap with visor shadowing heavily his narrow, sharp-featured
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>As the door opened he removed his finger from the bell-push, and drove
+home recognition with his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Thursby live here? I got a message for her."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gasped: "Butch!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's me, all right," her brother admitted crisply in his
+well-remembered tone of irony. "You certainly are one sincere little
+sleeper. I been ringing here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How did you get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rang up the janitor&mdash;if <i>that</i> matters. Lis'n: you betta hustle into
+your clothes quick 's you can if you wanta get home in time to say
+good-bye to the old woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Joan shrilled. "What&mdash;what's the matter&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dyin'," Butch told her briefly and without emotion. "She said she
+wanted to see you. So get a move on. My car's waitin', and I dassent
+leave it alone. Hustle&mdash;y' understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" Joan promised with a sob. "I'll hurry, Butch&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"See you do, then!"</p>
+
+<p>The boy swung about smartly and disappeared down the well of the
+stairway.</p>
+
+<p>Joan closed the door, and leaned against it, panting. Suppose he had
+wanted to come in!...</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, this was her sole coherent thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then, rousing, she crept stealthily back to the darkened bedroom,
+gathered up her clothing with infinite precautions against noise, and
+returned to the sitting-room to dress in feverish haste....</p>
+
+<p>There was an open taxicab waiting in front of the door. As she came out,
+Butch bent over and cranked the motor. Straightening up, he waved her
+curtly into the body of the car.</p>
+
+<p>"Jump in and shut the door," he ordered briefly, climbing into the
+driver's seat.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;Butch&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Doncha hear me? Get in and shut that door. We got no time to waste
+chinnin' here."</p>
+
+<p>Abashed and frightened, the girl obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately Butch had the cab in motion, tearing eastward at lawless
+speed through streets whose long ranks of yawning windows, seen
+fugitively in the formless dusk of early morning, seemed to look down
+leering, as if informed with terrible intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>She shut out the sight of them with hands that covered her face until
+the swift rush of cool air steadied and sobered her, so that she grew
+calmer in the knowledge that, in veritable fact (and this was all that
+really mattered) "nobody knew"....</p>
+
+<p>Then, sitting up, she composed herself, and with deft fingers completed
+the adjustment of her garments. By the time she had finished her toilet,
+aided by a small mirror inset between the forward windows, Butch was
+stopping the cab before the East Seventy-sixth Street tenement.</p>
+
+<p>Bending back, he unlatched the door and swung it open.</p>
+
+<p>"You go on up," he ordered. "I'll be around before long&mdash;gotta run this
+machine back to the garage."</p>
+
+<p>Joan stepped quickly to the sidewalk, and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she responded, and added, almost timidly, avoiding her
+brother's eyes: "Thank you, Butch."</p>
+
+<p>He grunted unintelligibly and, as Joan moved up the stoop, threw in the
+power again and drew swiftly away down the street.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Joan held back in the vestibule, sickened to recognize
+anew the home of dirt and squalor she had fled, a long lifetime since,
+it seemed, and struggling with almost invincible repugnance for the
+ordeal awaiting her at the head of those five weary flights.</p>
+
+<p>Then, more through instinct than of her will, her finger pressed the
+call-button beneath the Thursby letter box.</p>
+
+<p>The latch clicked. She pushed the door open, moved reluctantly into the
+shadows and addressed herself wearily to the stairs, inhaling with a
+keen physical disgust the heavy and malodorous atmosphere in which her
+youth had been shaped toward womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>As the dining-room door admitted her, she checked again, almost tempted
+to question the soundness of those faculties which insisted that more
+than a year had passed, rather than an hour or two, since she had left
+that mean and sordid place.</p>
+
+<p>Above the dining-table blazed and wheezed a single gas-jet, whose ragged
+bluish flame was yet sufficiently strong to turn to the colour of night
+the dull dawnlight outside the air-shaft windows. It revealed to her not
+a single article of furniture other than as memory placed it, and showed
+her, seated on the far side of the table, her father lifting a heavy and
+sullen face from the note-book between his soiled fat fingers, that
+inevitable sheaf of dope lying at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sort of greeting, in proper sense, between these two. For a
+little neither spoke. Joan hesitated, with shoulders against the panels
+of the door, in an attitude instinctively defiant and defensive. Thursby
+looked her up and down, a louring sneer marking his recognition of his
+daughter's finery.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, explosively, she found her tongue: "How's ma?"</p>
+
+<p>Thursby jerked a thumb in the direction of the bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>"She died an hour ago," he said slowly, "just after Ed went to find you.
+Edna's in there."</p>
+
+<p>Joan made a gesture of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" she said throatily, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, loud cries of lamentation ringing through the flat
+testified that she had found her sister.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>With peculiar irony, the passing of that pallid, vague, and ineffectual
+character, Mrs. Thursby, proved the signal for the dissolution of the
+family which, denying her both respect and affection during her life,
+had none the less lost, in losing her, its sole motive or excuse for
+unity.</p>
+
+<p>The return from the cemetery was accomplished toward noon of a July day
+whose heavily overcast sky seemed only to act as a blanket over the
+city, compressing its heated and humid atmosphere until the least
+exertion was to be indulged in only at the cost of saturated clothing.</p>
+
+<p>The four were crowded in common misery within a shabby, stuffy,
+undertaker's growler.</p>
+
+<p>Thursby occupied the back seat with his eldest daughter, notwithstanding
+the fact that, since apprising her of her mother's death, the morning of
+her return, he had addressed no word to her directly. He sat now with
+fat and mottled hands resting on his knees, his waistcoat unbuttoned,
+exposing soiled linen, his dull and heavy gaze steadfastly directed
+through the window.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite him, on the forward seat, Edna wept silently and incessantly
+into a black-bordered handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Butch, beside her, looked serious and depressed in a suit of black
+clothing borrowed for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody spoke from the time they re-entered the carriage, after the
+burial, until they left it. Joan huddled herself into her corner,
+putting all possible space between herself and her father. A sense of
+lassitude was heavy upon her. She meditated vaguely on the strangeness
+of life, its inscrutable riddle, the enigma of its brief and feverish
+transit from black oblivion through light to black oblivion. But the
+problem only wearied her. She dropped it from time to time and tried to
+think of other things; as a rule this resulted in her speculations
+centering about Butch.</p>
+
+<p>The boy mystified her, awed her a little with a suggestion of spirit and
+strength, character and intelligence, conveyed by a forceful yet
+unassuming manner. It was a new manner, strangely developed in the year
+that spaced her knowledge of him, only to be explained by his sudden
+determination to go seriously to work and make something of himself; and
+the motive for that remained inexplicable, and would ever as far as
+concerned Joan. For the personal reticence that had always sealed his
+cynical mouth was more than ever characteristic of the boy today; and
+the sympathy which once had existed between himself and Joan was become
+a thing of yesterday and as if it had never been. His attitude toward
+her was touched with just a colour of contempt, almost too faint to be
+resented; she shrank from it, feeling that he saw through her
+shallowness, that he knew her, not as Marbridge knew her, perhaps, or as
+Billy Salute, but thoroughly and intimately, and far better than she
+would ever know herself.</p>
+
+<p>She knew now&mdash;through Edna&mdash;that within the last twelve-month Butch had
+learned his trade of chauffeur and pursued it with such diligence that,
+aside from being the main support of the family which she had deserted,
+he was half-owner of his taxicab and in a way to acquire an interest in
+a small garage....</p>
+
+<p>When the carriage stopped, the father was the first to alight. With no
+word or look for either of his daughters, and only a semi-articulate
+growl for Butch, to the effect that they'd see one another again at
+dinner, he pulled his rusty derby well forward over his haggard, haunted
+eyes, thrust his hands deep into trouser-pockets, and slouched
+ponderously away in the direction of his news-stand. Before he turned
+the avenue corner, Joan, looking after him while she waited for Butch
+to settle with the driver, saw Thursby produce his packet of dope and,
+moistening a thumb, begin to con it as he plodded on.</p>
+
+<p>So, pursuing his passion to the end, he passed forever from her life,
+yet never altogether from her memory; in which, as time matured the
+girl, his inscrutable personality assumed the character of a symbol of
+aborted destiny. What he had been, whence he had sprung, what he might
+have become, she never learned....</p>
+
+<p>Then, preceded by Edna, followed by Butch, she climbed for the last time
+those weary stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived in the flat, Butch shut himself into his room to change to
+working clothes. He could not afford to waste an afternoon, he said.
+Joan and Edna sat down in the dark and dismal dining-room, conferring in
+hushed voices until he rejoined them. He came forth presently, the
+inevitable cigarette drooping from his thin, hard lips, and sat down,
+his spare, wiry body looking uncommonly well set-up and capable in the
+chauffeur's livery.</p>
+
+<p>After a little hesitation, Joan mustered up courage to say her say, if
+with something nearly approaching appeal in the way that she addressed
+this taciturn and self-sufficient man who had replaced her loaferish
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been telling Edna," she said, "that I'm going to take care of her
+from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"That so?" Butch exhaled twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. "How?" he
+enquired without prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well ... she's coming to live with me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I'm leaving where you found me. By the way, how did you
+know where to look for me, Butch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seen you one day when you was livin' in the Astoria Inn. There's a
+dairy lunch on the ground floor where I gen'ly eat. After that I kept an
+eye on you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Joan thoughtfully, wondering how much that eye had seen of
+the brief but lurid existence she had led before coming partially to her
+senses and moving to share Hattie Morrison's lodgings. "Well, I'll find
+a good place, and Edna can stay with me and act as my maid until she's
+old enough to find something to do for herself."</p>
+
+<p>"On the stage, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess so. I'm getting on, you know. Chances are I could give her a
+boost."</p>
+
+<p>Butch shook his head: "Nothin' doin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>He was unmoved by the flash of hostility in Joan's manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess," he said after a deliberate pause, "we don't have to go into
+that. Anyway, I got other plans for Edna. She's goin' to the country,
+up-State, to spend the summer on a farm&mdash;family of a fellow I know.
+After that, if she's strong enough, she can come back and keep house for
+me, if she wants to, or go to work any way she chooses&mdash;that's not my
+business. Only&mdash;understand me&mdash;she isn't going to go into the chorus
+until she's old enough to know what she's doin', and strong enough to
+stand the racket. That's settled."</p>
+
+<p>Rising, he jerked the stub of his cigarette through the air-shaft
+window, and slowly drew on his gauntlets.</p>
+
+<p>"You do what packin' you wanta, kid," he advised Edna, "before three
+o'clock thisaft'noon. I'll be back for you then. Your train leaves at
+four. You'll travel along with the mother of this friend of mine&mdash;Mrs.
+Simmons, her name is."</p>
+
+<p>As he had said, the matter was settled. Joan conceded the point without
+bickering, with indeed a feeling of mean relief. Moreover, she was
+afraid of Butch....</p>
+
+<p>The flat in Fiftieth Street had gained associations insufferably
+hateful. She returned to it only long enough to pack up and move out.
+Incidentally she found, read, and destroyed without answering, a note
+from Fowey suggesting an assignation. Her paradoxical dislike for the
+man had deepened into detestation. She both hoped and intended never to
+see him again.</p>
+
+<p>She moved before nightfall, leaving no address, and established herself
+in an inexpensive but reputable boarding establishment, little
+frequented by the class of theatrical people with which she was
+acquainted, and where a repetition of her escapade was impossible. On
+the third day following she began rehearsing privately with Gloucester,
+and threw into the work all she could muster of strength, patience, and
+intelligence, leaving herself, at the end of each day's work, too
+exhausted in mind and body to indulge in any of the pleasures to which
+her tastes inclined.</p>
+
+<p>Fowey, unable to trace her and seeing nothing of the girl in those
+restaurants and places of amusement she had been wont to frequent, in
+time gave up the chase; and before the first presentation of "Mrs.
+Mixer" the newspapers supplied Joan with the news of his clandestine
+marriage and subsequent flight to Europe with a widow whose fortune
+doubtless promised compensation for the fact that she had a son nearly
+as old as her latest husband.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The rehearsals of "Tomorrow's People" were arranged to begin on the
+twenty-third day of September; and since all the important rôles had
+been filled before he left Town, and Wilbrow, whom he could trust, had
+charge of all other details, Matthias delayed his home-coming until the
+twenty-second.</p>
+
+<p>Not until the twentieth did he emerge from the wilderness up back of the
+Allagash country into the comparative civilization of Moosehead Lake. In
+eight weeks he had not written a line, received a letter, or read a
+newspaper. But, as he telegraphed Helena from the Mt. Kineo House, he
+was so healthy that he was ashamed of it.</p>
+
+<p>The day-letter telegram she sent in reply was delivered on the train.
+Its news, though condensed, was reassuring: Venetia was well and her boy
+developing into a famous ruffian; the two were making a visit at
+Tanglewood, and on the return of Marbridge from his summer in Europe
+would move back to New York, where Venetia was to reassume charge of his
+town-house.</p>
+
+<p>Thus satisfied as to the welfare of the woman he loved, Matthias gave
+himself up completely to the production of his play; and through the
+following four weeks lived in the theatre by day, dreamed of it by
+night, thought, talked, and wrote only in its singular terminology.</p>
+
+<p>Few facts unconnected with his own play penetrated his understanding, in
+all that period. But, dining with Wilbrow one night at the general table
+in the Players, he overheard Gloucester railing bitterly at the
+ill-fortune which had induced him to pledge himself to stage a modern
+satirical comedy for Arlington and to train for the leading part a raw
+and almost inexperienced stage-struck girl.</p>
+
+<p>He detailed his trials in vivid phrases:</p>
+
+<p>"As far as I know, she's never played in anything except a bum
+vaudeville sketch, and I had hell's own time making her fit to play
+<i>that</i>. And yet she's got the ineffable nerve to keep picking at my way
+of doing things on the general ground that it ain't Tom Wilbrow's. Seems
+he had the privilege of rehearsing her for a five-side part in that punk
+show of Jack Matthias', that went to pieces out on the Coast last
+Summer. If Wilbrow wasn't listening with all his ears, over there, I'd
+tell you what I said to the young woman the last time she threw him in
+my face.... What?... Oh, nobody you ever heard of. Calls herself
+Thursday&mdash;Joan Thursday.... Of course I rowed with Arlington about her,
+but he only shrugged and grinned and said she had to play it and I'd got
+to make her play it&mdash;offered to bet me a thousand over and above my fees
+I couldn't do it.... Sure, I took him up. Why not? I'll make her act it
+yet. I could make a Casino chorus boy act human if I wasn't so
+squeamish.... Oh, Marbridge&mdash;one of his discoveries. I saw him handing
+her gently into that big, brazen touring-car of his, in front of
+Rector's, night before last. Fragile's the word&mdash;'handle with care!'"</p>
+
+<p>Wilbrow, interrogated, supplied the context. Arlington had bought up,
+through a third party, Mrs. Cardrow's interest in "Mrs. Mixer," advising
+her to sell out because the play had already scored one failure and
+promising her another play in which she would stand better chance to win
+New York audiences. This was an old comedy from the French, revamped,
+and was even then being rehearsed with a scrub company and a scratch
+outfit of scenery, the production to be made on the same night that
+"Mrs. Mixer" was to tempt fate with Joan Thursday; the designated date
+being the twenty-fifth of October, a Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias promptly dismissed the matter from his mind: he speculated a
+little, hazily about Marbridge, in his constitutional inability to
+understand that gentleman, felt more than ever sorry for Venetia and
+wondered how much longer she would stand it all&mdash;and plunged again into
+his preoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>"Tomorrow's People" was announced for production on Monday, October the
+twenty-third. But after the dress-rehearsal on Sunday certain changes
+recommended themselves as advisable to the judgment of the author, who
+persuaded the management to postpone the opening night until Wednesday.
+At ten minutes to twelve on that night the final curtain fell upon a
+successful representation; an audience in its wraps blocked the aisles
+until after midnight, applauding and demanding the author; who, however,
+was not in the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>He had, in fact, not been near it since the curtain, falling on the
+first act, had persuaded him of the general friendliness of an audience
+and the competency of the company. This culmination of a nerve-racking
+strain which had endured without respite for over a month found him
+without courage to await the verdict. He took to the streets and walked
+himself weary in vain effort to refrain from circling back toward the
+building whose walls housed his fate.</p>
+
+<p>At length, in desperation hoping to distract his thoughts from the
+supreme issue, he purchased a ticket of admission to another theatre,
+above whose entrance blazed the announcement "Mrs. Mixer," and stationed
+himself at the back of the orchestra to witness the last part of the
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the self-confidence of Gloucester supremely justified: the
+satiric farce marched steadily, scene by scene, to a success that was to
+keep it on Broadway through the winter and make the name of Joan
+Thursday a house-hold word throughout the Union. Her personal success
+was as unquestionable as her beauty; she played with grace, vivacity,
+charm, and distinction; and only to the initiate of the theatre was it
+apparent that Gloucester had found in her the perfect medium for the
+transmission of his art. Matthias could see, in company with a few of
+the more discriminating and stage-wise, that she employed not a gesture,
+intonation or bit of business which had not originated with Gloucester;
+she brought to her rôle on her part nothing but beauty and an unshakable
+self-confidence so thoroughly ingrained that it escaped suggesting
+self-consciousness. The triumph was, rightly, first Gloucester's, then
+the play's; but the public acclaimed the actress, and the one acidulated
+critic who hailed her, the following morning, as "at last!&mdash;the perfect
+human kinetophone record!" was listened to by none, least of all by the
+subject of his sarcasm. Marbridge, in a stage box, led the applause at
+the conclusion of each act; and at the end of the play Arlington came in
+person before the curtain, leading by the hand the gracefully reluctant
+Joan, and in a few suave sentences thanked the audience for its
+appreciation and a beneficent Providence for granting him this
+opportunity of fixing a new star in the theatrical firmament: the name
+of "this little girl," he promised (bowing to Joan) would appear in
+letters of fire over the theatre, the next night....</p>
+
+<p>Pausing in the lobby to light a cigarette before leaving, Matthias
+overheard one of Arlington's lieutenants confiding to another the news
+of the ruinous failure of the third initial production of that night.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he met Wilbrow by appointment in a quiet,
+non-theatrical club, and received from him confirmation of rumours which
+had already reached him of his own triumph with "Tomorrow's People."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a made man now," Wilbrow told him with sincere good will and
+some little honest envy; "by tomorrow morning the pack will be at your
+heels, yapping for a chance to put on every old 'script in your trunk."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," Matthias nodded soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's one comfort about that," Wilbrow pursued cheerfully:
+"whatever the temptation, you won't give 'em anything but sound, sane,
+workmanlike stuff. You've proved yourself one of the two or three, at
+most, playwrights in this country who are able to think and to make an
+audience think without losing sight of the fact that, in the last
+analysis, 'the play's the thing.' We've got plenty of authors nowadays
+who can turn out first-chop melodrama, and we've got a respectable
+percentage of 'em who write plays so full of honest and intelligent
+thought that it gives the average manager a headache to look at the
+'script; but the men who can give us the sort of drama that not only
+makes you think but holds you on the front edge of your seat waiting to
+see what's coming next.... Well, they're few and far between, and you're
+one of 'em, and I'm proud to have had a hand in putting you before the
+public!"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got nothing on me, there," Matthias grinned: "I'm proud you had.
+And if I can get my own way after this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't need to join the I-Should-Worries on account of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be the only man who will ever produce one of my plays."</p>
+
+<p>Between one o'clock and two they parted. Matthias trudged home,
+completely fagged in body, but with a buoyant heart to sustain him.</p>
+
+<p>Venetia would be glad for him....</p>
+
+<p>He was ascending the steps of Number 289 when a heavy touring-car,
+coming from the direction of Longacre Square, swung in to the curb and
+stopped. Latch-key in hand, Matthias paused and looked back in some
+little surprise: the lodgers of Madame Duprat were a motley lot, but as
+far as he knew none of them were of the class that maintains expensive
+automobiles. But this car, upon inspection, proved to be tenanted by the
+chauffeur alone; who, leaving the motor purring, jumped smartly from his
+seat and ran up the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, touching his cap, "but I'm looking
+for a gentleman named Matthias&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am Mr. Matthias."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir. I've been sent to fetch you. It's&mdash;er&mdash;important, I
+fancy," the man added, eyeing Matthias curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been sent to fetch me? But who sent you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My employer, sir&mdash;Mr. Marbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Marbridge!" Matthias echoed, startled. Without definite decision, he
+turned and ran down the steps in company with the chauffeur: Venetia in
+need of him, perhaps.... "What's happened?" he demanded. "Is Mrs.
+Marbridge&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll just get in, sir," the man replied, "I'll tell you&mdash;as much
+as I know&mdash;on the way. It'll save time."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door of the tonneau, but Matthias turned from it, walked
+round the car, and climbed into the seat beside the driver's. With a nod
+of satisfaction, the chauffeur joined him, threw in the power, and
+deftly swung the ponderous vehicle about.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" Matthias asked as the machine shot across-town.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, sir," the man replied after a moment&mdash;"but I'd rather not
+say anything, if it's all the same to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't," Matthias insisted curtly. "I'm not on sufficiently friendly
+terms with Mr. Marbridge for him to send for me without explanation."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; but you see, part of my job is to keep my mouth shut."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to forget that duty to some extent,
+or else stop the car and let me out."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, sir. I don't suppose I can do any harm telling what little I
+know. After supper tonight, Mr. Marbridge told me to take the car to the
+garage and not to expect a call for it until sometime tomorrow morning;
+but when I got there, he was already wanting me on the telephone. He
+said there'd been an accident, and told me to find Mr. Arlington first
+and then you, and ask you to come immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"But why me?" Matthias asked, more of himself than of the driver.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't say, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he state what sort of an accident?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You found Mr. Arlington?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; he wasn't in when I asked at his hotel. But I left a message
+before coming on for you."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias sat up with a start. Instead of turning up Broadway the man was
+steering his car straight across Longacre Square. Before he had time to
+comment on this fact they were speeding on toward Sixth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he cried, "you're not taking me to Mr. Marbridge's home!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marbridge hadn't gone home when he telephoned me, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be there in a minute, sir&mdash;an apartment house on Madison Avenue."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Matthias thoughtfully. "Was Mr. Marbridge&mdash;ah&mdash;alone when you
+left him tonight?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather not say, sir, if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>Troubled by an inkling of the disaster, Matthias composed himself to
+patience.</p>
+
+<p>Turning south on Fifth Avenue, the car passed Thirty-fourth Street
+before swinging eastward again. It stopped, eventually, in the side
+street, just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, before a private
+entrance to a ground-floor apartment, such as physicians prefer. But
+Matthias could discern no physician's name-plate upon the door at which
+his guide knocked, or in either of the flanking windows.</p>
+
+<p>Opening, the door disclosed a panelled entry tenanted by a white-lipped
+woman in the black and white uniform of a lady's-maid. Her frightened
+eyes examined Matthias apprehensively as he entered, followed by the
+chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>This last demanded briefly: "Doctor been?"</p>
+
+<p>The maid assented with a nervous nod: "Ten minutes ago, about. He's with
+the lady now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Lady!" the chauffeur echoed. "But I thought it was Mr. Marbridge&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the other lady," the maid explained&mdash;"the one what done the
+shooting. When Mr. Marbridge got the gun away from her, he locked her up
+in the bathroom, and then she had hysterics. The doctor's trying to make
+her hush, so's she won't disturb the other tenants, but.... You can hear
+yourself how she's carrying on."</p>
+
+<p>In a pause that followed, Matthias was conscious of the sound of
+high-pitched and incessant laughter, slightly muffled, emanating from
+some distant part of the flat.</p>
+
+<p>He asked abruptly: "Where is Mr. Marbridge?"</p>
+
+<p>The maid started and hesitated, looking to the chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Matthias," that one explained. "Mr. Marbridge sent for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes&mdash;excuse me, sir. This way, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>Opening a door on the right, the woman permitted Matthias to pass
+through, then closed it.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself in a dining-room of moderate proportions and handsomely
+furnished. Little of it was visible, however, outside the radius of
+illumination cast by an electric dome which, depending from the middle
+of the ceiling, focussed its rays upon a small round dining-table of
+mahogany. This table was quite bare save for a massive decanter of
+cut-glass standing at the edge of a puddle of spilt liquor: as if an
+uncertain hand had attempted to pour a drink. Near it lay a broken
+goblet.</p>
+
+<p>On the farther side of the table a woman with young and slender figure
+stood in a pose of arrested action, holding a goblet half-full of brandy
+and water. Her features were but indistinctly suggested in the penumbra
+of the dome, but beneath this her bare arms and shoulders, rising out of
+an elaborate evening gown, shone with a soft warm lustre. Matthias
+remembered that gown: Joan Thursday had worn it in the last act of "Mrs.
+Mixer." But she neither moved nor spoke, and for the time being he paid
+her no further heed, giving his attention entirely to Marbridge.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting low in a deeply upholstered wing-chair&mdash;out of place in the
+dining-room and evidently dragged in for the emergency&mdash;Marbridge
+breathed heavily, chin on his chest, his coarse mouth ajar, his face
+ghastly with a stricken pallor. His feet sprawled uncouthly. The dress
+coat and waistcoat he had worn lay in a heap on the floor, near the
+chair, and both shirt and undershirt had been ripped and cut away from
+his right shoulder, exposing his swarthy and hairy bosom and a sort of
+temporary bandage which, like his linen, was darkly stained. Closed when
+Matthias entered, his eyes opened almost instantly and fixed upon the
+man a heavy and lacklustre stare which at first failed to indicate
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Matthias heard himself crying out in a voice of horror: "Good God,
+Marbridge! How did this happen?"</p>
+
+<p>The man stirred, granted with pain, and made a deprecatory gesture with
+his left hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Needn't yell," he said thickly: "I've been shot ... done for...."</p>
+
+<p>His gaze shifted heavily to the woman. With effort he enunciated one
+word more: "Drink...."</p>
+
+<p>As though by that monosyllable freed from an enchaining spell, Joan
+started, moved quickly to his side and held the goblet to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>He drank noisily, gulping and slobbering; overflowing at either corner
+of his mouth, the liquor dripped twin streams upon his naked bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically Matthias put his hat down on the table.</p>
+
+<p>He experienced an incredulous sensation, as though he were struggling to
+cast off the terror and oppression of some particularly vivid and
+coherent nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>From the farther room that noise persisted of monotonous and awful
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge ceased to swallow and grunted. Joan removed the glass and drew
+away without looking at Matthias. At a cost of considerable will-power,
+apparently, the wounded man collected himself and levelled at Matthias
+his louring, but now less dull, regard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said ungraciously. "Well, you'll do at a
+pinch.... I wanted Arlington ... but you if he couldn't be found."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Matthias stupidly, "I'm here.... The doctor's seen you, I
+suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;did what he could for me&mdash;no use wasting effort&mdash;it's my cue to
+exit."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come! It's not as bad as that!"</p>
+
+<p>"The hell it ain't. The doctor knows&mdash;I know. Not that it matters. It
+was coming to me and I got it."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the doctor?" Matthias insisted. "Why isn't he attending you
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's in the other room ... trying to silence that crazy woman.... She
+plugged me and ... went into hysterics...."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nella Cardrow.... Had the devil of a time with her before doctor
+came ... trying to keep her from rushing out and giving herself
+up ... all this in the papers.... But all right now: we'll hush it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Then that's what you want of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," Marbridge grunted. "Where's that girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan moved back to his side. "What can I do?" she said; and these were
+all the words Matthias heard her utter from first to last of that
+business.</p>
+
+<p>Marbridge nodded at her with a curling lip: "You can get out!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned sharply and left the room, banging the door.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the kind <i>she</i> is," Marbridge commented. "You were lucky to get
+rid of her as easy as you did.... Give me more brandy, will you, like a
+good fellow&mdash;and be stingy with the water. I've got to ... hold out a
+couple of hours more."</p>
+
+<p>Matthias served him.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume Venetia knows nothing about this, yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Having drunk, Marbridge shook his head. "Not yet. Now, listen.... You
+guessed it: I want you to help hush this up, for Venetia's sake....
+Rotten mess&mdash;do no good if it gets in the papers&mdash;only humiliation for
+her. Will you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you want me to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help me home and keep your mouth shut.... You see, this is my place;
+I've had it years; very handy&mdash;private entrance&mdash;all that.... Nella used
+to meet me here. That's how she came to have a key. I'd forgotten....
+Well, I got tired of her, and she couldn't act, and Arlington was sore
+about that. So we planned to get rid of her. I guess you must've heard.
+It was a dirty business, all round.... And tonight, when her play went
+to pieces, just as we'd planned it should, she saw how she'd been bilked
+and lost her head.... Came here, let herself in quietly, without the
+maid's hearing her, and shot me when I came in with Joan. I managed to
+get the gun away before she could turn it on herself, and locked her up.
+Then&mdash;hysterics.... Well, I'm finished. I asked for it, and got it....
+No: no remorse bunk, no deathbed repentance, nothing like that! But I
+realize I've been a pretty rotten proposition, first and last. Never
+mind.... What I'm getting at's this: nobody need suffer but me. That's
+where <i>you</i> come in. For Venetia's sake. You and Arlington and the
+doctor can cover it all up between you. Arlie can quiet that
+girl&mdash;Joan&mdash;and the doctor's all right; he'll want a pretty stiff cheque
+to fix the undertaker&mdash;and that's all right, too. Then you've got to
+scare Nella Cardrow so's she won't give herself away, and buy my
+chauffeur and that maid out there, Sara.... But first off, you'll have
+to help doctor get me home and in bed. I'm the sort that's got to die in
+the house."</p>
+
+<p>His chin dropped again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well ... I guess it's a good job ... at that...."</p>
+
+<p>He shivered.</p>
+
+<p>The hall-door opened and Arlington entered, followed by a lean man with
+worried eyes who proved to be the doctor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Shortly before seven o'clock, that same morning, a limousine car pulled
+up quietly just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, and its occupant,
+with a word on alighting to his driver, addressed himself briskly to the
+door of the ground-floor flat.</p>
+
+<p>He was a handsome, well dressed, well-set-up and well-nourished animal
+of something more than middle-age: a fact which the pitilessly clear
+light of early morning betrayed, discovering lines and hollows in his
+clean-shaven countenance which would ordinarily have escaped notice.</p>
+
+<p>But he had passed that time of life when he could suffer a sleepless
+night of anxiety without visibly paying for it.</p>
+
+<p>His intention to announce himself by ringing the bell was promptly
+anticipated, the door opening before his finger could touch the button.
+He checked momentarily in obvious surprise, then jauntily lifted his hat
+as he stepped hurriedly inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my dear!" he addressed the woman who held the door&mdash;"up so early!"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't been to bed, of course, Mr. Arlington," Joan informed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he observed, not without envy, "you don't look it."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been packing all night," she returned. "Of course&mdash;I can't stay
+here, after what's happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," he agreed sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>Having closed the outside door, she moved before him into a small
+drawing-room which adjoined the entry-hall on the left, and when he had
+followed shut its door with particular care.</p>
+
+<p>"Sara's still packing," she explained, turning to Arlington. "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, looking her over with a doubtful eye. But she was, at
+least outwardly, quite cool and collected, her manner exhibiting no
+undue amount of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Still, a certain amount of make-believe would seem no more than
+decent....</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said almost sharply&mdash;"you're feeling all right, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite&mdash;only tired as a dog; and naturally&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," he interrupted. "But you'll be fit to go on tonight, you
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about that," Joan advised him decidedly. "I'm hoping to get
+a nap before evening, but even if I don't, I know the first duty of an
+actress is always to her public."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Arlington agreed briefly, avoiding her eyes.... "Still, I must
+ask you to be prepared."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's figure stiffened slightly, and her dark eyes widened.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?" she questioned in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Arlington nodded. "I'm sorry.... About half an hour after we got him
+home."</p>
+
+<p>The girl sat down suddenly and buried her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she cried in a stifled voice&mdash;"how awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"There!" Arlington moved over and rested a hand familiarly on her
+shoulder. "Brace up. You'll forget all about this before long."</p>
+
+<p>"O no&mdash;never!" she moaned through her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will," he insisted, looking down at her with an odd expression.
+"To begin with, I'm going to make it my business to see that you forget.
+You must. You can't do justice to your&mdash;genius, if you keep harping on
+this accident. It wasn't your fault, you know. Just as soon as I've
+arranged a few details.... By the way, how's the Cardrow woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Asleep," Joan answered. "She hasn't made a bit of trouble since the
+doctor gave her that dope&mdash;whatever it was."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. He'll be along presently with a nurse he can trust. And by that
+time I'll have you out of the way. I know just the place for you, a
+little flat uptown, on Fifty-ninth Street, overlooking the Park. You'll
+be very quiet and comfortable there, and near the theatre besides."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that. I was thinking, of course, I'd have to go to some
+hotel ... and I didn't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"And quite natural. You want to be alone until you feel yourself
+again.... I'll find you a good maid, and make everything smooth for you.
+You're not to fret about anything, and if you're troubled you must come
+right to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You're awf'ly kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look at it that way, please."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I ever thank you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll talk that over some other time." Arlington removed his hand
+from her shoulder and went back to the table, upon which he had
+deposited a bundle of newspapers. "There's no doubt of your success," he
+pursued soothingly. "Your notices are the finest I've seen in years. I
+brought you the lot of them in case you care&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Joan uncovered her face and looked up quickly. "Oh, do let me see them!"</p>
+
+<p>Arlington placed the papers in her eager hands.</p>
+
+<p>"They're all folded with your reviews uppermost."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you ever so much!"</p>
+
+<p>But in the act of opening the bundle, Joan hesitated and let it fall
+into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing about&mdash;?" she questioned fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"No, and won't be," he promised. "Besides, these were already on the
+presses by the time it happened.... You needn't worry," he resumed,
+moving to a window and looking abstractedly out, hands clasped behind
+him; "the affair will be kept perfectly quiet. Everybody's been seen
+and fixed, except the Cardrow, and the doctor has already given us a
+certificate of death under the knife&mdash;operation for appendicitis,
+imperatively required at an hour's notice.... By the way, I don't
+suppose you know, but&mdash;Marbridge didn't leave any papers or anything of
+that sort lying round here, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. He heard a paper rustle, and looking round saw the
+girl with her attention all absorbed by one of her notices.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said after a moment, "I'll go and have a talk with that maid,
+Sara."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she returned abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all ready to leave when I've fixed things up with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she returned, without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment by the door, remarking the flush of colour that
+was deepening in her cheeks; then with a mystified shake of his head, he
+left the room very quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She remained alone for upwards of half an hour, in the course of which
+time she read all the reviews once and some of the more enthusiastic
+twice.</p>
+
+<p>Then carefully folding the papers, she put them aside and sat thinking.</p>
+
+<p>She thought for a long time without moving, her eyes shining as they
+looked ahead, out of the stupid and sordid turmoil of yesterday into the
+golden promise of tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>She thought by no means clearly, with a brain confused by praise and
+sodden with fatigue; but above the welter of her thoughts, a single
+tremendous fact stood out, solid and unshakable, like a mountain
+towering about cloud-wrack:</p>
+
+<p>She was a Success.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Joan Thursday, by Louis Joseph Vance,
+Illustrated by Oscar Cesare
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Joan Thursday
+
+
+Author: Louis Joseph Vance
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 23, 2011  [eBook #36502]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN THURSDAY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 36502-h.htm or 36502-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36502/36502-h/36502-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36502/36502-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/joanthursday00vanciala
+
+
+
+
+
+JOAN THURSDAY
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
+
+With Illustrations by Oscar Cesare
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown, and Company
+1913
+
+Copyright, 1913,
+By Louis Joseph Vance.
+
+All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign
+languages, including the Scandinavian.
+
+Published, September, 1913.
+Reprinted, September, 1913.
+Reprinted, December, 1913.
+
+The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    GRANT RICHARDS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+   "Oh," she said, "I guess I'll do, all right, all right!"
+
+   "What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded, hotly
+
+   "Miss Thursday--my fiancee. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge"
+
+   The door slammed. He was gone
+
+
+
+
+JOAN THURSDAY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+She stood on the southeast corner of Broadway at Twenty-second Street,
+waiting for a northbound car with a vacant seat. She had been on her
+feet all day and was very tired, so tired that the prospect of being
+obliged to stand all the way uptown seemed quite intolerable. And so,
+though quick with impatience to get home and "have it over with," she
+chose to wait.
+
+Up out of the south, from lower Broadway and the sweatshop purlieus of
+Union Square, defiled an unending procession of surface cars, without
+exception dark with massed humanity. Pausing momentarily before the
+corner where the girl was waiting (as if mockingly submitting themselves
+to the appraisal of her alert eyes) one after another received the
+signal of the switchman beyond the northern crossing and ground
+sluggishly on. Not one but was crowded to the guards, affording the girl
+no excuse for leaving her position.
+
+She waited on, her growing impatience as imperceptible as her fatigue:
+neither of them discernible to those many transient stares which she
+received with a semblance of blank indifference that was, in reality,
+not devoid of consciousness. Youth will not be overlooked; reinforced by
+an abounding vitality, such as hers, it becomes imperious. This girl was
+as pretty as she was poor, and as young.
+
+Judged by her appearance, she might have been anywhere between sixteen
+and twenty years of age. She was, in fact, something over eighteen, and
+at heart more nearly a child than this age might be taken to imply--more
+a child than any who knew her suspected. She herself suspected it least
+of all.
+
+She looked what she liked to believe herself, a young woman of
+considerable experience with life. Simple, and even cheap, her garments
+still owned a certain distinction which she would without hesitation
+have termed "stylish": a quality of smartness which somehow contrived
+not incongruously to associate with inferior materials. Her shirtwaist
+was of opaque linen, pleated, and while not laundry-fresh was still
+presentable; her skirt fitted her hips snugly, and fell in graceful
+lines to a point something short of her low tan shoes, showing stockings
+of a texture at once coarse and sheer; to her hat, an ordinary straw
+simply trimmed with a band and _chou_ of ribbon, she had lent some
+little factitious character by deftly twisting it a trifle out of the
+prevailing shape. Over one arm she carried a coat of the same material
+as her skirt, and in her hand a well-worn handbag of imitation leather,
+rather too large, and decorated with a monogram of two initials in
+German silver. The initials were J-T: her name was Joan Thursby.
+
+Uniform with a thousand sisters of the shop-counters, she was yet
+mysteriously different. Men looked twice in passing; after passing some
+turned to look again.
+
+Her face, tinted by the glow of the western sky, was by no means poor in
+native colour: a shade thin, its regular features held a promise, vague,
+fugitive, and provoking. Her hair was a brown which hardly escaped being
+ruddy, and her skin matched it, lacking alike the dusky warmth of the
+brune and the purity of the blonde. She was neither tall nor short, but
+seemed misleadingly smaller than she was in fact, thanks to the
+slightness of a body more stupidly nourished than under-nourished or
+immature. Her eyes were brown and large, and they were very beautiful
+indeed when divorced from the vacancy of weary thinking.
+
+It was only in this look of the unthinking toiler that unconsciously
+she confessed her immense fatigue. Her features were relaxed into lines
+and contours of apathy. She seemed neither to think nor even to be
+capable of much sustained thought. Yet she was thinking, and that very
+intensely if unconsciously. Her mind was not only active but was one of
+considerable latent capacity: something which she did not in the least
+suspect; indeed, it had never occurred to Joan to debate her mental
+limitations. Her thoughts were as a rule more emotional than psychical:
+as now, when she was intensely preoccupied with pondering how she was to
+explain at home the loss of her position, and what would be said to her,
+and how she would feel when all had been said ... and what she would
+then do....
+
+Daylight was slowly fading. Though it was only half-after six of an
+evening in June, the sun was already invisible, smudged out by a
+portentous bank of purplish cloud whose profile was edged with
+fire-of-gold against a sky of tarnished blue--a sky that seemed dimmed
+with the sweat of day-long heat and toil. The city air was close and
+moveless, and the cloud-bank was lifting very slowly from behind the
+Jersey hills; it might be several hours before the promised storm would
+break and bring relief to a parched and weary people.
+
+At length despairing of her desire, the girl moved out to the middle of
+the street and boarded the next open car of the Lexington Avenue line.
+
+She was able to find standing-room only between two seats toward the
+rear, where smoking was permitted. She stood just inside the
+running-board, grasping the back of the forward seat. Her hand rested
+between the shoulders of two men. She was the only woman in that
+section. Behind her were ten masculine knees in a row, before her five
+masculine heads: ten men crowding the two transverse benches, some
+smoking, all stolidly absorbed in newspapers and indifferent to the
+intrusion of a woman. None dreamed of offering the girl a seat; nor did
+she find this anything remarkable, in whom use had bred the habit of
+accepting without question such everyday phenomena. If she was weary, so
+were the men; if she desired the consideration due her sex, then must
+she enfranchise herself from the sexless struggle for a living wage....
+
+The car, swerving into Twenty-third Street, plunged on to and turned
+north on Lexington Avenue. Thereafter its progress consisted of a series
+of frantic leaps from street-corner to street-corner. When it was in
+motion, there was a grateful rush of air; when at pause, the heat was
+stifling and the fumes of cigarettes, pipes, and cheap cigars blended to
+manufacture a mephitic reek. A slight sweat dewed the face of the girl,
+and her colour faded to pallor. Her feet and legs were aching, her back
+ached with much lifting of boxes to and from shelves, her head
+ached--chiefly because of the inevitable malnutrition of a shop-girl's
+lunch.
+
+From time to time more passengers were taken on; a lesser number
+alighted: Joan found herself obliged to edge farther in between the rank
+of knees and the rigid back of the forward seat. By the time the car
+crossed Forty-second Street, she was at the inside guard-rail: ten
+persons, half of them standing, were occupying a space meant for five.
+
+It was then, or only a trifle later, that she became conscious of the
+knee which the man behind her was purposely pressing against her. Then
+for a minute or two she was let alone. But she was sick with
+apprehension....
+
+
+She stood it as long as she could. Then abruptly she twisted round and
+faced her persecutor.
+
+Before her eyes, half blinded by rage and disgust, his face swam like
+the mask of an incubus--a blur of red flesh fixed in an insolent smirk.
+
+She was dimly aware of curious glances lifting to the sound of her
+tremulous voice:
+
+"Must I leave this car? Or will you let me alone?"
+
+There was the pause of an instant; then she had her answer in a tone of
+truculent contempt:
+
+"Ah, wha's the matter with you, anyhow?"
+
+She choked, stammering, and looked round in despair. But the man at her
+elbow was grinning with open amusement, and another, seated beside her
+tormentor, was pretending to notice nothing, his nose buried in a
+newspaper.
+
+"If y'u don't like the goin', sister, why doncha get off 'n' walk?"
+
+This from him who had compelled that frantic protest.
+
+With a lurch, the car stopped; and as it did so the girl turned
+impulsively, grasped the guard-rail, swung her lithe body between it and
+the floor of the car, and dropped to the cobbles between the tracks. She
+staggered a foot or two away, followed by an indistinguishable taunt
+amid derisive laughter. Fortunately there was no car bearing down on the
+southbound track to endanger her; while that which she had left flung
+away as, recovering, she ran to the sidewalk.
+
+She began to trudge northward. The first street lamp she encountered
+told her she had alighted at Forty-seventh Street, and had another mile
+and a half to walk. But with all her weariness, she no longer thought of
+riding; it was impossible ... she could never escape annoyance ... men
+just wouldn't let her alone....
+
+_Men!..._
+
+Shuddering imperceptibly, her eyes hot with tears of shame and
+indignation, she walked rapidly, anxious to gain the refuge of her home,
+to be secure, for a time at least, from Man....
+
+They called themselves _Men_! She despised them all--_all_! Beasts!...
+What had she ever done?... It wasn't as if this was the first time: they
+were always plaguing her: hardly a day passed.... Well, anyway, never a
+week.... It wasn't her fault if she was pretty: she never even so much
+as looked at them: but they kept on staring ... nudging.... She didn't
+believe there was a decent fellow living ... except, of course, That
+One....
+
+He was different; at least, he had been, somehow: like a perfect
+gentleman. He had come between her and a gang of tormentors, had knocked
+one down and thrown the rest into confusion with a lively play of fists,
+and then, whisking Joan into a convenient taxicab, had taken her to the
+corner nearest her home--never so much as asking her name, or if he
+might call.... She had expected him to--like in a book; but he didn't,
+nor had he (likewise contrary to her expectations) at any time
+thereafter been known to haunt her neighbourhood. To her the affair was
+like a dream of chivalry: she remembered him as very handsome (probably
+far more handsome than he really was) and _different_, with grand
+clothes and manners (the man had helped her out of the cab and lifted
+his hat in parting): all in all, vastly unlike any of the fellows whose
+rude attentions she somewhat loftily permitted in the streets after
+supper or at the home of some other girl.
+
+That One remained her dream-lord of romance. And in her heart of hearts
+she was sure that some day their paths would cross again. But it had all
+happened so long ago that she had grown a little faint with waiting.
+
+So, smothering her indignation with roseate fancies, she plodded her
+weary way to Seventy-sixth Street; where, turning eastward, she
+presently ascended a squat brown-stone stoop, entered the dingy
+vestibule of a dingier tenement, pressed the button below a mail-box
+labelled "Thursby," waited till the latch clicked its spasmodic welcome,
+and then began her weary climb to the topmost floor.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The five flights of steps were long and steep and covered with a
+compound of fabric, grease, and dirt which, today resembling a thin
+layer of decayed rubber, had once been bright linoleum. There was no
+light other than a dejected dusk filtering down the wall from a grimy
+sky-light in the roof, a twilight lacking little of the gloom of night.
+
+On each landing five doors opened--three toward the back, two toward the
+front of the building: most of them ajar, for purposes of ventilation
+and publicity. It was a question which was the louder, the clatter of
+tongues or the conflict of odours from things cooking and things that
+would doubtless have been the better for purification by fire.
+
+At the top conditions were a little more endurable: and when Joan had
+shut behind her the door giving access to her home, the clatter and
+squalling came from below, a familiar and not unpleasant blend of
+dissonances. And within the smells were individual: chiefly of boiled
+cabbage and fried pork, with a feebly contending flavour of cheap
+tobacco-smoke.
+
+She was in the dining-room of the Thursby flat. Behind it lay the
+kitchen; forward, three small cubicles successively denominated on the
+architect's plans as "bedchamber," "alcove," and "parlour." They were
+all, however, sleeping-rooms. The nearest was occupied by Joan's
+brother; the next, the alcove, contained a double-bed dedicated to Joan
+and her young sister; while the parlour held a curiosity called a
+folding-bed, which had long since ceased to fold, and on which slept
+Anthony Thursby and his wife.
+
+Mrs. Thursby was now in the kitchen, preparing dinner with the
+assistance of her fifteen-year-old daughter, Edna. "Butch," the son of
+the house, was not at home.
+
+Anthony Thursby sat at the dining-table, head bent over a ragged
+note-book and a well-thumbed collection of white and pink newspaper
+clippings.
+
+It was the sight of him that checked Joan in her explicit intention. She
+had meant to enter dramatically to her mother, blurt out the news, with
+the cause, of her misfortune, and abandon herself to the luxury of
+self-pity soothed by sympathy. But she had also meant to have it
+understood that nobody was to tell "the Old Man"--at least not until she
+should have established herself in a new job. In short, she had not
+thought to find Thursby at home.
+
+Hesitating beside the table, she removed the long pins from her hat
+while she stared with narrowed eyes at her father. She was wondering
+whether she hadn't better confess and have it out with him first as
+last. The only thing, indeed, that made her pause was the knowledge that
+there would be no living with him until she was once more "earning good
+money" behind a counter. And she was firmly determined not again to seek
+employment in a department store.
+
+Regarding fixedly the round but unpolished bald head with its neglected
+fringe of grey hair, she asked herself if the bitterness in her heart
+for her father were in truth hatred or mere premonitory resentment of
+the opposition he would unquestionably set against her plans for the
+future....
+
+He was a man of nearly fifty, who looked more, in spite of a tendency to
+genial corpulence. At thirty he had been a fair and handsome man; today
+his round red face was mottled, disfigured by a ragged grey moustache,
+discoloured by several days' growth of scrubby beard, and lined and
+seamed with the imprint of that consuming passion whose sign was also
+set in his grey, passionate, haunted eyes. Shabbily dressed in a soiled
+madras shirt and shoddy trousers, he wore neither tie nor collar: his
+unkempt chin hung in folds upon his chest. Fat and grimy forearms
+protruded from his rolled-up sleeves; fat and mottled hands trembled
+slightly but perceptibly as they rustled the pink and white clippings
+and with a stubby pencil scrawled mysterious hieroglyphics in the
+battered note-book.
+
+Thursby was intent upon what he, and indeed all his family, knew as his
+"dope": checking and re-checking selections for tomorrow's races. This
+pursuit, with its concomitants, its attendant tides of hope and
+disappointment, was his infatuation, at once the solace and the terror
+of his declining years.
+
+Now and again he muttered unintelligibly.
+
+There rose a sound of voices in the kitchen. Annoyed by the
+interruption, he started, looked up, and discovered Joan.
+
+She offered to his irritated gaze a face of calm, with unsmiling
+features.
+
+"Hello!" he growled. "How the h--how long've you been in?"
+
+"Only a few minutes, pa," the girl returned quietly.
+
+"Well--what're you standing there--staring!--for, anyhow?"
+
+"I didn't mean anything: I was just taking off my hat."
+
+"Well"--his face was now purple with senseless anger--"cut along! Don't
+bother me. I'm busy."
+
+"I see."
+
+There was a damnable superciliousness in the tone of the girl as she
+turned away. Thursby meditated an explosion, but refrained at
+discretion: Joan had taught him that, unlike her browbeaten mother and
+timid sister and her sleek, loaferish brother, she could give as good as
+he could send. He bent again, grumbling, over his dope. Instantly it
+gripped him, obliterating all else in his cosmos. He frowned, moistened
+the pencil at his mouth, and scrawled another note in the greasy little
+book.
+
+Joan slipped quietly away to her bedroom. She found it stifling;
+ventilated solely from the parlour and the open door to Butch's kennel,
+it reeked with the smell of human flesh and cheap perfume. She noted
+resentfully the fact that her sister had neglected to make up the bed:
+its rumpled sheets and pillows, still retaining the impression of
+over-night, lent the cubicle the final effect of sordid poverty.
+
+Hanging up her hat and coat, she sat for a time on the edge of the bed,
+thinking profoundly.
+
+Such an existence, she felt, passed human endurance. And a gate of
+escape stood ajar to her, with a mundane paradise beyond, if only she
+had the courage to adventure....
+
+In any event, conditions as they were now with the Thursbys could not
+obtain much longer. If the Old Man continued to follow the races through
+the poolrooms, he would soon be forced out of his small business and his
+family dispossessed of their mean lodgings; and there was no longer any
+excuse for hope that he would ever shake off the bondage of his
+infatuation. As it was, he gave little enough toward the support of his
+family, and grudged that little; almost all his meagre profits went to
+the poolrooms; it was only when he won (or seldom otherwise) that he
+would spare his wife a few dollars. Furthermore, his business was
+heavily involved in an intricate meshing of debt.
+
+Thursby, at least, persisted in calling it a business; though Joan's
+lips shaped scornfully at mention of that mean and insignificant
+newspaper shop, crowded in between a saloon and a delicatessen shop, in
+the shadow of the Third Avenue Elevated Railway. In her understanding it
+was chiefly remarkable as the one place where one could be certain of
+not finding Thursby during the afternoon or Butch at night. They were
+seldom there together: it was as if father and son could not breathe the
+same atmosphere for long at a time.
+
+Nominally, Butch was his father's assistant; actually, he alone kept the
+business alive; had it not been for his supervision of the morning and
+evening paper deliveries, it would long since have wasted
+inconspicuously away. By way of compensation, Butch, shrewdly alive to
+signs of a winning day, would now and again wheedle a dollar or two out
+of the Old Man. Wages he neither received nor expected, being well
+content with a nominal employment which served to cover many an hour of
+unlicensed liberty; and he seemed to have access to some mysterious if
+occasionally scanty fund, for he was never without some little money in
+pocket. After dinner, if Butch elected to eat the evening meal at home,
+he invariably disappeared; and his return was a matter of his personal
+convenience. He had been known not to sleep at home at all; his
+favourite bedtime was between one and two in the morning--after the
+saloons had closed. Yet no one had ever seen him drunk.
+
+He was younger than Joan by a year. Born to the name of Edgar, he had
+been dubbed Butch in the public schools, and the name had stuck; even
+his mother and father employed it. And yet it could not be said to suit
+him; rather, the boy suggested a jocky. He was short, slender, and wiry;
+with a strong, emaciated nose flanked by small eyes sunk deep in sallow
+cheeks--his mouth set in a perpetually sardonic curve. He dressed
+neatly, whatever the straits and necessities of the family (to the
+mitigation of which he contributed nothing whatever) and had a failing
+for narrow red neckties and flashy waistcoats. His hard, thin lips were
+generally tight upon a cigarette; they were forever tight upon his
+personal affairs: if he opened them at home it was to "kid" the girls,
+which he did with a slangy, mordant wit, or to drop some casually
+affectionate word to his mother. His conversation with his father, whom
+he seemed always to be watching with a narrow, grim suspicion, was
+ordinarily confined to monosyllables of affirmation or negation.
+
+He went his secret ways, self-sufficient, wary, reserved; a perpetual
+subject of covert speculation to the women of his family.
+
+Joan had heard it whispered that he was a member of the "Car-barn Gang."
+But she never dared question Butch, though she trembled every time she
+came upon newspaper headlines advertising some fresh hooliganism on the
+part of the gang--a policeman "beaten up," a sober citizen "held up and
+frisked" in the small hours, or a member of some rival organization
+found stabbed and weltering on the sawdust floor of a grisly dive.
+
+Between this girl and her brother there existed a strange harmony of
+understanding, quite tacit and almost unrecognized by either. Joan's
+nearest approach to acknowledgment of it resided in infrequent
+admissions to friends that she could "get on with Butch," whereas "the
+rest of the bunch made her weary."
+
+Almost all the vigour and vitality of the mother seemed to have been
+surrendered to Butch and Joan; there had been little left for Edna. The
+girl was frail, anaemic, flat-chested, pretty in an appealing way: fit
+only for one of two things, tuberculosis or reconstruction in the
+country. As it was, in the busy seasons she found underpaid employment
+in the workrooms of Sixth Avenue dressmaking establishments; between
+whiles she drudged at housework to the limits of her small strength.
+
+As for Mrs. Thursby.... It was singularly difficult for Joan to realize
+her mother. There was about the woman something formless and intangible.
+She seemed to fail to make a definite impression even upon the retina of
+the physical eye. She had the faculty of effacing herself, seemed more a
+woman that had been than a woman who was. The four boundary walls of the
+flat comprehended her existence; she seldom left the house; she never
+changed her dress save for bed. It might have been thought that she
+would thus dominate her world: to the contrary, she haunted it, more a
+wraith than a body, a creature of functions rather than of faculties.
+She had a way of being in a room without attracting a glance, of passing
+through and from it without leaving an impression of her transit.
+
+When Joan made herself look directly at her mother, she was able to
+detect traces of ravaged beauty. A living shell in which its tenant lay
+dormant, her subjective will to live alone kept this woman going her
+sempiternal rounds of monotony. Capacity for affection she apparently
+had none; she regarded her children with as little interest as her
+husband. Nor had she the power to excite or sustain affection.
+
+Joan believed she loved her mother. She did not: she accepted her as a
+convention in which affection inhered through tradition alone....
+
+Seated on the edge of the bed, her face flushed with the heat of the
+smouldering evening, sombre eyes staring steadfastly at the threadbare
+carpet, the girl shook her head silently, in dreary wonder.
+
+She stood at crossroads. She could, of course, go on as she had
+gone--bartering youth and strength for a few dollars a week. But every
+fibre of her being, every instinct of her forlorn soul, was in vital
+mutiny against such servitude. In fact, doubt no longer existed in
+Joan's mind as to which way she would turn: dread of the inevitable
+rupture alone deterred her from the first steps.
+
+From the rear of the flat Edna called her fretfully: "Joan! Jo-an! Ain't
+you coming to eat?"
+
+Joan rose. She answered affirmatively in a strong voice. Her mind was
+now made up: she would tell them after supper--after the Old Man had
+gone back to the shop.
+
+She posed before a mirror, touching her hair with deft fingers while she
+stared curiously at the face falsified in the depths of the uneven sheet
+of glass.
+
+Then placing her hands on her hips, at the belt-line, thumbs to the
+back, she lifted her shoulders, at one and the same time smoothing out
+the wrinkles in her waist and settling her belt into place.
+
+"Oh," she said, as casually as if there had been any one to hear, "I
+guess I'll _do_, all right, all right!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+With a careless nod to her mother and sister, Joan slipped into her
+chair and helped herself mechanically but liberally to the remains of
+pork and cabbage. Her mother tilted a granite-ware pot over a cup and
+filled the latter with the decoction which, in the Thursby menu,
+masqueraded as coffee.
+
+Joan acknowledged the service with an outspoken "Thanks."
+
+At this Edna plucked up courage to say, with some animation: "Joan--"
+
+The mother interrupted with a sibilant warning, "_Hush!_"
+
+Thursby lifted his head and raked the three faces with an angry glance.
+"In God's name!" he cried--"can't you women hold your tongues?"
+
+The girls made their resentment variously visible: Joan with a scowl and
+a toss of her head, Edna with a timid pout. The mother's face betrayed
+no emotion whatsoever. Thereafter, as far as they were concerned, the
+meal progressed in silence.
+
+Thursby bent low over his plate, in the intervals devoted to mastication
+intently studying the file of dope at his elbow. Now and again he would
+drop knife and fork to take up his pencil and check the name of a horse
+or jot additional memoranda in his note-book. Infrequently he spoke or,
+rather, grunted, to indicate a desire for some dish beyond his reach.
+Curiously enough (Joan remarked for the thousandth time) he was
+punctilious to say "please" and "thank you." The idiosyncrasy was all a
+piece (she thought) with the ease with which he employed knife, fork,
+and spoon: a careless grace which the girl considered "elegant" and did
+him the honour to imitate.
+
+Furtively throughout the meal she studied her father. These little
+peculiarities of his, these refinements which sat so strangely on his
+gross, neglected person and were so exotic to his circumstances, exerted
+a compelling fascination upon the nimble curiosity of the girl. She both
+feared and despised him, but none the less cherished a sneaking
+admiration for the man. Beyond the fact that their estate had not always
+been so sorry, she knew nothing of the history of her parents; but she
+liked to think of her father, that he had once been, in some unknown
+way, superior: that he was a man ruined by a marriage beneath his
+station. To think this flattered her own secret dreams of rising out of
+her environment: girls, she had heard, took after their fathers--and
+_vice-versa_: perhaps she had inherited some of Anthony Thursby's keener
+intelligence, adaptability, and sensitiveness--those qualities with
+which she chose to endow the man who had been Thursby before he became
+her father. Other circumstances lent colour to this theory: Butch, for
+instance, had unquestionably inherited his mother's physique and her
+reticence, while Joan had her father's vigorous constitution and a body
+like his for sturdiness and good proportion....
+
+Suddenly thrusting back his chair, Thursby rose, buttoned a soiled
+collar round his neck, shrugged a shabby coat upon his shoulders and,
+pocketing his dope, departed with neither word nor glance for his
+womenfolk.
+
+His heavy footsteps were pounding the second flight of steps before a
+voice broke the hush in the stuffy little room, a voice faint and
+toneless, dim and passionless. It was Mrs. Thursby's.
+
+"He's had a bad day, I guess...."
+
+Edna placed a tender hand over the scalded, listless one that rested on
+the oilcloth. Joan, abandoning her determination to air her personal
+grievances at the first available instant, said suddenly:
+
+"Never mind, ma. It ain't like he was a drinking man."
+
+The vacant eyes in the faded face of the mother were fathoming distances
+remote from the four walls of the slatternly room. Her thin and
+colourless lips trembled slightly; little more than a whisper escaped
+them:
+
+"Sometimes I wish he was--wish he had been. It'd 've been easier to
+stand--all this." A faltering gesture indicated vaguely the misery of
+their environment.
+
+Edna continued to pet the unresponsive hand.
+
+"Don't, mother!" she pleaded.
+
+The woman stirred, withdrew her hand, and slowly got up.
+
+"Come on, Edna. Le's get done with them dishes."
+
+With eyes hard and calculating, Joan watched the two drift into the
+kitchen. Their wretched state touched her less than the fact that she
+must continue forever to share it, or else try to better it in open
+defiance of her father's prejudices.
+
+"Something's got to be done for this family," she grumbled--"and I don't
+see anybody even thinking of doing anything but me!"
+
+She rose and strode angrily back to the cubicle she shared with Edna. In
+a fit of unreasoning rage, snatching her hat from its hook, she impaled
+it upon her hair with hatpins that stabbed viciously. It had grown too
+dark to see more than a vague white shape moving on the surface of the
+mirror. But she did not stop to light the gas to make sure she was
+armoured against the public eye. In another moment, bag in hand, coat
+over her arm, she was letting herself out into the hallway.
+
+Time enough tomorrow morning to fret her mother and sister with news of
+her misfortune: tonight she was in the humour to make a bold move toward
+freedom....
+
+But on the door-stoop she checked, a trifle dashed by apprehension of
+the impending storm, which she had quite forgotten. She drew back into
+the vestibule: she could hardly afford to subject her only decent waist
+and skirt to danger of a drenching.
+
+An atmosphere if anything more dense than that of the day blanketed
+heavily the city. Even the gutter-children seemed to feel its influence,
+and instead of making the evening hideous with screams and rioting,
+moved with an uncommon lethargy, or stood or squatted apart in little
+groups, their voices hushed and querulous. The roar of the trains on the
+nearby Elevated seemed muted, the clangour of the Third Avenue surface
+cars blunted, and Joan fancied that the street lamps burned with an
+added lustre. Wayfarers moved slowly if near home, otherwise briskly,
+with a spirit as unwilling as unwonted: one and all with frequent
+glances skyward.
+
+Overhead, a low-hung bosom of dusky vapour borrowed a dull blush from
+the fires of life that blazed beneath. In the west, beyond the
+silhouetted structure of the Elevated and the less distinct profile of
+buildings on the far side of Central Park, the clouds blazed luridly
+with their own dread fires--a fitful, sheeted play athwart gigantic
+curtains, to an accompaniment of dull and intermittent grumbles.
+
+A soft, warm breath sighed down the breathless street, and sighing,
+died. Another, more cool and brusque, swept sharp upon the heels of the
+first, played with the littered rubbish of the pavements, caressed with
+a grateful touch flesh still stinging with the heat of day, and drove
+on, preceded by a cloud of acrid dust. A few drops of lukewarm water
+maculated the sidewalks with spots as big as dollars. There followed a
+sharper play of fire, and one more near. Children ran shrieking to
+shelter, and men and women dodged into convenient doorways or scudded
+off clumsily. The wind freshened, grew more chill.... Then, so suddenly
+that there might as well have been no warning, on the wings of the
+howling blast, laced continually with empyrean fire, timed by the
+rolling detonations of heavy artillery now near, now far, a shining
+deluge sluiced the streets and made its gutters brawling rivulets.
+
+A lonely, huddled figure, standing back in the entry, well out of the
+spray from the spattering drops, Joan waited the passing of the storm
+with neither fascination nor fear. Self-absorbed, her mood almost
+altogether introspective, she weighed her reckless plans. The crisis
+bellowed overhead in a series of tremendous, shattering explosions,
+bathing the empty street in wave after wave of blinding violet light,
+without seriously disturbing the slow, steady processes of the girl's
+mentality.
+
+Then she became aware of a young man who had emerged from the darksome
+backwards of the tenement, so quietly that Joan had no notion how long
+he might have been standing there, regarding her with interest and
+amusement in his grey eyes and on his broad, good-humoured countenance.
+He had a long, strong body poised solidly on sturdy legs, short arms
+with large and efficient hands; and bore himself with a careless
+confidence that did much to dissemble the negligence of his mode of
+dress--the ill-fitting coat and trousers, the common striped "outing
+shirt," the rusty derby set aslant on his round, close-cropped head.
+Joan knew him as Ben Austin, one of the few admirers whose attentions
+she was wont to suffer: by occupation a stage-hand at the Hippodrome; a
+steady young man, who lived with his mother in one of the rear flats.
+
+He greeted her with a broadening grin and a "Hello, Joan!"
+
+She said with indifference: "Hello, Ben."
+
+"Waitin' for the rain to let up?"
+
+"No, foolish; I'm posing for a statue of Patience by a sculptor who's
+going to be born tomorrow."
+
+This answer was brilliantly in accord with the humour of the day. Austin
+chuckled appreciatively.
+
+"I thought maybe you was waitin' for Jeems to bring around your
+limousine, Miss Thursby."
+
+"I was, but he won't be here till day before yesterday."
+
+The strain of such repartee proved too much for Austin; he felt himself
+outclassed and, shuffling to cover his discomfiture, sought another
+subject.
+
+"Whacha doing tonight, Joan? Anythin' special?"
+
+"I've got an engagement to pass remarks on the weather with the Dook de
+Bonehead," the girl returned with asperity. "He ain't late, either."
+
+"I guess that was one off the griddle, all right," said Austin
+pensively. "Excuse me for livin'."
+
+There fell a pause, Joan contemptuously staring away through the
+glimmering rain-drops, Austin desperately casting about for a
+conversational opening less calculated than its predecessors to educe
+rebuffs.
+
+"Say, Joan, lis'en--"
+
+"Move on," the girl interrupted: "you're blocking the traffic."
+
+"Nah--serious': howja like to go to a show tonight?"
+
+She turned incredulous eyes to him. "What show?" she drawled.
+
+"I gotta pass for Ziegfield's Follies--N'Yawk Roof. Wanta go?"
+
+"Quit your kidding," she replied after a brief pause devoted to analysis
+of his sincerity. "Y' know you've got to work."
+
+"Nothin' like that!" he insisted. "The Hip closed last Sat'dy and I got
+a coupla weeks lay-off while they're gettin' ready to rehearse the new
+show. On the level, now: will you go with me?"
+
+"_Will_ I!" The girl drew a long, ecstatic breath. Then her face
+darkened as she glanced again at the street: "But we'll get all wet!"
+
+"No, we won't: I'll get an umbrella. Besides, it's lettin' up."
+
+With this Austin vanished, to return in a few minutes with a fairly
+presentable umbrella. The shower was, in fact, fast passing on over Long
+Island, leaving in its wake a slackening drizzle amid deep-throated
+growls at constantly lengthening intervals.
+
+Half-clothed children were seeping in swelling streams from the
+tenements as the two--Austin holding the umbrella, Joan with a hand on
+her escort's arm, her skirts gathered high about her trim
+ankles--splashed through lukewarm puddles toward Third Avenue. A faint
+and odorous vapour steamed up from wet and darkly lustrous asphalt.
+
+They hurried on in silence: Austin dumbly content with his conquest of
+the aloof tolerance which the girl had theretofore shown him, and
+planning bolder and more masterful steps; Joan all ecstatic with the
+prospect of seeing for the first time a "Broadway show"....
+
+A few minutes before nine they left the cross-town car at Broadway and
+Forty-second Street.
+
+Though she had lived all her young years within the boundaries of New
+York, never before had Joan experienced the sensation of being a unit of
+that roaring flood of life which nightly scours Longacre Square, with
+scarce a perceptible change in volume, winter or summer. Yet she
+accepted it with apparently implacable calm. She felt as if she
+had been born to this, as if she were coming tardily into her
+birthright--something of which each least detail would in time become
+most intimate to her.
+
+They were already late, and Austin hurried her. A brief, hasty walk
+brought them to the theatre, where Austin left her in a corner of the
+lobby with the promise that he would return in a very few minutes: he
+had to see a friend "round back," he explained in an undertone. But Joan
+remained a target for boldly enquiring glances for full ten minutes
+before he reappeared. Even then, with a nod to her to wait, Austin went
+to the box-office window. She was not deceived as to the general tenor
+of his fortunes there--saw him place a card on the ledge and confer
+inaudibly with the ticket-seller, and then reluctantly remove the card
+and substitute for it two one-dollar bills, for which he received two
+slips of pasteboard.
+
+"House 'most sold out," he muttered uncomfortably in her ear as an
+elevator carried them to the roof. "Best I could get was table seats."
+
+"They're just as good as any," she whispered, with a look of gratitude
+that temporarily turned his head.
+
+The elevator discharged them into a vast hall with walls and a roof of
+glass. Artificial wistaria festooned its beams and pillars of steel,
+palms and potted plants lined the walls. A myriad electric bulbs
+glimmered dimly throughout the auditorium, brilliantly upon the small
+stage. Deep banks of chairs radiated back from the footlights, to each
+its tenant staring greedily in one common direction.
+
+An usher waved the newcomers to the left. Ultimately they found seats at
+a small table in a far corner of the enclosure.
+
+Austin was disappointed, and made his disappointment known in a public
+grumble: the table was too far away; they couldn't see nothin'--might's
+well not've come. Joan smiled his ill-humour away, insisting that the
+seats were fine. Mollified, he summoned a waiter and ordered beer for
+himself, for Joan a glass of lemonade--a weirdly decorated and insipid
+concoction which, nevertheless, Joan absorbed with the keenest relish.
+
+In point of fact, the distance from their seats to the stage offered
+little obstacle to her complete enjoyment: her senses were all youthful
+and unimpaired; she saw and heard what many another missed of those in
+their neighbourhood. Furthermore, Joan brought to an entertainment of
+this character a point of view fresh, virginal, and innocent of the very
+meaning of ennui. She sat forward on the extreme edge of her chair,
+imperceptibly a-quiver with excitement, avid of every sight and sound.
+All that was tawdry, vulgar, and contemptible escaped her: she was
+sensitive only to the illusion of splendour and magnificence, and lived
+enraptured by dream-like music, exquisite wit, and the poetic beauty of
+femininity but half-clothed, or less, and viewed through a kaleidoscopic
+play of coloured light.
+
+During the intermission she bent an elbow on the sloppy table-top and
+chattered at Austin with a vivacity new in his knowledge of her, and for
+which he had no match....
+
+At one time during the second part of the performance, the auditorium
+was suddenly darkened, while attention was held to the stage by the
+antics of a pair of German comedians. But in the shadows that now
+surrounded them (quite unconscious that Austin had seized this
+opportunity to capture her warm young hand) Joan became aware of a
+number of figures issuing from a side-door to the stage. She saw them
+marshalled in ranks of two--a long double file, vaguely glimmering
+through the obscurity. And then the comedians darted into the wings, the
+lights blazed out at full strength all over the enclosure, and a roll of
+drums crescendo roused the audience to a tremendous and exhilarating
+novelty: a procession of chorus girls in hip-tights and hussar tunics
+who, each with a snare-drum at waist, had stolen down the aisle, into
+the heart of the auditorium.
+
+For a long moment they marked time, drumming skilfully, their leader
+with her polished baton standing beside Joan. Then the orchestra blared
+out an accompaniment, and they strode away, turning left and marching up
+the centre aisle to the stage.... Joan marked, with pulses that seemed
+to beat in tune to the drumming, the wistful beauty of many of the
+painted faces with their aloof eyes and fixed smiles of conscious
+self-possession, the richness of their uniforms, their bare powdered
+arms, the pretty legs in their silken casings. Oblivious to the
+libidinous glances of the goggling men they passed, she envied them one
+and all--the meanest and homeliest of them even as the most proud and
+beautiful--this chance of theirs _to act_, to be admired, to win the
+homage of the herd....
+
+She awoke as from idyllic dreams to find herself again in a Third Avenue
+car, homeward bound. But still her brain was drowsy with memories of the
+splendour and the glory; fragments of haunting melody ran through her
+thoughts; and visions haunted her, of herself commanding a similar meed
+of adoration....
+
+Austin's arm lay along the top of the seat behind her; his fingers
+rested lightly against the sleeve of her shirtwaist. She did not notice
+them. To his clumsily playful advances she returned indefinite,
+monosyllabic answers, accompanied by her charming smile of a grateful
+child....
+
+On the third landing of their tenement they paused to say good night,
+visible to one another only in a faint light reflected up from the
+gas-jet burning low in the hall below. The smell of humanity and its
+food hung in the clammy air they breathed. A hum of voices from the many
+cells of the hive buzzed in their ears. But Joan forgot them all.
+
+She hesitated, embarrassed with the difficulty of finding words adequate
+to express her thanks.
+
+Austin tried awkwardly to help her out: "Well, I guess it's good night,
+kid."
+
+She said, exclamatory: "O Ben! I've had _such_ a good time!"
+
+"Dja? Glad to hear it. Will you go again--next week? I guess I can work
+som'other show, all right."
+
+Compunction smote as memory reminded her. "But--Ben--didn't you have to
+pay for those tickets?"
+
+"Oh, that's all right. I couldn't find the fella I was lookin' for,
+round back."
+
+"I'm so sorry--"
+
+"Gwan! It wasn't nothin'. Cheap at the price, if you liked it, little
+girl."
+
+"I liked it _awfully_! But I won't go again, unless you show me the pass
+first."
+
+"Wel-l, we'll see about that." He edged a pace nearer.
+
+Suddenly self-conscious, Joan drew back and offered her hand. "Good
+night and--thank you so much, Ben."
+
+He took the hand, but retained it. "Ah, say! is this all I get? I
+thought you kinda liked me...."
+
+"I do, Ben, but--"
+
+"Well, a kiss won't cost you nothin'. It's your turn now."
+
+"But, Ben--but, Ben--"
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the way you feel about it--"
+
+He made as if to relinquish her hand. But to be thought lacking in
+generosity had stung her beyond endurance. Without stopping to
+think--blindly and quickly, so that she might not think--she gave
+herself to his arms.
+
+"Well," she breathed in a soft voice, "just one...."
+
+"Just one, eh?" He pressed his lips to hers. "Oh, I don't know about
+that!"
+
+He tightened his embrace. Her heart was hammering madly. His mouth hurt
+her lips, his beard rasped her tender skin. She wanted frantically to
+get away, to regain possession of herself; and wanted it the more
+because, dimly through the tumult of thought and emotion, she was
+conscious of the fact that she rather liked it.
+
+"Joan...." Austin murmured in a tone that, soft with the note of wooing,
+was yet vibrant with the elation of the conqueror, "Joan...."
+
+One arm shifted up from her waist and his big hand rested heavily over
+her heart.
+
+For a breath she seemed numb and helpless, suffocating with the tempest
+of her senses. Then like lightning there pierced her confusion the
+memory of the knee that had driven her from the car, only that
+afternoon: symbolic of the bedrock beastliness of man. With a quick
+twist and wrench she freed herself and reeled a pace or two away.
+
+"Ben!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anger. "You--you brute--!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"What right had you to--to touch me like that?" she panted, retreating
+as he advanced.
+
+He paused, realizing that he had made a false move which bade fair to
+lose him his prey entirely. Only by elaborate diplomacy would he ever be
+able to reestablish a footing of friendship; weeks must elapse now
+before he would gain the advantage of another kiss from her lips. He
+swore beneath his breath.
+
+"I didn't mean nothin'," he said in a surly voice. "I don't see as you
+got any call to make such a fuss."
+
+"Oh, don't you?... _Don't_ you!" She felt as if she must choke if she
+continued to parley with him. "Well, I do!" she flashed; and turning,
+ran up the fourth flight of steps.
+
+He swung on his heel, muttering; and she heard him slam the door to his
+flat.
+
+She continued more slowly, panting and struggling to subdue the signs of
+her emotion. But she was poisoned to the deeps of her being with her
+reawakened loathing of Man. On the top landing she paused, blinking back
+her tears, digging her nails into her palms while she fought down a
+tendency to sob, then drew herself up, took a deep breath, and advancing
+to the dining-room, turned the knob with stealth, to avoid disturbing
+her family.
+
+To her surprise and dismay, as the first crack widened between the door
+and jamb, she saw that the room was lighted.
+
+Wondering, she walked boldly in.
+
+Her father was seated at the dining-table, a cheap pipe gripped between
+his teeth. Contrary to his custom, when he sat up late, he was not
+thumbing his dope. His fat, hairy arms were folded upon the oilcloth,
+his face turned squarely to the door. Instinctively Joan understood that
+he had waited up for her, that inexplicably a crisis was about to occur
+in her relations with her family.
+
+In a chair tilted back against the wall, near the window opening upon
+the air-shaft, Butch sat, his feet drawn up on the lower rung, purple
+lisle-thread socks luridly displayed, hands in his trouser-pockets, a
+cigarette drooping from his cynical mouth, a straw hat with brilliant
+ribbon tilted forward over his eyes.
+
+Closing the door, Joan put her back to it, eyes questioning her parent.
+Butch did not move. Thursby sagged his chin lower on his chest.
+
+"Where have you been?" he demanded in deep accents, with the incisive
+and precise enunciation which she had learned to associate only with his
+phases of bad temper.
+
+"Where've I been?" she repeated, stammering. "Where.... Why--out
+walking--"
+
+"Street-walking?" he suggested with an ugly snarl.
+
+She sank, a limp, frightened figure, into a chair near the door.
+
+"Why, pa--what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean I'm going to find out the why and wherefore of the way you're
+behaving yourself. You're my daughter, and not of age yet, and I have a
+right to know what you do and where you go. Keep still!" he snapped, as
+she started to interrupt. "Speak when you're spoken to.... I'm going to
+have a serious talk with you, young woman.... What's all this I hear
+about your losing your job and going on the stage?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+For a brief moment Joan sat agape, meeting incredulously the keen,
+contemptuous gaze of her father. Then she pulled herself together with
+determination to be neither browbeaten nor overborne.
+
+"Where'd you hear that about me?" she demanded ominously.
+
+Thursby shook his ponderous head: "It makes no difference--"
+
+"It makes a lot of difference to me!" she cut in, sharply contentious.
+"You might's well tell me, because I won't talk to you if you don't."
+
+Butch brushed the brim of his hat an inch above his eyes and threw her a
+glance of approbation. Thursby hesitated, his large, mottled face sullen
+and dark in the bluish illumination provided by the single gas-jet
+wheezing above the table. Then reluctantly he gave in.
+
+"Old Inness was in the store this evening. He said--"
+
+"Never mind what _he_ said! I guess I know. Gussie's been shooting off
+her face about me at home. And of course old Inness hadn't nothing
+better to do than to run off and tell you everything he knew!"
+
+"Then you don't deny it?" Thursby insisted.
+
+"I don't have to. It's true. No, I don't deny it," she returned, aping
+his manner to exasperation.
+
+"How'd you come to lose your job?"
+
+"Mr. Winter insulted me--one of the floor-walkers--if you've got to
+know."
+
+Thursby's head wagged heavily while he weighed this information, and he
+regarded his daughter with a baleful, morose glare, his fat hands
+trembling.
+
+"What did you say to this man, Winter?" he asked presently.
+
+"Told him I'd slap his face if he tried anything like that on me again.
+So he reported me up to the management--lied about me--and I got fired."
+
+There was a long silence, through which Thursby pondered the matter, his
+thick lips moving inaudibly, while Joan sat upright, maintaining her
+attitude of independence and defiance, and Butch, grinning lazily, as if
+at some private jest, manufactured ring after ring of smoke in the
+still, close air.
+
+Before her father spoke again, Joan became cognizant of Edna and her
+mother, like twin ghosts in their night-dresses, stealing silently,
+barefooted, to listen just within the door of the adjoining bedroom.
+
+"And what do you propose to do now?" asked Thursby at length, lifting
+his weary, haunted gaze to his daughter's face. "What's this about your
+going on the stage?"
+
+Joan set her jaw firmly. "That's what I'm going to do."
+
+Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.
+
+"Oh, you won't? Well, I'd like to know how you're going to stop me. I'm
+tired slaving behind a counter for a dog's wages--and that eaten up by
+fines because I won't go out with the floor-walkers. I'm going to do the
+best I can for myself. I'm going to be an actress, so's I can make a
+decent living for Edna and ma and myself."
+
+"A decent living!" Thursby mocked without mirth. "You're old enough to
+know better than that."
+
+"I'm old enough to know which side my bread's buttered on," the girl
+flashed back angrily. "I'm through living in this dirty flat and giving
+up every dollar I make to keep us all from starving. God knows what we'd
+do if it wasn't for me with a steady job, and Edna working during the
+season. You don't do anything to help us out: all _you_ get goes on the
+ponies. I don't see any reason why I got to consult you if I choose to
+better myself."
+
+She rose the better to end her tirade with a stamp of her foot. Thursby
+likewise got up, if more sluggishly, and moved round the table to
+confront her.
+
+"You don't go on the stage--no!" he said. "That's settled. Understand?"
+
+"Oh, I get you," she replied, with a flirt of her head, "but I don't
+agree with you. I'm going down town first thing tomorrow to try for a
+job with--with," she hesitated, "Ziegfield's Follies!"
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," he insisted fiercely, congested veins
+starting out upon his forehead. "You're my daughter, and those are my
+orders to you, and you'll obey 'em or I'll know the reason why. You...."
+He faltered as if choking. Then he flung out an arm, with a violent
+gesture indicating the shrinking woman in the doorway. "You--your mother
+was an actress when I married her and took her off the stage.
+She--she--"
+
+"Don't you dare say a word against my mother!" Joan screamed
+passionately into his louring face. "Don't you dare! You hear me: don't
+you dare!"
+
+Her infuriated accents were echoed by a smothered gasp and a spasm of
+sobbing from the other room.
+
+Momentarily abashed by the sheer force of this defiance, the father fell
+back a pace. An expression of almost ludicrous disconcertion shadowed
+his discoloured features. Then slowly, as if thoughtfully, he lifted one
+hand and deliberately tore his collar from its fastening and cast it
+from him.
+
+At this, hastily jerking his cigarette into the air-shaft, Butch got up,
+removed his hat and carefully placed it on the mantel, out of harm's
+way.
+
+"You," said Thursby with apparent difficulty, breathing heavily
+between his words--"you shan't use that tone to me, young woman, and
+live in this house. More than that, you'll leave it this very
+night--now!--unless you promise to give up this fool's notion of the
+stage."
+
+"Tonight!"
+
+Joan paled; her lips tightened; but the glint in her eyes wasn't one of
+fright.
+
+"Tonight!" her father reiterated with malicious pleasure in what he
+thought to be evidences of consternation. "And what's more, you're going
+to apologize to me now."
+
+"Apologize to you!" Joan caught her breath sharply, and her next words
+came without premeditation; she was barely conscious, in her rage, that
+she employed them: "I'll be damned if I do!"
+
+With an inarticulate cry, maddened beyond reason, Thursby lifted a heavy
+hand and stepped toward her.
+
+Simultaneously Butch sprang forward, seized the menacing fist and
+dragged it down and back, with a movement so swift and deft that its
+purpose was accomplished and the hand pinned to the small of Thursby's
+back actually before he appreciated what was happening.
+
+Even Joan was slow to comprehend the fact of this amazing
+intervention....
+
+Nodding emphatically, "Beat it, kid," Butch counselled in a pleasant,
+unstrained tone--"beat it while the going's good.... Easy, now, guvner!"
+
+Speechless, Joan slipped out into the hall and slammed the door.
+Stumbling blindly in the murk, she was none the less quick to find the
+head of the stairway.
+
+On the ground floor, panting and sobbing, she paused to listen. There
+came from above no sound of pursuit to speed her on; yet on she went,
+out of the house, to scurry away through the midnight hush of the
+squalid street like a hunted thing.
+
+There was no sort of coherence in her thoughts, nothing but shreds and
+tatters of rage, fear, and despair, all clouded with a faint and vain
+regret. She gave no heed to the way she went: impulse controlled and
+blind instinct guided her. But at the corner of Park Avenue she was
+obliged to pause for breath, and took advantage of that pause to review
+her plight and plan her future.
+
+Her first concern must be to find a lodging for the night. Tomorrow
+could take care of itself....
+
+Uttering a low cry of dismay, the girl clutched at the handbag swinging
+by its strap from her wrist: its latch was broken, its wide jaws yawned.
+In a breath she had grasped the empty substance of her most dire
+apprehensions: the slender fold of bills, handed her when she left the
+store for the last time that evening, was gone. Whether some sneak-thief
+had robbed her on a surface-car or in the Broadway rabble, or whether
+the lock had been broken, releasing its poor treasure, during her
+struggle with Austin on the stairs--or afterwards or before--she could
+not guess. But she was swift to recognize in its bitter fulness the
+heart-rending futility of retracing her steps to search for the vanished
+money--even though it was all that had stood between her and the world,
+between a common room with food for a week or two and starvation
+and--the streets.
+
+It was a fact, established and irrefutable in her understanding, that
+she could never go back....
+
+Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of
+small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers--eighty-seven
+cents wherewith to face the world!
+
+Further rummaging educed a handful of odds and ends, from which, by the
+light of a corner lamp, she presently succeeded in sorting out a folded
+scrap of paper bearing a pencilled memorandum, faint almost to
+illegibility, so that only with some difficulty could Joan decipher its
+legend: "_Maizie Dean_ (_Lizzie Fogarty_) 289 W. 45 St."
+
+Slowly conning the address with mute, moving lips, until she had it by
+heart, the girl trudged on to Madison Avenue and there signalled and
+boarded a southbound surface-car. It carried few passengers. She had a
+long seat all to herself, and about fifteen minutes wherein to debate
+ways and means....
+
+She reckoned it several years since Lizzie Fogarty (predecessor of
+faithless Gussie Inness, both at the stocking counter and in Joan's
+confidence) suddenly, and with no warning or explanation, had left the
+department store and for fully eight months thereafter had kept her
+where-abouts a mystery to her erstwhile associates--though rumours were
+not lacking in support of a shrewd suspicion that she had "gone on the
+stage." The truth only transpired when, one day, she drifted languidly
+up to the counter behind which she had once served, haughtily inspected
+and selected from goods offered her by a stupefied and indignant Gussie,
+and promptly broke down, confessing the truth amid giggles not guiltless
+of a suspicion of tears. Lizzie was in "vodeveal," partner in a
+"sister-act"--witness her card--"_The Dancing Deans, Maizie & May_."
+
+Beyond shadow of doubt she had prospered. Not only was she amazingly and
+awfully arrayed, but there was in evidence an accomplishment believed to
+be singular to people of great wealth, an "English accent"--or what Joan
+and Gussie ingenuously accepted as such. As practised by Miss Maizie
+Dean this embellishment consisted merely in broadening every A in the
+language (when she didn't forget) and speaking rapidly in a high,
+strained voice. Its effect upon her former associates was to render the
+wake she ploughed through their ranks phosphorescent with envy.
+
+Departing in good time to spare the girls the censure of the
+floor-walker, she had left with Joan the pencilled address and this
+counsel: "If ever you _dream_ of goin' into the business, my deah, don't
+do anythin' before you see _me_. That ad-dress will always make me, no
+mattah wheah 'm woikin': and I'd do _anythin'_ in the woild for you. I
+know you'd make good _anywheres_--with that _shape_ and them _eyes_!..."
+
+Of such stuff as this had Joan fashioned her dreams. Confident in the
+generosity of Lizzie Fogarty, she relied implicitly upon the willingness
+of Miss Maizie Dean to help her into the magic circle of "the
+profession." She had no more doubt that Maizie would make it her
+business, even at cost of personal inconvenience, to secure her an
+engagement, than she had that tomorrow's sun would rise upon a world
+tenanted by one Joan Thursby. Or if such doubt entered her mind by
+stealth, she fought it down and cast it forth with all the power of her
+will. For in Miss Dean, nee Fogarty, now resided her sole immediate hope
+of friendly aid and advice....
+
+Alighting at Forty-fifth Street, Joan hastened westward, past Fifth
+Avenue and Sixth to Longacre Square. Here on the corner, she paused to
+don her coat; for the low-swinging draperies of the painted skies had
+begun to distil upon the city a gentle drizzle, soft and warm.
+
+Only two hours ago a vortex of vivid animation, the Square now presented
+a singular aspect of sleepy emptiness. With its high glittering walls of
+steel and glass, its polished black paving like moire silk, its blushing
+canopy of cloud, its air filled with an infinity of globular atoms of
+moisture, swirling and weltering in a shimmer of incandescence: it was
+like a pool of limpid light, deep and still. Few moving things were
+visible: now and again a taxicab, infrequently a surface-car, here and
+there, singly, a few prowling women, a scattering of predacious men.
+
+Of these latter, one who had been skulking beneath the shelter of the
+New York Theatre fire-escapes strolled idly out toward Joan and
+addressed her in a whisper of loathly intimacy. Fortunately she did not
+hear what he said. Even as he spoke she slipped away from the curb and
+like a haunted shadow darted across the open space and into the kindly
+obscurity of the side-street.
+
+Number 289 reared its five-storey brown-stone front on the northern side
+of the street, hard upon Eighth Avenue. Joan inspected it doubtfully.
+Its three lower tiers of windows were all dark and lightless, but on the
+fourth floor a single oblong shone with gas-light, while on the fifth as
+many as three were dully aglow. The outer doors, at the top of the
+high, old-style stoop, were closed, and even the most hopeful vision
+could detect no definite illumination through the fan-light.
+
+Into the heart of Joan a wretched apprehension stole and there abode,
+cold and crawling. From something in the sedate aspect of the house she
+garnered grim and terrible forebodings.
+
+Nevertheless she dared not lose grasp on hope. Mounting the stoop, she
+sought the bell-pull, and found it just below a small strip of paper
+glued to the stone; frayed and weatherbeaten, it published in letters in
+faded ink scrawled by an infirm hand the information: "_Rooms to let
+furnished_."
+
+For some reason which she did not stop to analyze, this announcement
+spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought lustily at the bell.
+
+It evoked no sound that she could hear. Trembling with expectancy, she
+waited several minutes, then pulled again, and once more waited while
+the cold of dread spread from her heart to chill and benumb her hands
+and feet. She heard never a sound. It was no use--she knew it--yet she
+rang again and again, frantically, with determination, in despair. And
+once she vainly tried the door.
+
+The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant
+upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.
+
+A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand
+relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. Only vaguely did she
+recognize in this the symptoms of immense physical fatigue added to
+those of intense emotional strain: she only knew that she was all
+a-weary for her bed.
+
+Of a sudden, hope and courage both deserted her. Tears filled her eyes:
+she was so lonely and forlorn, so helpless and so friendless. Huddled in
+the shallow recess of the doorway, she fought her emotions silently for
+a time, then broke down altogether and sobbed without restraint into
+her handkerchief. Moments passed uncounted, despair possessing her
+utterly.
+
+The street was all but empty. For some time none remarked the
+disconsolate girl. Then a man, with a handbag but without an umbrella,
+appeared from the direction of Longacre Square, walking with a
+deliberation which suggested that he was either indifferent to or
+unconscious of the rain. Turning up the steps of Number 289, he jingled
+absently a bunch of keys. Not until he had reached the platform of the
+stoop did he notice the woman in the doorway.
+
+Promptly he halted, lifting his brows and pursing his lips in a
+noiseless whistle--his head cocked critically to one side.
+
+Then through the waning tempest of her grief, Joan heard his voice:
+
+"I say! What's the matter?"
+
+Gulping down a sob and dabbing hastily at her eyes with a sodden wad of
+handkerchief, she caught through a veil of tears a blurred impression of
+her interrogator. A man.... She ceased instantly to cry and shrank
+hastily out of his way, into the full swing of wind and rain. She said
+nothing, but eyed him with furtive distrust. He made no offer to move.
+
+"See here!" he expostulated. "You're in trouble. Anything I can do?"
+
+Joan felt that she was regaining control of herself. She dared to linger
+and hope rather than to yield to her primitive instinct toward flight.
+
+"Nothing," she said with a catch in her voice--"only I--I wanted to see
+Miss Dean; but nobody answered the bell."
+
+"Oh!" he said thoughtfully--"you wanted to see Miss Dean--yes!"--as
+though he considered this a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. "But
+Madame Duprat never does answer the door after twelve o'clock, you know.
+She says people have no right to call on us after midnight. There's a
+lot in that, too, you know." He wagged his head earnestly. "Really!" he
+concluded with animation.
+
+His voice was pleasant, his manner sympathetic if something original.
+Joan found courage to enquire:
+
+"Do you think--perhaps--she might be in?"
+
+"Oh, she never leaves the house. At least, I've never seen her leave it.
+I fancy she thinks one of us might move it away if she got out of sight
+for a minute or so."
+
+Puzzled, Joan persisted: "You really think Miss Dean is in?"
+
+"Miss Dean? Oh, beg pardon! I was thinking of Madame Duprat. Ah ... Miss
+Dean ... now ... I infer you have urgent business with her--what?"
+
+"Yes, very!" the girl insisted eagerly. "If I could only see her ... I
+must see her!"
+
+"I'm sure she's in, then!" the man declared in accents of profound
+conviction. "Possibly asleep. But at home. O positively!" He inserted a
+key in the lock and pushed the door open. "If you don't mind coming
+in--out of the weather--I'll see."
+
+Joan eyed him doubtfully. The light was indifferent, a mere glimmer from
+the corner lamp at Eighth Avenue; but it enabled her to see that he was
+passably tall and quite slender. He wore a Panama hat with dark
+clothing. His attitude was more explicitly impersonal than that of any
+man with whom she had as yet come into contact: she could detect in it
+no least trace either of condescension or of an ingratiating spirit. He
+seemed at once quite self-possessed and indefinitely preoccupied,
+disinterested, and quite agreeable to be made use of. In short, he
+engaged her tremendously.
+
+But what more specifically prepossessed her in his favour, and what in
+the end influenced her to repose some slight confidence in the man, was
+a quality with which the girl herself endowed him: she chose to be
+reminded in some intangible, elusive fashion, of that flower of
+latter-day chivalry who had once whisked her out of persecution into
+his taxicab and to her home. In point of fact, the two were vastly
+different, and Joan knew it; but, at least, she argued, they were alike
+in this: both were _gentlemen_--rare visitants in her cosmos.
+
+It was mostly through fatigue and helpless bewilderment, however, that
+she at length yielded and consented to precede him into the vestibule.
+Here he opened the inner doors, ushering Joan into a hallway typical of
+an old order of dwelling, now happily obsolescent. The floor was of
+tiles, alternately black and white: a hideous checker-board arrangement.
+A huge hat-rack, black walnut framing a morbid mirror, towered on the
+one hand; on the other rose a high arched doorway, closed. And there was
+a vast and gloomy stairway with an upper landing lost in shadows
+impenetrable to the feeble illumination of the single small tongue of
+gas flickering in an old-fashioned bronze chandelier.
+
+Listening, Joan failed to detect in all the house any sounds other than
+those made by the young man and herself.
+
+"If you'll be good enough to follow me--"
+
+He led the way to the rear of the hall, where, in the shadow of the
+staircase, he unlocked a door and disappeared. The girl waited on the
+threshold of a cool and airy chamber, apparently occupying the entire
+rear half of the ground floor. At the back, long windows stood open to
+the night. The smell of rain was in the room.
+
+"Half a minute: I'll make a light."
+
+He moved through the darkness with the assurance of one on old, familiar
+ground. In the middle of the room a match spluttered and blazed: with a
+slight _plup!_ a gas drop-light with a green shade leapt magically out
+of the obscurity, discovering the silhouette of a tall, spare figure
+bending low to adjust the flame; which presently grew strong and even,
+diffusing a warm and steady glow below the green penumbra of its shade.
+
+The man turned back with his quaint air of deference. "Now, if you
+don't mind sitting down and waiting a minute, I'll ask Madame Duprat
+about Miss--ah--your friend--"
+
+"Miss Dean--Maizie Dean."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+With this he left the girl, and presently she heard his footsteps on the
+staircase.
+
+She found a deeply cushioned arm-chair, and subsided into it with a
+sigh. The intensity of her weariness was indeed a very serious matter
+with her. Her very wits shirked the labour of grappling with the problem
+of what she should do if Maizie Dean were not at home....
+
+Wondering incoherently, she stared about her. The rich, subdued glow of
+the shaded lamp suggested more than it revealed, but she was impressed
+by the generous proportions of the room. The drop-light itself stood
+on a long, broad table littered with a few books and a great many
+papers, inkstands, pens, blotters, ash-trays, pipes: all in agreeable
+disorder. Beyond this table was one smaller, which supported a
+type-writing-machine. Against the nearer wall stood a luxurious, if
+worn, leather-covered couch. There were two immense black walnut
+bookcases. The windows at the back disclosed a section of iron-railed
+balcony.
+
+Joan grew sensitive to an anodynous atmosphere of quiet and comfort....
+
+Drowsily she heard a quiet knocking at some door upstairs; then a
+subdued murmur of voices, the closing of a door, footsteps returning
+down the long staircase. When these last sounded on the tiled flooring,
+the girl spurred her flagging senses and got up in a sudden flutter of
+doubt, anxiety, and embarrassment. The man entering the room found her
+so--poised in indecision.
+
+"Please do sit down," he said quietly, with a smile that carried
+reassurance; and, taking her compliance for something granted, passed on
+to another arm-chair near the long table.
+
+With a docility and total absence of distrust that later surprised her
+to remember, Joan sank back, eyes eloquent with the question unuttered
+by her parted lips.
+
+Her host, lounging, turned to her a face of which one half was in dense
+shadow: a keen, strongly modelled face with deep-set eyes at once
+whimsical and thoughtful, and a mouth thin-lipped but generously wide.
+He rested an elbow on the table and his head on a spare, sinewy hand,
+thrusting slender fingers up into hair straight, not long, and rather
+light in colour.
+
+"I'm sorry to have to report," he said gently, "that 'The Dancing Deans,
+Maizie and May,' are on the road. So I'm informed by Madame Duprat, at
+least. They're not expected back for several weeks.... I hope you aren't
+greatly disappointed."
+
+Her eyes, wide and dark with dismay, told him too plainly that she was.
+She made no effort to speak, but after an instant of dumb consternation,
+moved as if to rise.
+
+He detained her with a gesture. "Please don't hurry: you needn't, you
+know. Of course, if you must, I won't detain you: the door is open, your
+way clear to the street. But what are you going to do about a place to
+sleep tonight?"
+
+She stared in surprise and puzzled resentment. A warm wave of colour
+temporarily displaced her pallor.
+
+"What makes you so sure I've got no place to sleep?" she asked
+ungraciously.
+
+He lifted his shoulders slightly and dropped his hand to the table.
+
+"Perhaps I was impertinent," he admitted. "I'm sorry.... But you
+haven't--have you?"
+
+"No, I haven't," she said sharply. "But what's that--"
+
+"As you quite reasonably imply, it's nothing to me," he interrupted
+suavely. "But I'd be sorry to think of you out there--alone--in the
+rain--when there's no reason why you need be."
+
+"No reason!" she echoed, wondering if she had misjudged him after all.
+
+Without warning the man tilted the green lamp-shade until a broad,
+strong glow flooded her face. A spark of indignation kindled in the girl
+while she endured his brief, impersonal, silent examination. Sheer
+fatigue alone prevented her from rising and walking out of the
+room--that, and curiosity.
+
+He replaced the shade, and got out of the chair with a swift movement
+that seemed not at all one of haste.
+
+"I see no reason," he announced coolly. "I've got to run along now--I
+merely dropped in to get a manuscript. I think you'll be quite
+comfortable here--and there's a good bolt on the door. Of course, it's
+very unconventional, but I hope you'll be kind enough to overlook that,
+considering the circumstances. And tomorrow, after a good rest, you can
+make up your mind whether it would be wiser to stick to your first plan
+or--go home."
+
+He smiled with a vague, disinterested geniality, and added a pleading
+"Now don't say no!" when he saw that the girl had likewise risen.
+
+"How do you know I've left home?" she demanded hotly.
+
+"Well"--his smile broadened--"deductive faculty--Sherlock
+Holmes--Dupin--that sort of tommyrot, you know. But it wasn't such a bad
+guess--now was it?"
+
+"I don't see how you knew," she muttered sulkily.
+
+He ran his long fingers once or twice through his hair in a manner of
+great perplexity.
+
+"I can't quite tell, myself."
+
+"It wasn't my fault," she protested with a flash of passion. "I lost my
+job today, and because I said I wanted to go on the stage, my father put
+me out of the house."
+
+"Yes," he agreed amiably; "they always do--don't they? I fancied it was
+something like that. But there isn't really any reason why you
+shouldn't go home tomorrow and patch it up--or is there?"
+
+She gulped convulsively: "You don't understand--"
+
+"Probably I don't," he conceded. "Still, things may look very much
+otherwise in the morning. They generally do, I notice. One goes to bed
+with reluctance and wakes up with a headache. All that sort of thing....
+But if you'll listen to me a moment--why, then if you want to go, I
+shan't detain you.... My name is John Matthias. My trade is writing
+things--plays, mostly: I know it sounds foolish, but then I hate
+exercise. I live--sleep, that is--ah--elsewhere--down the street. This
+is merely my work-room. So your stopping here won't inconvenience me in
+the least...."
+
+He snatched up a mass of papers from the table, folded them hastily and
+thrust them into a coat pocket.
+
+"That manuscript I was after. Good night. I do hope you'll be
+comfortable."
+
+Before the amazed girl could collect herself, he had his hat and handbag
+and was already in the hallway.
+
+She ran after him.
+
+"But, Mr. Matthias--"
+
+He glanced hastily over his shoulder while fumbling with the
+night-latch.
+
+"I can't let you--"
+
+"Oh, but you must--really, you know."
+
+He had the door open.
+
+"But why do you--how can you trust me with all your things?"
+
+"Tut!" he said reprovingly from the vestibule--"nothing there but play
+'scripts, and they're not worth anything. You can't get anybody to
+produce 'em. I know, because I've tried."
+
+He closed the inner door and banged the outer behind him.
+
+Joan, on the point of pursuing to the street, paused in the vestibule,
+and for a moment stood doubting. Then, with a bewildered look, she
+returned slowly to the back room, shut herself in, and shot the bolt....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the platform of the stoop, Mr. Matthias delayed long enough to turn
+up his coat-collar for the better protection of his linen, and surveyed
+with a wry grin the slashing rush of rain through which he now must
+needs paddle unprotected.
+
+"Queer thing for a fellow to do," he mused dispassionately....
+
+"Daresay I am a bit of an ass.... I might at least have borrowed my own
+umbrella.... But that would hardly have been consistent with the
+egregious insanity of the performance....
+
+"I wonder why I do these awful things?... If I only knew, perhaps I
+could reform...."
+
+Running down the steps, he set out at a rapid pace for the Hotel Astor;
+which in due time received and harboured him for the night.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Awakening at a late hour in a small bedroom bright with sunlight, Mr.
+Matthias treated himself to a moment of incredulity. Such surroundings
+were strange to his drowsy perceptions, and his transitory emotions on
+finding himself so curiously embedded might be most aptly and tersely
+summed up in the exclamation of the old lady in the nursery rhyme:
+"Lack-a-mercy, can this be I?"
+
+Being, however, susceptible to a conviction of singular strength that he
+was himself and none other; and by dint of sheer will-power overcoming a
+tremendous disinclination to do anything but lie still and feel
+perfectly healthy, sound, and at peace with the world: he induced
+himself to roll over and fish for his watch in the pocket of the coat
+hanging on a nearby chair.
+
+The hour proved to be half-past ten.
+
+He fancied that he must have been uncommonly tired to have slept so
+late.
+
+Then he remembered.
+
+"One doesn't need to get drunk to be daft," was the conclusion he
+enunciated to his loneliness.
+
+"I hope to goodness she doesn't go poking through my papers!"
+
+The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more
+promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he
+forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was
+knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again
+flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.
+
+"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for
+the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her...."
+
+But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her
+personality. She remained a shadow--a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith
+of girlhood: more than that, nothing.
+
+He wagged his head seriously.
+
+"Something about her!... _Must_'ve been good-looking ... or
+something...."
+
+With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie
+which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief
+homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he
+was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new
+play--something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.
+
+A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily
+lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely.
+He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall
+and burst unceremoniously into his room--not in the least disconcerted
+to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been
+otherwise.
+
+His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang.
+He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a
+sheet of paper into the carriage and ... sat back at leisure, his gaze
+wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of
+sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.
+
+A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop
+his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers
+closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.
+
+He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.
+
+Half an hour elapsed before he was disturbed. Then someone knocked
+imperatively on the door. He recognized the knock; it was Madame
+Duprat's. Swinging round in his chair he said pleasantly: "Come in."
+
+Madame Duprat entered, filling the doorway. She shut the door and stood
+in front of it, subjecting it to an almost total eclipse. She was tall
+and portly, a grenadier of a woman, with a countenance the austerity of
+whose severely classic mould was somewhat moderated by a delicate, dark
+little moustache on her upper lip. Her mien was regal and portentous,
+sitting well upon the person of the widow of a great if unrecognized
+French tragedian; but her eyes were kindly; and Matthias had long since
+decided that it needed a body as big as Madame Duprat's to contain her
+heart.
+
+"Bon jour, monsieur."
+
+"Bon jour, madame."
+
+This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of
+Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into
+English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face
+of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance
+from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will,
+when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within
+the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather
+electrical.
+
+"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row?
+Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is
+behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles--that dachshund of
+Heaven!--turned suffragette--and proved it with pups?"
+
+"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the
+conduct of monsieur himself?"
+
+"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.
+
+"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is
+it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room
+last night?"
+
+"Oh--that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
+"But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I--"
+
+"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please--at my age?" madame
+demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost
+immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not
+from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through
+the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?"
+The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with
+monsieur is that he left the young woman here _alone_!"
+
+Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression:
+"I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is
+essentially Gallic."
+
+"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look
+forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of
+my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and
+my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because
+monsieur has a heart of pity?"
+
+"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as
+that. It's not likely to happen again ... and besides, the girl was a
+perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I
+wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."
+
+"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.
+
+By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box
+of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of
+typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a
+formless, untrained hand:
+
+"_Dear Sir_," he read with relief, "_thank you--Your friend, Joan
+Thursby_."
+
+He found the matches and used one before looking up.
+
+"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently
+respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her
+condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent
+opposition on the part of her father--a bigot of a man!--that she was
+obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite
+naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss
+Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I
+to turn her out to wander through the rain--at two o'clock in the
+morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the
+sort!"
+
+Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She
+hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.
+
+"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"
+
+"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a
+creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for
+more than he bargained.
+
+"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday,
+you said?"
+
+He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."
+
+"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"
+
+The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.
+
+With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's
+note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed
+her message and herself entirely from his mind.
+
+Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.
+
+But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only
+for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came
+a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young
+man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over
+again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of
+lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but
+the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and
+then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last
+quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust
+back his chair and groaned from his heart.
+
+He sat for a space, teetering on the rear legs of his chair, his lips
+pursed, forehead deeply creased from temple to temple. Then in a
+sepulchral tone uttering the single word "_Snagged!_" he rose and began
+to pace slowly to and fro between the door and the windows.
+
+At the end of an hour he was still patrolling this well-worn beat--his
+way of torment by day and by night, if the threadbare length of carpet
+were to be taken as a reliable witness. And there's no telling how long
+he might have continued the exercise had not Madame Duprat knocked once
+again at his door.
+
+Roused by that sound, he came suddenly out of profound speculations.
+Stopping short and bidding Madame enter, he waited with hands thrust
+deep in his trouser-pockets and shoulders hunched high toward his ears,
+a cloud of annoyance darkening his countenance.
+
+Madame Duprat came in with a "Pardon, monsieur," and a yellow envelope.
+Placing this last upon the table, she announced with simple dignity, "A
+telegram, if you please," and retired.
+
+Matthias strode to the table and with an air of some surprise and
+excitement tore open the message. He found its import unusual in more
+than one respect: it was not a "day-letter," and it had been written
+with a fine, careless extravagance of emotion that recked naught
+whatever of the ten-word limit.
+
+He conned its opening aloud: "'_Beast animal coward ingrate poltroon
+traitor beast_'--"
+
+At this point he broke off to glance at the signature and observe
+thoughtfully: "If Helena's going in for this sort of thing, I really
+must buy her a thesaurus: she's used '_beast_' twice in two lines...."
+
+He continued: "'_How dared you run away last night? You promised. I was
+counting on you. I am disgusted with you and never want to see your face
+again. Return at once. Perhaps you won't be too late after all.
+Imperative. I insist that you return._'"
+
+The signature was simply: "_Helena_."
+
+He said with considerable animation: "But--damn it!--I don't _want_ to
+get married yet! I don't see what I've done...."
+
+Throwing back his shoulders and lifting a defiant chin, he announced
+with invincible determination: "I won't go. That's all there is about
+it. I will--not--go!...
+
+"Besides," he argued plaintively, "I couldn't travel like this--clothes
+all out of shape from that drenching last night--no time to change--!"
+
+Consultation of his watch gave flat contradiction to this assertion.
+
+"And besides, I'm just getting this thing started nicely!" This with
+reference to the play.
+
+With another groan even more soulful than the first he sat down at the
+table, seized the telephone in a savage grasp, and in prematurely
+embittered accents detailed a suburban number to the inoffensive central
+operator. In the inevitable three minutes' wait for the connection to be
+put through he found ample opportunity to lash himself to a frenzy of
+exasperation.
+
+"Hello!" he roared suddenly. "Hel-lo, I say!... Who is this?... Oh, you,
+eh, Swinton? This is Mr. Matthias.... No--I say, no! Don't call Mrs.
+Tankerville. Haven't time.... Just tell her I'm coming down on the
+six-thirty.... Yes.... And send something to meet me at the station....
+Yes. Good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Joan's was an awakening of another order; like the thoroughly healthy
+animal she was, the moment her eyes opened she was vividly and keenly
+alive, completely acquainted with her situation, in full command of
+every faculty.
+
+With no means of determining the time save by instinct, she was none the
+less sure that the hour wasn't late: not late, at all events, for people
+who didn't have to be behind counters by half-past eight. So she lay
+still for many minutes, on the worn leather couch, listening intently.
+There was a great hush in the lodging-house: not a foot-fall, not a
+sound. Yet it was broad daylight--a clear and sunny morning.
+
+Her quick eyes, reviewing the room in this new light, realized the
+substance of a dream come true. She liked it all: the high and dusty
+ceiling, the immense and gloomy bookcases, the disorderly writing-table,
+the three sombre and yellowing steel engravings on the walls, the bare,
+beaten path that crossed the carpet diagonally from door to window, the
+roomy and dilapidated chairs, even the faint, intangible, ineradicable
+smell of tobacco that haunted the air, even the generous cushion beneath
+her head.
+
+Against this last she cuddled her cheek luxuriously, a shadowy smile
+softening her lips, her lashes low. She was enchanted by the novel
+atmosphere of this roomy chamber, an atmosphere of studiousness and
+clear thinking. And her thoughts focussed sharply upon her memories of
+the early morning hours, especially those involving the man who had put
+himself out to shelter her. She was consumed with curiosity about him
+and all that concerned him. In her inexperience she found it rather more
+than difficult to associate his courtesy, his solicitude and generosity
+with his aloofness, abstraction and detachment: the type was new and
+difficult to classify.
+
+Was it true, then, that Man--flesh-and-blood Man as differentiated from
+the romantic abstractions that swaggered through the chapters of the
+ten-cent weekly libraries--could be disinterested with Woman, content to
+serve rather than be served, to give rather than take?
+
+On the one side stood That One of the taxicab adventure, together with
+John Matthias: arrayed against these, a host composed of Ben Austins and
+Mr. Winters and men with knees--beasts of prey who stalked or lay in
+ambush along all the trails that webbed her social wilderness.
+
+Were they truly different, Matthias and that other one? Or were they
+merely old enemies in new masks? How was one to know?...
+
+A noise in the basement, the rattle of a kitchen range being shaken
+clear of ashes, startled the girl to her feet in a twinkling. However
+sharp her inquisitiveness and her desire to see and to know more of this
+man, she entertained no idea of lingering to be found there by him....
+
+After bolting the door and before surrendering her tired body to the
+invitation of the couch, she had yielded to the temptation to make a
+brief tour of enquiry. The result had satisfied her that Matthias had
+lied in one particular, at least: unquestionably this was his work-room,
+but no less surely the man lived as well as worked in it, much if not
+all of the time. In its eastern wall Joan found a door opening into a
+small bedroom furnished with almost soldierly simplicity. And there were
+two large closets in the southern wall of the chamber; in one she found
+his wardrobe, a staggering array of garments, neatly arranged in sharp
+contrast to the confusion of his desk; the other was a bathroom
+completely equipped, a dazzling luxury in her eyes, with its white
+enamel, nickel-plate, glass and porcelain fittings.
+
+She refreshed herself there after rising--not without a guilty sensation
+of trespass--returning to the larger room to complete her dressing; no
+great matter, since she had merely laid aside skirt, coat, and
+shirtwaist, and loosened her corsets before lying down. In a very little
+time then, she was ready for the street; but with her hands on the
+doorknob and bolt, she hesitated, looking back, reluctant to go a
+thankless guest.
+
+Slowly she moved back to the centre-table, touching with diffident
+fingers its jumble of manuscripts, typewriter-paper, memoranda, and
+correspondence. There were letters in plenty, a rack stuffed with them,
+others scattered like leaves hither and yon, one and all superscribed
+with the name of _John Matthias, Esq._, many in the handwriting of
+women, a few scented, but very faintly. Joan wondered about these women
+and his relations with them. Was he greatly loved and by many? It would
+not be strange, she thought, if he were....
+
+Her temper curiously unsettled by these reflections, she stood for a
+long time, staring and thinking. Then a renewed disturbance in the lower
+regions of the house sent her packing--but not until she had left an
+inadequate scrawl of thanks, whose poverty and crudity she felt keenly.
+Why had she never learned to write a hand of delicately angular
+distinction to bear comparison with the hands that had addressed those
+impeccably "correct" notes?...
+
+The hallway was deserted. She let herself hastily out, believing she had
+escaped detection.
+
+Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering
+blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted
+up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those
+early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to
+shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In
+violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square
+on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.
+
+Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had
+gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. A clock in the
+window of a delicatessen shop told her the hour was half-past seven,
+while the sight of the food unattractively displayed proved a sharper
+reminder of breakfast-time. She had no other concern in the world just
+then. It would be hours before she could accomplish anything toward
+establishing her independence; and what steps she was to take toward
+that consummation remained altogether nebulous in her understanding.
+
+She had not gone far before a dairy lunch settled the question as to
+where she was to breakfast.
+
+It was a small, shabby, dingy place, its walls plastered with white
+tiling and mirrors. Joan's order comprised a cup of brownish-yellow
+liquid, which was not coffee, and three weighty cakes known as
+"sinkers." These last might have been crude, childish models in putty of
+the popular American "hot biscuit," but were larger and slightly
+scorched on top and bottom, and when pried open revealed a composition
+resembling aerated clay. Joan anointed them generously with butter and
+consumed them with evident relish. Her powers of digestion were
+magnificent. The price of the meal was ten cents. She went away with a
+sense of repletion and seventy-two cents.
+
+She turned northward again. An empty day of arid hours confronted her
+perturbed and questioning imagination. She was still without definite
+plans or notion which way to turn for shelter. She knew only that
+everything must be settled before nightfall: she dared not trust to find
+another John Matthias, she could not sleep in the streets or parks, and
+return to East Seventy-sixth Street she would not. She had her own
+exertions to rely upon--and seventy-two cents: the one as woefully
+inadequate as the other.
+
+Near Columbus Circle she bought a copy of the _New York World_ for the
+sake of its "Help Wanted" advertisements, and strolled on into Central
+Park.
+
+Here she found some suggestion of nature rising refreshed from its
+over-night bath to bask in sunlight. The grass was nowhere scorched, and
+in shadowed spots still sparkled with rain-drops. The air was still,
+steamy, and heady with fragrance of vegetation. Upon this artificial,
+rectangular oasis a sky of robin's-egg blue smiled benignly. A sense of
+peace and friendly fortunes impregnated the girl's being. Somehow she
+felt serenely sure that nothing untoward could happen to her. The world
+was all too beautiful and kindly....
+
+She discovered a remote bench and there unfolded her newspaper and ran
+hastily through its advertising columns, finding one reason or another
+for rejecting every opening that seemed to promise anything in the
+nature of such employment as she had theretofore known. There were no
+cards from theatrical firms in need of chorus-girls, and nothing else
+interested her. She was now obsessed by two fixed ideas, as they might
+have been the poles of her world: she was going on the stage; she was
+not going back behind a counter.
+
+Yet she must find a way to live until the stage should open its jealous
+doors to her....
+
+The morning hours ebbed slowly, with increasing heat. From time to time
+Joan, for one reason or another, would drift idly on to another bench.
+
+Once, as she sat dreaming with vacant eyes, she was roused by the quick
+beating of muffled hoofs, and looked up in time to see a woman on
+horseback pass swiftly along a bridle-path, closely pursued by a man,
+likewise mounted. The face of the horsewoman burned bright with pleasure
+and excitement and her eyes shone like stars as she glanced
+over-shoulder at her distanced escort. She rode well and looked very
+trim and well turned out in her habit of light-coloured linen. Joan
+thought her charming--and unspeakably blessed.
+
+Later they returned; but now their horses walked sedately side by side;
+and the woman was smiling softly, with her eyes downcast, as she
+listened to her companion, who bent eagerly close to her and spoke in a
+low and intimate voice.
+
+For hours afterwards Joan was haunted by the memory, and rent with
+envious longing. A hundred times she pictured herself in the place of
+the horsewoman; and the man at her side wore always the manner and the
+aspect of John Matthias....
+
+About two o'clock in the afternoon she lunched meagrely on
+crackers-and-milk at another dairy establishment on Columbus
+Avenue--reducing her capital to sixty-one cents. Then, recrossing the
+park, she made her way back through the sweltering side-streets toward
+her late home. She arrived in time to see her father's burly figure
+lumbering heavily up the street. His gaze was to the sidewalk, his mind
+upon the poolrooms, his thick, pendulous lower lip quivered with
+incessant, inaudible repetition of race-track names and records. He
+would not have recognized Joan had he looked directly at her. And he
+didn't look.
+
+She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be
+counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the
+street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway....
+
+Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the
+residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than
+ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she
+entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise
+not untouched by alarm.
+
+"Joan!"
+
+The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very
+suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of
+questions that was about to break.
+
+"Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?"
+
+"Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a
+frightened breath.
+
+"Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly.
+"Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was
+gone?"
+
+Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to
+her mother.
+
+"No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He
+won't hear of your coming back--"
+
+"A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's
+my things. I've done enough for this family.... Now I'm going to look
+out for Number One."
+
+The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose
+bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal
+grievance.
+
+"I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously.
+
+Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without
+you--"
+
+"Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all
+day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and
+try it: _I_'m sick and tired of it!"
+
+She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed
+but inquisitive.
+
+Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the
+accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting,
+in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in
+embittered silence, ignoring her sister.
+
+"Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length.
+
+"With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely.
+
+"Who?" the other persisted.
+
+Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face.
+
+"Maizie Dean, if you _got_ to know."
+
+"Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her--"
+
+"Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at
+the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big
+money."
+
+"Is she going to get you a job?"
+
+"Of course--foolish!"
+
+"Where's she live?"
+
+"Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue."
+
+"What's the number of the house?"
+
+"What do you want to know for?"
+
+"Ain't you going back there?"
+
+Joan shut down the lid of the suit-case and began to strap it. "Yes,"
+she said with a trace of reluctance.
+
+"I might wanta write to you," insisted Edna. "Anything might happen and
+you not know--"
+
+"Oh, well, then," Joan admitted, with an air of extreme ennui, "the
+number's Two-eighty-nine. Catch that? Don't forget."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"Besides," Joan added, lifting her voice for the benefit of the listener
+in the dining-room, "you don't need to be so much in a rush to think I
+ain't ever coming back to see you. You got no right to think that of me,
+after the way I've turned in my pay week in and week out, right straight
+along. I don't know what makes you think I've turned mean. I'm going to
+come and see you and ma every week, and as soon's I begin to make money
+you'll get your share, all right, all right!"
+
+"Joan--" the younger girl whispered, drawing nearer.
+
+"What?"
+
+"They had a nawful row last night--ma and pa--after you went."
+
+"I bet he done all the rowing!"
+
+"He"--Edna's thin, pale cheeks coloured faintly with indignation--"he
+said rotten things to her--said it was because you took after her made
+you want to go on the stage."
+
+"That's like him, the brute!" Joan commented between her teeth. "What'd
+she say?"
+
+"Nothing. Then he lit into Butch, but Butch stood up to him and told him
+to shut his face or he'd knock his block off."
+
+"And he did shut his face, didn't he?"
+
+Edna nodded vigorously. "Yeh--but he rowed with ma for hours after
+they'd went to bed. I could hear him fussing and swearing. She never
+answered one word."
+
+Reminiscences of like experiences of her own, long white nights
+through which she had lain sleepless, listening to the endless,
+indistinguishable monologue of recrimination and abuse in the adjoining
+bedroom, softened Joan's mood.
+
+She returned to the dining-room.
+
+Her mother's head had fallen forward on arms folded amidst the odious
+disorder of unclean dishes. Through a long minute Joan regarded with
+sombre eyes that unlovely and pitiful head, with its scant covering of
+greyish hair stretched taut from nape to temple and brow and twisted
+into a ragged knot at the back, with its hollowed temples and sunken
+cheeks, its thin and stringy neck emerging from the collar of a cheap
+and soiled Mother Hubbard. With new intentness, as if seeing them for
+the first time, she studied the dejected curve of those toil-bent
+shoulders, and the lean red forearms with their gnarled and scalded
+hands.
+
+Dull emotions troubled the girl, pity and apprehension entering into her
+mood to war with selfishness and obstinacy.
+
+This drudge that was her mother had once been a woman like herself,
+straight and strong and fashioned in clean, firm contours of wholesome
+flesh. To what was due this dreadful metamorphosis? To the stage? Or to
+Man? Or to both?... Must she in the end become as her mother was, a
+battered derelict of womanhood, hopeless of salvage?
+
+Slipping to her knees, she passed an arm across the thin, sharp
+shoulders of the woman.
+
+"Ma ..." she said gently.
+
+The response was a whisper barely audible, her name breathed in a sigh:
+"Joan...."
+
+Beneath her warm, strong arm there was the faintest perceptible movement
+of the shoulders.
+
+"Listen to me, ma: I ain't going to forget you and Edna. I am going to
+work hard and take care of you."
+
+The mother moved her head slightly, turning her face away from her
+daughter. Otherwise she was wholly unresponsive. Joan might have been
+talking to the deaf.
+
+She divined suddenly something of the tragedy and despair of this
+inarticulate creature whose body had borne her, who had once been as her
+daughter was now. Before her mental vision unfolded a vast and sordid
+tapestry--a patchwork-thing made up of hints, innuendoes and snatches of
+half-remembered conversations, heretofore meaningless, of a
+thousand-and-one insignificant circumstances, individually valueless,
+assembling into an almost intelligible whole: picturing in dim,
+distorted perspective the history of her mother, drab, pitiful,
+appalling....
+
+Abruptly, bending forward, Joan touched her lips to the sallow cheek.
+
+"Good-bye," she said stiffly; "I got to go."
+
+She rose. Her mother did not move. Edna stared wonderingly, as though a
+bystander at a scene of whose meaning she was ignorant. Joan took up her
+suit-case and went to the door.
+
+"S'long, kid," she saluted her sister lightly. "Take good care of ma
+while I'm away. See you before long."
+
+She hesitated again in the open doorway, with her hand on the knob.
+
+"And tell Butch I said thanks."
+
+She was half-way down to the next landing before she became aware of
+Edna bending over the banisters.
+
+"Joan--"
+
+"What?"
+
+The girl paused.
+
+"I 'most forgot: Butch said if you was to come in to tell you to drop
+around to the store th'safternoon. Said he had something to tell you."
+
+"What?" demanded Joan, incredulous.
+
+"I dunno. He just said that this morning."
+
+"All right. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Joan."
+
+To eyes dazzled by ambition, the news-stand, shouldered on either side
+by a prosperous delicatessen shop and a more prosperous and ornate
+corner saloon, wore a look unusually hopeless and pitiful: it was so
+small, so narrow-chested, so shabby!
+
+Its plate-glass show-window, dim with the accumulated grime of years,
+bore in block letters of white enamel--with several letters missing--the
+legend:
+
+    A THUR BY
+
+    Newsd  ler & Stationer
+    igars & Con   tionery
+
+Before the door stood a wooden newspaper stand, painted red and black,
+advertising the one-cent evening sheet which furnished it gratis. A few
+dusty stacks of papers ornamented it. The door was wide open, disclosing
+an interior furnished with dirt-smeared show-cases which housed a stock
+of cheap cigars and tobacco, boxes of villainous candy to be retailed by
+the cent's-worth, writing-paper in gaudy, fly-specked packages,
+magazines, and a handful of brittle toys, perennially unsold. The floor
+was seldom swept and had never been scrubbed in all the nine years that
+Thursby had been a tenant of the place.
+
+The establishment was, as Joan had anticipated, in sole charge of Butch,
+who occupied a tilted chair, his lean nose exploring the sporting pages
+of _The Evening Journal_. Inevitably, a half-consumed Sweet Caporal
+cigarette ornamented his cynic mouth. He greeted Joan with a flicker of
+amusement.
+
+"'Lo, kid!" he said: and threw aside the paper. "What's doing?"
+
+"Edna said you wanted to see me."
+
+"Yeh: that's right." Butch yawned liberally and thrust his hat to the
+back of his head.
+
+"Well?" said the girl sharply. "What do you want?"
+
+Butch delayed his answer until he had inserted a fresh cigarette between
+his lips, lighted it from the old, and inhaled deeply. Interim he looked
+her over openly, with the eyes of one from whom humanity has no secrets.
+
+"Dja land that job?" he enquired at length, smoke trickling from his
+mouth and nostrils, a grim smile lurking about his lips.
+
+"Haven't tried yet."
+
+"But you're goin' to?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"What line? Chorus girl or supe in the legit?"
+
+"I'm going to try to do anything that turns up," Joan affirmed
+courageously.
+
+"Try anythin' once, eh?" murmured the boy with profound irony. "Well,
+where you goin' to hang out till you land?"
+
+The lie ran glibly off her tongue this time: "With Maizie
+Dean--Two-eighty-nine West Forty-fifth."
+
+"That where you stayed last night?"
+
+"Yes ..." she faltered, already beginning to repent and foresee unhappy
+complications in event Butch should try to find her at the address she
+had given.
+
+The boy got up suddenly and stood close to her, searching her face with
+his prematurely knowing eyes.
+
+"Look here, kid!" he said roughly. "Hand it to me straight now: on the
+level, there ain't no man mixed up in this?"
+
+She was able to meet his gaze without a tremor: "On the dead level,
+Butch."
+
+"That's all right then. Only...."
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"There'll be regular trouble for the guy, if I ever find out you've lied
+to me."
+
+"What business--"
+
+"Ah, cut that!" snarled Butch. "You're my sister--see? And you're a
+damn' little fool, and somebody's got to look out for you. And that
+means me. You go ahead and try this stage thing all you like--but duck
+the men, duck 'em every time!"
+
+He eyed her momentarily from a vast and aloof coign of vantage. She was
+dumb with resentment, oppressed by amazement and a little in awe of the
+boy, her junior though he was.
+
+"Now, lis'en: got any money?"
+
+"No--yes--fifty cents," she stammered.
+
+"That ain't goin' to carry you far over the bumps. Who's goin' to put up
+for you while you're lookin' for this job-thing? Your frien' Maizie?"
+
+"I don't know--I guess so--yes: I'm going to stay with her."
+
+"Well, you won't last long if you don't come through with some coin
+every little while."
+
+Without warning Butch produced a small packet of bills from his
+trouser-pocket.
+
+"Djever see them before?" he enquired, with his mocking smile.
+
+Joan gasped: "My money--!"
+
+"Uh-huh," Butch nodded. "Fell outa your bag when you side-stepped the
+Old Man and beat it, last night. He didn't see it, and I sneaked the
+bunch while he wasn't lookin'. G'wan--take it."
+
+He thrust the money into her fingers that closed convulsively upon it.
+For a moment she choked and gulped, on the verge of tears, so
+overpowering was the sense of relief.
+
+"O Butch--!"
+
+"Ah, cut that out. It's your money, all right--ain't it?"
+
+She began with trembling fingers to count the bills. Butch tilted his
+head to one side and regarded her with undisguised disgust.
+
+"Say, you must have a swell opinion of me, kid, to think I'd hold out on
+you!"
+
+She stared bewildered.
+
+"There's twenty-two dollars here, Butch!"
+
+Her hand moved out as if offering to return the money. With an angry
+movement he slapped it back and turned away.
+
+"That's right," he muttered sourly. "I slipped an extra ten in. I guess
+I gotta right to, ain't I? You're my sister, and you'll need it before
+you get through, all right."
+
+She lingered, stunned. "But, Butch ... I oughtn't to...."
+
+"Ah, can that guff--and beat it. The Old Man's liable to be back any
+minute."
+
+Seizing her suit-case, he urged her none too gently toward the door.
+
+"It's awful' good of you, Butch--awful' good--"
+
+"All right--all right. But can the gush-thing till next time."
+
+Overwhelmed, Joan permitted herself to be thrust out of the door; and
+then, recovering to some extent, masked her excitement as best she could
+and trudged away across-town, back toward Central Park.
+
+Blind instinct urged her to that refuge where she would have quiet and
+peace while she thought things out: a necessity which had not existed
+until within the last fifteen minutes.
+
+Before her interview with Butch she had been penniless and planless.
+But now she found herself in circumstances of comparative affluence and
+independence. Twenty-two dollars strictly economized surely ought to
+keep her fed and sheltered in decent lodgings for at least three weeks;
+within which time she would quite as surely find employment of some
+sort.
+
+It remained to decide how best to conserve her resources. On the face of
+the situation, she had nothing to do but seek the cheapest and meanest
+rooming-house in the city. But in her heart of hearts she had already
+determined to return to the establishment of Madame Duprat, beyond her
+means though it might be, ostensibly to await the return of the Dancing
+Deans, secretly that she might be under the same roof with John
+Matthias.
+
+And in the end it was to Number 289 that she turned. At half-past four
+she stood again on the brown-stone stoop, waiting an answer to her ring.
+
+And at the same moment, John Matthias, handsomely garbed in the best of
+his wardrobe but otherwise invested in a temper both indignant and
+rebellious, instituted a dash from room to train, handicapped by a
+time-limit ridiculously brief.
+
+As the front door slammed at his back, he pulled up smartly to escape
+collision with the girl on the stoop. He looked at and through her,
+barely conscious of her pretty, pallid face and the light of recognition
+in her eyes. Then, with a murmured apology, he dodged neatly round her,
+swung down the steps, and frantically hailed a passing taxicab.
+
+Joan, dashed and disappointed, saw the vehicle swing in to the curb and
+heard Matthias, as he clambered in, direct the driver to the
+Pennsylvania Station with all possible haste.
+
+She stared after the dwindling cab disconsolately. He hadn't even known
+her!
+
+In another minute she would have turned her back on the house and sought
+lodgings elsewhere, but the door abruptly opened a second time,
+revealing Madame Duprat, a forbidding but imperative figure, upon the
+threshold.
+
+Timidly in her confusion the girl made some semi-articulate enquiry as
+to the address of Miss Maizie Dean.
+
+To her astonishment and consternation, the landlady unbent and smiled.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed with unction. "Mademoiselle is the friend of
+Monsieur Matthias, is it not? Very good. Will you not be pleased to
+enter? It is but this afternoon that the Sisters Dean have returned so
+altogether unexpectedly."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Alone in the body of a touring-car, Helena Tankerville, a slender and
+fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot
+and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly,
+and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious
+stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track
+debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength
+of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train.
+
+She was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were
+evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her
+manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except
+possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her
+while to be aware. None the less, she was conscious that she was
+visible. . . .
+
+A faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines.
+Immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the
+west. A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged
+from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a
+pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where,
+panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in
+beside the platform.
+
+Incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men
+in apparently comfortable circumstances, well dressed to the standards
+of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon,
+heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought
+accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, 'buses, surreys,
+smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.
+
+Helena, bending forward, overlooked them all with imperceptible disdain.
+The face she sought was not among those that swam in review beneath her.
+And presently encountering an overbold glance, she drew back with a
+little frown of annoyance. Already the throng was thinning; conveyances
+laden to the guards were drawing out of the rank and rattling and
+rumbling off through stifling drifts of dust; no more passengers were
+issuing from the coaches; and already the parlour-car porters were
+picking up their stools and preparing to swing back aboard the train.
+The conductor waved his final signal. The bell tolled its warning. The
+locomotive belched black smoke and cinders and amid stentorian puffings
+began to move, the coaches following to their tune of clanking
+couplings. No sign of her refractory nephew. And still Helena hesitated
+to give the order to drive home; John had telephoned; it wasn't like him
+to be delinquent in his promises.
+
+The end of the last car was passing her when she saw him. He appeared
+suddenly on the rearmost platform, with the startled expression and air
+of a Jack-in-the-box; dropped his suit-case over the rear rail; ran down
+the steps; delayed an instant to gauge distance and speed: and with nice
+calculation dropped lightly to the ground.
+
+Pausing only to recover his luggage, he approached the motor-car with a
+sheepish smile for his handsome young aunt, who regarded him with an air
+of mingled bewilderment and despair.
+
+"Wel-l!" she exclaimed, as soon as he was near enough to hear--"of _all_
+things--!"
+
+"Right you are!" he affirmed gravely, tossing his handbag into the car
+and following it. "Kick along, Davy," he added, with a nod to the
+chauffeur; and gracefully sank back upon the seat beside Helena.
+
+Purring, the car began to grope its way through the dust-fog. Matthias
+turned twinkling eyes to his aunt. She compressed her lips and shook her
+head helplessly.
+
+"Words inadequate, aunty?"
+
+"Quite!" she said. "_What_ were you doing on that train, to come so near
+forgetting the station?"
+
+"Thinking," he explained: "wrapped in profound and exhaustive
+meditation. I say, how stunning you look!"
+
+She gave him up; or one inferred as much from her gesture.
+
+"You're impossible," she said in a tragic voice. "Thinking!... While _I_
+had to wait there and be ogled by all those odious men!"
+
+"You must've been ready to sink through the ground."
+
+She eyed him stonily. "You didn't care--!"
+
+"Even if I hadn't been preoccupied, it would never have entered my head
+that you seriously objected to being admired."
+
+She received this in injured silence. Matthias chuckled to himself and
+settled more comfortably into his seat. The motor-car turned off the
+main road from the station to the village of Port Madison, down which
+the greater number of its predecessors had clattered, and found
+unclouded air on a well-metalled lane bordered with aged oaks and
+maples. Through a funnel-like dip between hills, Matthias, looking past
+his aunt, caught a fleeting glimpse of the cluttered roofs of Port
+Madison, its shallow, land-locked harbour set with a little fleet of
+pleasure boats, and the ineffable, burning blue of the distant Sound....
+
+"I presume," Helena returned to the charge, disarmingly aggrieved, "you
+think I ought to be grateful for your condescending to return at all!"
+
+"Forgive me," he pleaded, not altogether insincerely; "I know it wasn't
+right of me to run away like that, but I couldn't help it."
+
+"You couldn't help it!" she murmured despairingly.
+
+"That's just the way of it. I got to thinking about a play I wanted to
+write, yesterday afternoon, and--well, along about ten o'clock it got
+too strong for me. I just had to get back to my typewriter. You know how
+that is."
+
+"I? What do I know about your silly playwriting?"
+
+Laughing, he bent nearer and patted the gloved hand on the cushions
+beside him. "You know perfectly well, Helena dear, what it is to want to
+do something so bad you simply can't help yourself. It's the Matthias
+blood in both of us. That's why you ran off and married Tankerville
+against everybody's advice. Of course, it did turn out beautifully; but
+you didn't stop to wonder whether it would or not when you took it into
+your head to marry him. The same with me: you decide that it's high time
+for your delightful sister-in-law to get married, and you look round and
+fix on your dutiful nephew for the bridegroom-elect--wholly because you
+want it to be that way."
+
+"Don't you?" she demanded sharply.
+
+He took a moment to think this over. "I suppose I do," he admitted
+almost reluctantly. "But--"
+
+"You're in love with her!" Helena declared with spirit.
+
+"Quite true, but--"
+
+"Then why," she begged in tones of moderate exasperation--"why do you
+object--hang fire--run away like a silly, frightened schoolboy as soon
+as I get everything arranged for you?"
+
+"But, you see, I'm not in a position to get married yet," he argued. "I
+haven't--"
+
+"How's that--'not in a position'?" she interrupted testily.
+
+"You keep forgetting I'm the family pauper, the poor relation, whereas
+Venetia has all the money there is, more or less."
+
+"There you are!" Helena turned her palms out expressively; folded them
+in resignation. "What more can you ask?"
+
+"Something more nearly approaching an equal footing, at least."
+
+"Jack!"--she turned to him with a fine air of innocence--"how much money
+_have_ you got, anyway?"
+
+"Thirty-six hundred per annum, as you know very well," he replied. "But,
+my dear, dear aunty (you're one of the most beautiful creatures alive
+and I'm awfully proud and fond of you) surely you must understand that
+no decent fellow wants to go to the girl he's in love with and make a
+proposition like this: 'I've got thirty-six hundred and you've got three
+hundred and sixty thousand; let's marry and divide.'"
+
+"How long have you been writing plays?"
+
+"Oh ... several years."
+
+"And how many have you written?"
+
+"Quite a few."
+
+"And how much have you made at it?"
+
+"Next to nothing, but--"
+
+"Then why do you persist?"
+
+"Because it's the thing I want to do."
+
+"But you can't make any money at it--"
+
+"I may make a lot before long. Meanwhile, I like it."
+
+"But if you'd only listen to reason and let Tankerville--"
+
+"With all the best intentions in the world, dear Helena, Tankerville
+couldn't make me a successful business man. It isn't in me. Permit me to
+muddle along in my own, 'special, wrong-headed way, and the chances are
+I'll make good in the end. But, once and for all, I refuse positively to
+give up my trade and try to make sense of Wall Street methods."
+
+Helena moved her shoulders impatiently. For an instant she was silenced.
+Then: "But marriage needn't necessarily put an end to your playwriting.
+A good marriage--as with Venetia--ought even to help, I should think."
+
+"But you persist in forgetting I'm not a fortune hunter."
+
+"But," she countered smartly, "Marbridge is."
+
+He said: "Oh--Marbridge!" as if dumbfounded.
+
+She smiled quietly, a very wise and superior smile.
+
+To this point the car had been steadily ascending; the noise of the
+motor, together with the frequent stutterings of the exhaust with the
+muffler cut-out, had been sufficient to disguise the substance of their
+communication from the ears of the operator. Now, however, they
+surmounted the highest point and began the more gradual descent to the
+Tankerville estate. And with less noise there was consequently very
+little talking on the part of the two on the rear seat. For which
+Matthias wasn't altogether sorry. He wanted time to think--to think
+about Venetia Tankerville in the new light cast upon her by his aunt's
+concluding remark: as affected by her friendship with Vincent Marbridge.
+
+In the natural swing of events, it would never have occurred to him to
+consider Marbridge's attentions seriously. Nobody ever took Marbridge
+seriously, he believed, aside from a few exceptionally foolish women....
+
+Noiselessly the car slipped down a mile-long avenue to the brow of a
+promontory. On either hand Tanglewood's long parked terraces fell away
+to the water: on the left the harbour of Port Madison, on the right,
+Long Island Sound.
+
+Matthias was barely conscious of these things; his mood was haunted by
+an extraordinarily clear vision of Vincent Marbridge: not tall, but by
+no means short; a trifle stout, but none the less a well-knit figure of
+a man, and tremendously alive; dark, with a broad, blunt, good-humoured
+face and seal-brown eyes that were exceedingly handsome and expressive;
+keen-witted and accomplished, knowing almost everybody and every place
+and thing worth knowing; hedonist and egoist, selfish, unscrupulous,
+magnetic, fascinating.
+
+Impressed, Matthias frowned. His aunt eyed him covertly, with a sly,
+semi-affectionate, semi-malicious smile shadowing her mouth.
+
+Slackening its pace, the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and
+slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. Matthias pulled
+himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. They turned
+toward the house.
+
+Tankerville's pretentious marble palace crowned the brow of the headland
+with an effect as exquisite as a dream of an ancient French chateau
+realized in snow. For this its owner had his wife to thank. Helena,
+unable to curb her husband's desire for the most expensive and
+ostentatious place obtainable, had at least guided his choice of design.
+It was too magnificent, it was overpowering, but it was beautiful; and
+it was more than ever beautiful at this hour, with its walls in part
+bathed in a rose-pink light of sunset, in part shadowed as with a wash
+of violet, and with all its admirable proportions stark against the
+dusky sapphire of the Sound.
+
+An unwonted stillness clung about the place. Matthias wondered.
+
+"It might be the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," he said. "Why this
+deadly and benumbing silence? What--"
+
+"Oh, simply that Tankerville decided this morning to take everybody down
+to Huntington for lunch. They got away quite early, in the Enchantress.
+Come out on the terrace; we'll look for them."
+
+They passed through a wide, cool, panelled hallway.
+
+"Why didn't you go?"
+
+"You know I hate the water. Besides, I had a headache--at least, I had
+one until the Enchantress got under way; and furthermore I meant to stay
+at home and meet you and talk it out."
+
+"Venetia went, of course?"
+
+"Of course--_and_ Marbridge--and everybody!"
+
+He grunted thoughtfully. They descended to a terrace which jutted airily
+out over the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty
+feet to the beach.
+
+Helena, dropping languidly into a wicker chair, motioned Matthias to the
+broad marble balustrade.
+
+"Any sign of the Enchantress, O perturbed nephew?"
+
+He lingered there for an instant, marvelling with an inexhaustible
+wonder at the magnificent sweep of the view, then remembering, raked the
+waters until he discovered Tankerville's power-cruiser standing in
+toward the dock from the bottle-neck mouth of Port Madison harbour.
+
+Returning, he reported, seated himself near his aunt, lighted a
+cigarette.
+
+"Why did you ask him here anyway?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+"Who?" she parried mischievously.
+
+"Marbridge, of course," he admitted, sulking in the face of her manifest
+amusement.
+
+"Jealous, Jackie?"
+
+"Oh--if you insist."
+
+She laughed. "The most encouraging symptom you've yet betrayed!... I
+didn't ask him. Tankerville did. He likes him. The man's amusing, after
+all."
+
+"But you like him?"
+
+"He amuses me."
+
+"He's not precisely a tame cat...."
+
+"Dear boy!" she laughed again, "I didn't fetch you out here to worry
+about me. I'm fire-proof. Venetia's quite another pair of shoes. Fret
+about her as much as you like."
+
+"When does he go--Marbridge, I mean?"
+
+"Monday, I think. At least, I believe Tankerville asked him for a week
+only."
+
+"And that's why you asked me, this particular week?"
+
+"I thought you'd be a good counter-irritant; and hoped you'd come to
+your senses and secure Venetia against all Marbridges for all time to
+come. You gave me to understand you would."
+
+"Pardon," he corrected a trifle stiffly: "I admitted to you in strict
+confidence that I was in love with Venetia. I never promised to ask her
+to marry me."
+
+"Well, that's what I understood you to mean. And anyway, you'd better.
+Neither Tankerville nor I can control the girl; she's her own mistress
+and headstrong enough to be a good match for any Matthias that ever
+lived. If Marbridge ever convinces her that she likes him...."
+
+She concluded with an eloquent ellipsis.
+
+"Probably," mused Matthias after prolonged deliberation, "I'd have lost
+my head before this if it hadn't been so full of that play."
+
+Helena smiled indulgently. "It's not too late ... I hope."
+
+Troubled, he rose, walked to the balustrade, jerked his cigarette into
+space, and returned.
+
+"As between one fortune-hunter and another," he said gloomily, "I'm
+conceited enough to think myself the safer bet."
+
+His aunt smiled more openly: "See what Venetia thinks."
+
+"I will!" said Matthias with a fine air of inalterable determination.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Since it was her whim and the winds indulged, Helena had ordered that
+the rite of the late dinner be celebrated by candlelight alone. Ten
+shaded candles graced the places. In the centre of the table an ancient
+candelabrum of gold added the mellow illumination of its seven alabaster
+arms, whose small flames yearned upward ardently, with scarce a
+perceptible flicker, though every window was wide to the whispering
+night.
+
+One of these that faced Matthias framed a shimmering sky of stars and
+the still black shield of the Sound, on which the fixed and undeviating
+glare of a remote light-house was reflected darkly, a long unwavering
+way of light; he thought of a tall wax candle burning amid the
+sanctified shadows of some vast and dark and still cathedral....
+
+They were ten at table: from Helena's right, Pat Atherton (Tankerville's
+partner), a Mrs. Majendie, Marbridge, a Mrs. Cardrow, Tankerville at the
+head; on his right, Mrs. Pat Atherton, Matthias, Venetia Tankerville,
+Majendie. The latter and his wife were almost strangers to Matthias,
+having arrived only the previous afternoon: but he thought them as
+pleasant and handsome people as any of those with whom the Tankervilles
+liked to fill their house. The Athertons were old friends; he had known
+them well, long before Helena dreamed of marrying Tankerville. Marbridge
+was an indifferently familiar figure in the ways of his life; they
+frequented the same clubs, and of late he had begun to encounter the
+older man more and more frequently in his theatrical divagations.
+Remained Mrs. Cardrow, a widow, the acquaintance of a week's standing.
+Cardrow had been in some way connected with the enterprises of Messrs.
+Tankerville & Atherton; how, Matthias didn't remember; a man of whom
+rumour said little that was good until it began to say _De mortuis_....
+He had killed himself for no accountable reason. His widow seemed to
+have survived bereavement with amazing grace.
+
+Matthias admired her greatly. Women, he knew--Helena in their
+number--mistrusted her for no cause perceptible to him. He liked her,
+thought her little less than absolutely charming. So, evidently, did
+Marbridge, whose attitude toward her this evening was a little more
+noticeably attentive than ever before. He seemed to exert himself to
+interest and divert. His black eyes snapped. As he talked his heavy body
+swayed slightly from the hips, lending an accent to his animation. His
+laugh was frequent and infectious.
+
+She was a woman who smiled more than she laughed. She smiled now,
+inscrutably, her beautiful, insolent eyes half veiled with demure
+lashes, her face turned to Marbridge, her chin a trifle high, bringing
+out the clear strong lines of her throat and shoulders, which had the
+texture, the pallor, and the firmness of fine ivory. Her eyes, when she
+chose to discover them, were brown, her eyebrows almost black, her hair
+dull gold, the gold of the candelabrum--the gold of artifice, on the
+word of Helena.
+
+Perhaps it was to this odd colouring--ivory and brown, black and
+gold--that Mrs. Cardrow owed most of her strange and provoking quality.
+But there was something else, something one could not define: at once
+stimulating and elusive; less charm than allure; nameless; that
+attracted and repelled....
+
+These were thoughts set stirring by a dozen semi-curious glances at the
+woman, in pauses in his conversation with Venetia. Matthias was in fact
+indifferent to Mrs. Cardrow. But he was tremendously interested in
+Venetia. It could hardly be otherwise--since his talk with Helena. He
+was to marry Venetia. Amazing thought!
+
+She was adorable. Of the other women, none compared with Mrs. Cardrow:
+even Helena's beauty paled in contrast. But Venetia was to Mrs. Cardrow
+as dawn to noon. One looked at Venetia and thought of a still sea at
+daybreak, mobile to the young and fitful airs, radiant with sunlight,
+breathless with apprehension of the long, golden hours to come. One
+looked at Mrs. Cardrow and thought--of Woman. Venetia was dark, and the
+other fair; Venetia was by no means a child, Mrs. Cardrow not yet
+thirty. The gulf that set them apart was not so much of years as of
+caste: they lived and thought on different levels, mental if not social.
+Matthias liked to think Venetia of the higher order.
+
+He was to marry her. Incredible!
+
+And tonight her eyes were warm and kind for him, and all for him. He
+could not see that there was anything of self-interest in the infrequent
+glances she cast at those who sat opposite, playing their time-old game
+with such engaging candour. If she had thought much of Marbridge, surely
+she must have betrayed some little pique or chagrin. She was not blind;
+neither was she patient and prone to self-effacement. Matthias had known
+her long enough to have garnered vivid memories of her resentment of
+slights, whether real or fancied. She was unique and wonderful in many
+ways, but (he told himself in a catch-phrase of the hour) she was
+essentially human. He could not have cared for a woman without temper:
+he cared intensely for this girl-woman whose rare loveliness seemed
+almost exotic in its singular scheme, whose skin, fine of texture and
+colourless as milk-white satin, was splashed with lips of burning
+scarlet, whose eyes of deepest violet were luminous in the shadow of
+hair of the richness and lustre of burnished bronze ... luminous and
+kind to him: he dared to hope greatly of their sympathy.
+
+Through dinner she had entertained him with a mirthful, inconsecutive
+narrative of the adventures of the day. Now, as ices were served, her
+interest swerved suddenly and found a new object in himself.
+
+"Why did you run away last night?"
+
+"You really noticed it?"
+
+Light malice trembled on her lips: "Not till this morning."
+
+"You were so busy"--an imperceptible nod indicated Marbridge--"I felt
+myself becoming ornamental. Whereas, utility's my proudest attribute. So
+I left you dancing, and skipped by the light of the moon."
+
+"Not really?"
+
+"I assure you--"
+
+"Put out with me, I mean?"
+
+He sought her eyes again and found them veiled and downcast. "Not the
+least in the world."
+
+"Then, again, why--?"
+
+"I wanted to get back to work. Besides, I had a little business with a
+manager."
+
+And so he had; but until this moment he had forgotten it.
+
+"Play business?"
+
+"I'm afraid I know no other."
+
+"Is something new to be produced?"
+
+Matthias nodded: "Goes into rehearsal in August. A melodrama I wrote
+some time ago--'The Jade God.'"
+
+"Who produces it?"
+
+"Rideout."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"A foolish actor: played a sketch of mine in vaudeville for a couple of
+years and, because that got over, thinks this piece must."
+
+"But it will, won't it?"
+
+"I hope so; but I'm glad it's not my money."
+
+"And where will you open?"
+
+"Heaven and the Shuberts only know. Rideout books through the Shuberts,
+you understand."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't."
+
+"The Shuberts are the Independents--the opposition to the Syndicate
+headed by Klaw and Erlanger. You see, the theatres of this country are
+practically all controlled by one or the other combination. If you want
+booking for your show, you've got to take sides--serve God or Mammon."
+
+"And which is which?"
+
+"The difference is imperceptible to the innocent bystander."
+
+"But you'll let us know--?"
+
+"If we open within motoring distance of Town--rather!"
+
+Tankerville, edging his plump little body forward on his chair,
+manoeuvred his round and sun-scorched face in vain attempts to catch
+his wife's eye past the intervening candelabrum. Helena, however,
+divined his desire.
+
+"Coffee in the card-room, George?"
+
+"Please!" Tankerville bleated plaintively.
+
+There was a concerted movement from the table.
+
+Venetia lingered with Matthias.
+
+"It's auction, tonight. Shall you play?"
+
+"'Fraid I'll have to. So will you. Helena--you know--"
+
+"Of course. We must. Only"--she sighed, petulant--"I'd rather not. I'd
+rather talk to you."
+
+"Heroic measures!" he laughed. "But--consolation note!--we're two over
+two full tables. Therefore we'll have to cut in and out. That'll give us
+some time to ourselves."
+
+"Yes," she agreed: "but it'll be just our luck to be disengaged at
+different times."
+
+He paused in amused incredulity. "Do you really want to talk to me as
+badly as all that?"
+
+She nodded, curtaining her eyes.
+
+"Very much," she said softly.
+
+They entered the card-room and were summoned to different tables.
+Matthias cut and edged Mrs. Cardrow out by a single pip. How Venetia
+fared he did not learn, more than that she was to play while Marbridge
+was to stay out the first rubber.
+
+He played even less intelligently than usual, with a mind distracted.
+Venetia's new attitude, pleasant as had been all their association, was
+a development of disconcerting suddenness; or else he had been witless
+and blind beyond relief. And yet--how could he say? He was so frequently
+misled by faculties befogged with dreaming, that overlooked when they
+did not flatly deny the obvious: it was possible that Helena had been
+more wise than he.
+
+A sense of strain handicapped his judgment; whether atmospheric or bred
+of his own emotion, he could not tell. And yet, plumbing the deeps of
+his humour, he discovered nothing there more exacting than bewilderment,
+more exciting than hope. On the other hand, he could fix upon nothing in
+the bearing of these amiable people to lead him to believe that the
+feeling of tensity to which he was susceptible was not the creation of
+his own fancy. They played with a certain abandon of enjoyment, absorbed
+in their diversion....
+
+Looking past Venetia, at the other table--Venetia slim and tall and
+worshipful in a wonderful black gown that rendered dazzling the
+whiteness of her flesh--he could see Mrs. Cardrow and Marbridge at the
+piano in the drawing-room. The woman sat all but motionless, white arms
+alone moving graciously in the half-light as her deft hands wandered
+over the key-board. Marbridge, his arms folded, lounged over the piano,
+his back to the card-room. The eloquent movements of his round, dark
+head, its emphatic nods and argumentative waggings, seemed to indicate
+that he was bearing the burden of their talk; but the music, hushed
+though it was, covered his accents. The woman was looking up into his
+face with an expression of quick, pleased interest, her lips,
+half-parted, smiling.
+
+It did not occur to Matthias to wonder about the substance of their
+conversation. But for a sure clue to the intrigue of Venetia's
+heart--and his own--he would have given worlds.
+
+Throwing down his cards, Tankerville announced with satisfaction:
+"Game--rubber. Jack, you go out--praise the Saints! You've cost Mrs. Pat
+close onto fifteen dollars, more shame to you!"
+
+"Sorry!" Matthias smiled cheerfully, rising. "You would have me play."
+
+"Hearkening and repentance!" retorted Tankerville. "Next time I marry,
+you can bet your sweet life I'm going to pick out a family of
+sure-'nough bridgers.... Call Mrs. Cardrow, will you now, like a good
+fellow."
+
+But Mrs. Cardrow had already left the piano. Matthias held a chair for
+her, and then, since the rubber at the other table was not yet decided,
+strolled to a window.
+
+The night tempted him. Almost unconsciously he stepped out upon the
+terrace and wandered to the parapet.
+
+Abstractedly he lighted a cigarette. When the tobacco was aglow he held
+the match from him at arm's-length over the abyss. Its flame burned as
+steadily as though protected, flickering out only when, released, it
+fell. No night ever more still than this: land and water alike
+spellbound in breathless calm; even on the brow of that high foreland
+where Tankerville had builded him his lordly pleasure home, no hint of
+movement in the air! And yet Matthias was conscious of nothing
+resembling oppression--exhilaration, rather. He smiled vaguely into the
+darkness.
+
+From far below, echoing up from the placid waters of Port Madison as
+from a sounding-board, came the tinkle-tinkle of a banjo and the
+complaint of a harmonica. When these were silent the wailing of violins
+was clearly audible, bridging a distance of over a mile across the
+harbour, from the ball-room of the country club. Far out upon the Sound
+the night boat for Boston trudged along like a slow-winging firefly; and
+presently its wash swept inshore to rouse the beach below to sibilant
+and murmurous protest. In the east the vault of night was pallid, azure
+and silver, with the promise of the reluctant moon.
+
+A hand fell gently upon his arm: Venetia's. He had not been aware of her
+approach, yet he was not startled. He turned his head slowly, smiling.
+She said softly: "Don't say anything--wait till it rises."
+
+They waited in silence. Her hand lingered upon his arm; and that last,
+he knew, was trembling. The nearness of her person, the intimacy of her
+touch, weighed heavily upon his senses.
+
+An edge of golden light appeared where the skies came down to the sea;
+hesitated; increased. That wan and spectral light, waxing, lent emphasis
+to the rare and delicious wonder of her loveliness, to the impregnable
+mystery of her womanhood. He regarded her with something near awe, with
+keen perception of his unworthiness: as a spirit from Heaven had stooped
+to commune with him. She lived; breathed; the hand upon his arm was warm
+and strong.... Incredible!
+
+The gibbous disk swung clear of the horizon and like some strange
+misshapen acrobat climbed a low-lying lattice-work of clouds. The girl
+turned away to a huge willow basket-chair. Matthias found its fellow and
+drew near to her. He struggled to speak; he fancied that she waited for
+him to speak; but his mind refused to frame, his tongue to utter, aught
+but the stalest of banalities.
+
+"No dew tonight," he hazarded at length, shame-faced.
+
+After an instant of silence she laughed clearly and gently. "O romantic
+man!" she said. "Now that you have, shattered the spell--if you please,
+a cigarette."
+
+He supplied this need; held a match; delayed holding it when it had
+served its purpose, enraptured with the refulgent wonder of that cameo
+of sweet flesh and blood set against the melting shadows, silver and
+purple and blue.
+
+With a second low, light laugh, she bent forward and daintily
+extinguished the flame with a single puff.
+
+"I don't wish to be stared at...."
+
+"Pardon," he said mechanically, startled. "But ... why?"
+
+
+"Perhaps I'm afraid you may see too much...."
+
+"Impossible!" he declared with conviction.
+
+"Odd as it may sound," she said in a mocking voice, "I have my secrets."
+
+Her back was to the moon, her face a pallid oval framed in ebony,
+illegible; but the moonlight was full upon his face, and she who would
+might read. His disadvantage was obvious. It wasn't fair....
+
+Lounging, she crossed her knees, puffed thrice and cast the cigarette
+into the gulf. Abruptly she sat forward, studying him intently. He was
+disturbed with a singular uneasiness.
+
+"Jack," said Venetia very quietly, "is it true that you love me?"
+
+"Good lord!" he cried, sitting up.
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+He blinked. His head was whirling. He said nothing; sank back; quite
+automatically puffed with such fury that in a trice he had reduced the
+cigarette to an inch of glowing coal; scorched his fingers and threw it
+from him.
+
+Then he gasped stupidly: "Venetia!"
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+She had not moved. The question had the force of stubborn purpose
+through its very monotony, a monotony of inflexion no less than of
+repetition. Her accents were both serious and sincere. She was in
+earnest; she meant to know.
+
+"But, Venetia--"
+
+"Or have you been just making believe, all this long time?"
+
+"It--I--why--of course it's true!" he stammered lamely.
+
+"Then why haven't you ever told me so?"
+
+There sounded reproach, not unkindly, but real. He shook his wits
+together.
+
+"How could I guess you'd care to know?"
+
+"Do you know me so little as to think I'd resent it, if I happened not
+to care?"
+
+"I--don't know--didn't think of it that way. In fact--you've knocked me
+silly!"
+
+"But why? Because I've been straightforward? Dear boy!"--she lifted a
+hand to him: he took it in trembling--"you're twenty-seven, I'm
+twenty-three. We know one another pretty well: we know ourselves--at
+least slightly. Why can't we face things--facts--as man and woman, not
+as children? What's the good of make-believe? If this thing lies between
+us, let's be frank about it!"
+
+He hesitated, doubting, searching her face. Her look was very sweet and
+kind. Of a sudden he cried "Venetia!" came to his knees beside her
+chair, snatched her hand and crushed it between his own, to his lips.
+
+"I love you--I've always loved you!..."
+
+He felt the velvet of her lips, her breath, upon his forehead; and made
+as if to clasp her to him. But she slipped back, straightening an arm to
+fend him off.
+
+"No," she whispered--"not now--not here. Dear boy, get up! Think--this
+moonlight--anybody might see--"
+
+"I love you!"
+
+"I know and, dear, I'm glad--so glad! But--you made me ask you!"
+
+"I couldn't help that, Venetia: I was--afraid; I hardly dared to
+dream--of this. You were--you are--above, beyond--"
+
+Gently her hand sealed his mouth.
+
+"Dear, silly boy! Get up. If you won't, I must."
+
+Releasing her hand, he rose. His emotion shook him violently. At
+discretion, he dropped back into his chair. He looked about him a little
+wildly, his glance embracing all the weird fantasy of the night: the
+cold, inaccessible, glittering vault of stars, the malformed and
+sardonic moon, the silken bosom of the Sound, the lace and purple velvet
+draperies of the land. Down on the harbour the banjo and harmonica were
+ragging to tatters a sentimental ballad of the day. From the house came
+a burst of laughter--Tankerville exultant in some successful stratagem
+at cards.
+
+His gaze returned to Venetia. She sat without moving, wrapped in the
+exquisite mystery of her enigmatic heart, bewitching, bewildering,
+steadfastly reading him with eyes veiled and inscrutable in liquid
+shadow.
+
+Muttering--"Preposterous!"--he dropped his head between his hands. "I'm
+mad--mad!" he groaned.
+
+Without stirring, she demanded: "Why?"
+
+He shook his head free. "To have--owned up--let this come to pass. I
+love you: but that's all I dare say to you."
+
+"Isn't it, maybe, enough for me?"
+
+"I mean--I'm mad to marry you. But how can I ask you to have me? What
+have I to offer you? The position of wife to a poverty-stricken,
+half-grown playwright! It's out of reason...."
+
+"But possibly--am I not the one to judge of that?"
+
+"No: I won't have you marry a man unable to provide for you in the way
+to which you've been educated. It's a point of honour--"
+
+"But I have--"
+
+"You must understand: I've got to be able--able!--to humour your every
+whim. With things that way--what of your own you choose to spend on
+yourself won't count. The issue is my ability to give you everything."
+
+"But that will come--"
+
+"When? I can't promise--I hardly dare hope--"
+
+"This new play isn't your only hope?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"Success or failure, you'll keep on?"
+
+"Certainly...."
+
+"Then it's only a question of time."
+
+"But you--how can I ask you to wait?"
+
+"There's no necessity--"
+
+"But it must be." He rose, unable to remain still. "Give me six months:
+I've got another piece of work under way--and others only waiting their
+turn. In six months I can--"
+
+"No!"
+
+The monosyllable brought him up sharply. He stared. Her white arms,
+radiant in that clear, unearthly light, lifted toward him.
+
+"If you want me, dear," she said in a voice tense with emotion--"it must
+be now--soon! To wait--six months--I--that's im--"
+
+The beautiful modulations of Helena Tankerville's voice interrupted.
+
+Standing in one of the windows to the card-room, she said simply: "An
+exquisite night."
+
+Then, coming out upon the terrace and seeing Venetia and Matthias, she
+moved toward them.
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jack. You're wanted indoors."
+
+Matthias, unable quickly to regain his poise, said nothing. Venetia
+answered for him, calmly:
+
+"He can't come."
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"I say, he can't come, Helena. He's engaged."
+
+"Engaged!"
+
+Recovering, Helena bore down upon them with a little call of delight.
+
+"Not really!... O my dears! I'm so glad!"
+
+She gathered Venetia into her arms.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Unremarked by any of these, Marbridge stepped out upon the terrace. He
+was light of foot like most men of his type; his voice, unctuous with
+the Southern drawl which he affected together with quaint Southern
+twists of speech, was the first warning they had of his approach.
+
+"This is surely one powerful' fine night. I don't wonder you-all like it
+better out here than--" He checked suddenly in both words and action:
+the women had started apart. "Why!" he added slowly, as though
+perplexed--"I hope I don't intrude...."
+
+His quick dark eyes shifted rapidly from Helena to Venetia, to Matthias,
+and again back to the women, during a momentary lull of embarrassment.
+Then Helena said quietly:
+
+"Not in the least. But this makes you the first to learn the news, Mr.
+Marbridge. Venetia and my nephew are engaged to be married."
+
+"Engaged--!" The man's chin slacked: his eyes widened; a cigarette fell
+unheeded from his fingers. He smiled a trace stupidly.
+
+"Why!"--he recollected himself almost instantaneously--"this certainly
+is some surprise, but I do congratulate you--both!"
+
+With a stride he seized the hand Venetia could not refuse him, and
+pressed it warmly. "You're the luckiest man I ever knew!" he declared,
+turning to clasp hands with Matthias.
+
+Instinctively the latter met his powerful grasp with one as forceful.
+"Thank you," he said, smiling gravely into the other's eyes. Under his
+firm but pleasant regard they wavered and fell, then steadied with a
+glint of temper. Their hands fell apart. Marbridge stepped back.
+
+"Perhaps I don't know you well enough, Mr. Matthias, to congratulate
+Miss Tankerville as heartily as I do you; but I'm persuaded she's not
+liable to make any serious mistake."
+
+Matthias nodded thoughtfully. "I understand: your intentions are
+excellent. I'm sure we both thank you. Venetia--?"
+
+"Mr. Marbridge is very amiable," said the girl, a hint of mirth
+modifying her composure. "But I'm afraid, Helena," she added
+quickly--"if you don't mind--I think I'll go to my room."
+
+To Marbridge she gave a quaint little bow that was half an old-fashioned
+courtesy, robbed of formality by her spirited smile: to Matthias her
+hand and a gentle "Good night!" Taking the arm of her sister-in-law, she
+drew her toward the house.
+
+Watching them until they disappeared, Marbridge chuckled quietly.
+
+"Took my breath away!" he declared. "Why, I never suspected for an
+instant!..." He dropped heavily but with characteristic grace into a
+chair. "It takes you quiet boys to get away with the girls like
+Venetia--all fire and dash!"
+
+"Yes," said Matthias reflectively: "it does--doesn't it? Have another
+cigarette?" He offered his case. "You dropped yours...."
+
+"Thanks.... She's a thoroughbred, all right. I reckon if I wasn't a mite
+too middle-aged, maybe I might've set you a pace that you'd've found
+lively going."
+
+"Well, let's be thankful nothing of that sort happened, at all events."
+
+Marbridge looked up over his match and lifted his brows; but if in
+reality a retort trembled on his lips, he thought better of it; and
+before either spoke again, Tankerville was on the terrace, brandishing
+pudgy arms.
+
+"Hey, you!" he called fretfully. "Don't you know you're holding us all
+up? Come on in...."
+
+But the game held less attraction for Matthias than ever, and after
+another and final failure to establish himself in Tankerville's good
+graces, he pocketed his losses, relinquished his place to Marbridge
+and--with even less inclination for bed than for cards--took himself
+again out into the open night. But now the terrace was all too small to
+contain his spirits. The need of action--movement, freedom, space--was
+strong upon him. Striding away down the drive that wound like a broad
+band of whitewash through its dark bordering lawns and darker coppices,
+he found even the grounds of Tanglewood too constricted for the
+extravagant energy that animated him; and took to the broad highways,
+with all Long Island free to his tireless spirit.
+
+For several hours or more he trudged valiantly hither and yon, with
+little or no notion of whither he went--with his head in the stars and
+his feet in the dust and kicking up a famous smother of it--and in that
+time was wittingly as near to happiness as he had ever been in all his
+days. The faculty of coherent thought had passed from him utterly, but
+it passed unmourned: Venetia was his! This thought alone sufficed him.
+He had neither time nor inclination to entertain those doubts, those
+questionings and apprehensions which had beset him in saner humour
+theretofore. It mattered nothing now that he was poor and she wealthy,
+nothing that all his efforts to make something of himself had thus far
+proved vain and fruitless. She loved him: it was enough....
+
+He came to his senses, eventually, long enough to recognize anew the
+grounds of Tanglewood. Of a sudden his impetuosity had run out; remained
+the pleasant languor of a healthy body thoroughly exercised, the peace
+of a mind vexed by no insatiable desire. And still he was not sleepy.
+Purposefully he retarded his footsteps, approaching the house with
+stealth, eager to escape observation and gain his room, unhindered.
+Tomorrow would be soon enough to submit to the ordeal of
+congratulations....
+
+It was with a shock of amazement that he saw the house all quiet and
+dark. He pulled out his watch and studied its face by moonlight, finding
+its evidence difficult to credit: twenty minutes past one in the
+morning!
+
+Gingerly, keeping to the grass in order that the gravel of the drive
+might not, by its crunching underfoot, betray him or alarm some wakeful
+member of the house-hold, he approached the front door, wondering if he
+were locked out, and--not without amusement at his self-contrived
+predicament--what to do if he were. To his relief one-half of the double
+door stood a foot or two ajar--thanks, he had no doubt, to the
+thoughtfulness of Helena or Tankerville. Blessing both on general
+principles, he entered, shut the door and softly shot the bolt; turned
+in deep obscurity to grope his way to the foot of the stairs; but paused
+with a hand on the newel-post and his breath catching in his throat.
+
+In the hallway above a night-light was burning dim and low but
+sufficiently diffused to show him the figure of a woman silently
+descending the stairway. When he first became aware of her she was
+indeed almost within arm's length: a shape of shadow scarce three shades
+lighter than the encompassing gloom.... Venetia, possibly, having waited
+and watched for him from her windows overlooking the drive, stealing
+down to bid him that good night they had perforce foregone in the
+presence of Helena and Marbridge....
+
+That wild and extravagant surmise had no more than entered his mind when
+he found the woman in his arms. She gave herself into them with a
+gesture of abandonment, with a little sigh that escaped in broken
+measure, murmurous and fond. An arm that, lifting, flashed naked to the
+shoulder as the sleeve of her negligee fell back, encircled his neck and
+drew down his head to hers. And her mouth fastened to his with clinging
+lips....
+
+Half stunned by receipt of that mad caress, one thought shot like light
+through the turmoil of his senses: this was never Venetia!
+
+With an effort he straightened his neck against the pressure of the
+woman's arm. She strove to overcome his resistance, wooing him in
+accents hushed, shaking with passion:
+
+"_Vincent ... sweetheart!..._"
+
+He interrupted hastily: "I beg pardon!" The inadequacy of that stilted
+form, disgusting him, he added: "I am John Matthias."
+
+Immediately the woman released him and, with a gasp, sank back against
+the newel-post. Her breath came gustily, with a sound like smothered
+sobbing. Pitifully he divined her shame and terror; and though he knew
+her very well, beyond mistake, he said evenly: "Don't worry--there isn't
+any light."
+
+In a stupefied voice she iterated: "No light--?"
+
+"It's so confounded' dark," he complained: "I couldn't tell you from
+Eve. So perhaps you'd better run back to your room now...."
+
+He turned away deliberately. Behind him, after a pause of an instant,
+there rose a sound of soft rustling draperies, a swift and hushed patter
+of footsteps on the stairs. A moment or two later a latch clicked very
+gently in the corridor above.
+
+Quietly Matthias switched on a single light, returned to the door,
+unbolted and quickly opened it.
+
+He was not disappointed that this manoeuvre surprised a shadow
+skulking in the penumbra of rose bushes that bordered the steps, the
+shadow of a man who drew back swiftly when he recognized Matthias. This
+last stepped out, turned in the direction of the fugitive shadow, and
+pursuing at leisure, hailed in a quiet and natural tone: "I
+say--Marbridge!--that you?"
+
+Immediately he came upon Marbridge at a standstill round the corner of
+the house, awaiting him in a curious posture of antagonism: his feet
+well apart, heavy body inclined a trifle forward, round dark head low
+between his shoulders, hands clenched, upon his face a cloud of anger.
+
+Matthias greeted him suavely: "I was afraid I'd locked you out."
+Ignoring his attitude even as he seemed to ignore the fact that
+Marbridge had changed from evening dress to a suit of dark flannels, he
+added: "Coming in now? It's a bit late."
+
+Marbridge pulled himself together. "Perhaps you're right," he assented
+surlily. But it was with patent effort that he mastered his resentment
+and accompanied Matthias back to the doors.
+
+"A fine night, what?" Matthias filled in the awkward silence.
+
+"Yes," agreed Marbridge brusquely. "Too fine," he amended--"too fine to
+waste in bed."
+
+"Sleepless, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Following him in, Matthias refastened the door. "Several of us seem
+troubled with the same indisposition," he observed coolly, swinging to
+face Marbridge. "That's why I bothered to call you in, you know."
+
+Marbridge scowled: "Perhaps I don't get you...."
+
+"She has gone back to bed," Matthias explained pleasantly. "I didn't
+like to think of you waiting out there, all alone."
+
+Marbridge choked on a retort, turned and began slowly to mount the
+stairs.
+
+"Oh--going? Half a minute."
+
+The man paused, and in silence looked down.
+
+"I just happened to think perhaps you haven't a time-table in your
+room," said Matthias amiably. "There are several early trains tomorrow,
+you know. I fancy the eight-seven would suit you as well as any."
+
+He got no answer other than a grunt. Marbridge resumed his deliberate
+ascent, gained the upper floor, and disappeared.
+
+"Good night!" Matthias called after him, softly; and turned out the
+light.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Monday afternoon found Mr. Matthias back at his desk and in a tolerably
+unhappy temper, tormented not only by that conscience-stricken sensation
+of secret guilt inseparable from a return to neglected work, but also by
+a less reasonable, in fact inexplicable (to him) feeling of discomfort;
+as though he were a trespasser upon the premises rather than their
+lawful tenant.
+
+Never before had he felt less at home, never more ill at ease in the
+homely solitude of his workshop and lodgings.
+
+As for his work.... He found page 6 of that promising young first act in
+the typewriter carriage, precisely as it had been left on his receipt of
+Helena's peremptory telegram. Removing the sheet, he turned back to the
+first page, and read what had been written with such high and eager
+hope; and looked his dashed bewilderment. Knitting portentous brows,
+sedulously he reconsidered the manuscript at length; then with a groan
+put it aside, ran fingers through his hair till it rose rampant, and sat
+scowling darkly at the wall, groping blindly and vainly for the lost
+ends of that snapped thread of enthusiasm.
+
+The first flush of confidence vanished, what he had written owned
+heart-rending incoherence in his understanding.
+
+However (he assured himself) it would come back to him in time. Indeed,
+it was bound to. It wasn't the first time this sort of thing had
+happened to him, nor yet the second: he was no raw novice to cry despair
+over such an everyday set-back.
+
+But what the devil _was_ the matter with him? All the way to Town he
+had been full of his theme, as keen-set for work as a schoolboy for a
+holiday, and hardly less for the well-worn comforts of his abode. And,
+lo! here sat he with his head as empty as his hands, and that misfit
+feeling badgering him to exasperation.
+
+Instinctively he consulted a pipe and, through its atmosphere, the view
+from his windows: the never-failing, tried and true, enheartening
+monotony of that sun-scorched area of back-yards, grim and unlovely in
+the happiest weather, cat-haunted and melancholy in all its phases....
+But today he essayed vainly to distil from contemplation of it any of
+the rare glamour of yesterday's zeal and faith. It was all gone, all!
+and the erratic mind of him would persist in trailing off after errant
+thoughts of Venetia Tankerville.
+
+Surpassing inconsistency of the human heart! Three hours ago, in her
+company, he had been able to control and to behave himself, to
+anticipate with pleasure the prospect of returning to his desk after
+escorting her from the Pennsylvania to the Grand Central Station and
+putting her aboard the train for Greenwich, whither she was bound for a
+fortnight's visit. But now--he could think of nothing but Venetia:
+Venetia's eyes, her scarlet lips, her exquisite hands, her hair of
+bronze; her moods and whims, her laughter and her pensiveness, alike
+adorable; Venetia in evening dress on the moon-drenched terrace of
+Tanglewood; Venetia on the tennis-courts, all in white, glorified by
+sunlight, an amazingly spirited, victorious figure; Venetia with her
+hair blown across her eyes, at the wheel of one of Tankerville's racing
+motor-craft; Venetia in the gloom of the Grand Central Station,
+lingering to say good-bye to her betrothed....
+
+It required several days for this stupid gentleman to awaken to the fact
+that the name of his trouble was merely love; that an acknowledged lover
+is a person vastly different from a diffident and distant worshipper;
+that, in short, the muse of the creative fancy is a jealous mistress,
+prone to sulk and deny the light of her countenance to a suitor who
+thinks to share his addresses with another.
+
+But this illuminating discovery did little to allay his discontent:
+progress with his work alone could accomplish that; and the work dragged
+dolefully; he scored only dismal failures in his efforts to produce
+something to satisfy himself. And he had only six months to prove his
+worth. The date of their marriage had been fixed for February; every
+detail of their plans had been worked out under the masterful guidance
+of Helena; even the steamer upon which they were to sail for Egypt had
+been selected and their suite reserved.
+
+In short he positively _had_ to win out within the allotted period of
+grace, who seemed able only to sit there, day in and out, beside his
+typewriter, with idle hands, or, with a vacant mind, to pace his trail
+of torment from door to window: getting nowhere, stripped of every
+vestige of his arduously acquired craftsmanship.... It was maddening.
+
+None the less, doggedly, savagely determined to overcome this
+sentimental handicap, he worked long hours: only to review the outcome
+of his labours with a sinking heart. For all his knowledge of the stage,
+for all that a long career of failures and half-hearted successes had
+taught him, the play that slowly took shape under his modelling lacked
+vitality--the living fire of drama. Technically he could find no
+disastrous fault with it; but in his soul he knew it to be as
+passionless as a proposition in Euclid.
+
+He was a dreamer, but not even the stuff of dreams could dull the clear
+perceptions of his critical intelligence....
+
+Meantime, the superficial routine of work-a-day life went on much as it
+had ever since he had set up shop in the establishment of Madame Duprat.
+His breakfasts were served him in his rooms; for his other meals he
+foraged in neighbouring restaurants. A definite amount of exercise was
+required to keep him in working trim. In short, he was in and out of the
+house several times each day. Inevitably, then, he encountered fellow
+lodgers, either on the stoop or in the hallway; among them, and perhaps
+more often and less adventitiously than in other instances, one wistful
+young woman, shabbily dressed, in whose brown eyes lurked a hesitant
+appeal for recognition. He grew acquainted with the sight of her, but he
+was generally in haste and preoccupied, looked over her head if not
+through her, stepped civilly out of her way and went absently his own,
+and never once dreamed of identifying her with that dreary and damp
+creature of the rain-swept night whose necessity had turned him out of
+his lodgings for a single night.
+
+One day--the second Thursday following his return to Town--he found
+himself waiting in the lobby of the Knickerbocker, a trifle early for a
+luncheon engagement with Rideout and his producing manager, Wilbrow: a
+meeting arranged for the purpose of discussing the forthcoming
+production of "The Jade God." The day was seasonably insufferable with
+heat, but there was here a grateful drift of air through open doors and
+windows. Lounging in an arm-chair, he lazily consumed a cigarette and
+reviewed the listless ebb and flow of guests with a desultory interest
+which was presently, suddenly, and rudely quickened.
+
+Marbridge, accompanied by a woman, was leaving the eastern dining-room.
+They passed so near to Matthias that by stretching forth his foot he
+could have touched the woman's skirt. But she did not see him; her face
+was averted as she looked up, faintly smiling, to the face of her
+companion. Marbridge, on his part, was attending her with that slightly
+exaggerated attitude of solicitude and devotion which was peculiarly his
+with all women. If he saw Matthias he made no sign. His dark and boyish
+eyes ogled his companion; his tone was pitched low to a key of
+intimacy; he rolled a trifle in his walk, with the insuppressible
+swagger of the amateur of gallantry.
+
+They passed on and out of the hotel; and Matthias saw the
+carriage-porter, at a sign from Marbridge, whistle in a taxicab.
+
+He turned away in disgust.
+
+A moment or so later he looked up to find Marbridge standing over him
+and grinning impudently as he offered a hand.
+
+"Why, _how_ do you do, Matthias, my boy?"
+
+His voice, by no means subdued, echoed through the lobby and attracted
+curious glances.
+
+Matthias, ignoring the hand, lifted one of his own in a gesture
+deprecatory.
+
+"Softly!" he begged. "Somebody might hear you."
+
+Unabashed, Marbridge dropped into the chair beside him. "How's that? Why
+shouldn't they?"
+
+"They might make the mistake of inferring that I liked you," returned
+Matthias.
+
+Marbridge, on the point of settling back, sat up with a start. A dull
+colour flushed his plump, dark cheeks. For an instant his hands twitched
+nervously and his full lips tightened on a retort which he presumably
+deemed inadvisable; for mastering his impulse, he sank back again, and
+put a period to the display with a brief but not uneasy chuckle.
+
+"You're all there with the acidulated repartee," he observed
+appreciatively. "Some class to your work, my boy!" To which, Matthias
+making no comment, he added with at least some effort toward an
+appearance of sincerity: "Sorry you feel that way about me."
+
+"Unfortunately, I do."
+
+"Because I wouldn't act on your suggestion about that time-table, eh?"
+
+"Because of the circumstances which moved me to drop that hint."
+
+A brief silence prefaced Marbridge's next remark:
+
+"But damn it! I couldn't. It would've made talk if I'd pulled out when
+you wanted me to."
+
+"There would have been no occasion for any talk whatever if you'd known
+how to comport yourself as the guest of decent people."
+
+And still Marbridge husbanded his resentment.
+
+"Oh well!" he said, aggrieved--"women!"
+
+Matthias threw away his cigarette and prepared to rise.
+
+"Hold on a bit," Marbridge checked him. "I want to ask a favour of
+you.... Of course, you're right; I am a bad actor, and all that. I'm
+sorry I forgot myself at Tanglewood--word of honour, I am!"
+
+"Well?" Matthias suggested with an unmoved face.
+
+"Look here...." Marbridge sat up eagerly. "I think you're a mighty good
+sort--"
+
+"Thanks!"
+
+"You didn't blow about that business down there--"
+
+"I couldn't very well--could I?--with a woman involved!"
+
+"Oh, you did the white thing: I'm not disputing that. But what I'm
+worried about now is whether you're as good a sport as you seem."
+
+"Meaning--?"
+
+Marbridge nodded significantly toward the sidewalk, where he had put his
+late companion into the cab. "About today: you won't find it necessary
+to--?"
+
+"By God!" Matthias's indignation brimmed over. "If you're so solicitous
+of the woman's good name, why the devil do you allow her to be seen in
+your company?"
+
+"It isn't that," Marbridge persisted, keeping himself well in hand.
+"After all, what's a lunch at the Knick?"
+
+"Well--?"
+
+"The trouble is, she's supposed to be at Newport. Majendie doesn't
+know--"
+
+"You just can't help being a blackguard, can you, Marbridge?" Matthias
+enquired curiously. "You ought to have bitten off your tongue before you
+named a name in a public place like this." He rose, meeting with steady
+eyes the vicious glare of the other. "One word more: if I hear of your
+accepting another invitation to Tanglewood, I'll forget to be what you
+call 'a good sport'."
+
+Marbridge jumped up hotly. "Look here!" he said in accents that, though
+guarded, trembled, "I've been mighty patient with your insolence, and
+I'm certainly not going to forget myself here. But if you want to make a
+book on it, I'll lay you any odds you like that I'll be received at
+Tanglewood within the year, and you won't say one single damn' word. Do
+you make me?"
+
+Matthias looked him up and down, smiled quietly, swung on his heel, and
+moved across the lobby to greet Rideout and Wilbrow.
+
+His instinctive inclination to dismiss altogether from his mind a
+subject so distasteful was helped out by a conference which outlasted
+luncheon, involved dinner with the two men of the theatre, and was only
+concluded in Matthias's rooms shortly after midnight.
+
+Wilbrow, considering the play from the point of view of him upon whom
+devolved all responsibility for the manner of its presentation (the
+scene painting alone excepted) and gifted with that intuitive sense _du
+theatre_ singular to men of his vocation, who very nearly monopolize the
+intelligence concerned with the American stage today--Wilbrow had
+uncovered a slight, by no means damning, flaw in the construction of the
+third act, and had a remedy to suggest. This, adopted without opposition
+from the playwright, suggested further alterations which Matthias could
+not deny were calculated to strengthen the piece. In consequence, when
+at length they left him, he found himself committed to a virtual
+rewriting of the last two acts entire.
+
+Groaning in resignation, he resolved to accomplish the revision in one
+week of solid, uninterrupted labour, and went to bed, rising the next
+morning to deny himself his correspondence and the newspapers and to
+make arrangements with Madame Duprat to furnish all his meals until his
+task was finished. These matters settled, and his telephone temporarily
+silenced, he began work and, forgetful of the world, plodded faithfully
+on by day and night until late Thursday afternoon, when he drew the
+final page from his typewriter, thrust it with its forerunners into an
+envelope addressed to Rideout, entrusted this last to a messenger, and
+threw himself upon the couch to drop off instantly into profound
+slumbers of exhaustion.
+
+At ten o'clock that night he was awakened and sat up, dazed and blinking
+in a sudden glare of gas-light.
+
+Stupidly, bemused with the slowly settling dust of dreams, he stared,
+incredulous of the company in which he found himself.
+
+Madame Duprat, having shown his callers in and made a light for them,
+was discreetly departing. George Tankerville, whose vigorous methods had
+roused Matthias, stood over him, with a look of deep and sympathetic
+anxiety clouding his round, commonplace, friendly countenance. Wearing a
+dinner jacket together with linen motor-cap and duster, oil-stained
+gauntlets on his hands, with an implacable impatience betrayed in his
+very pose, he cut a figure sufficiently striking instantly to engage
+attention--the unexpectedness of his call aside. Furthermore, he was
+accompanied by his wife: Helena, in a costume as unconventional as her
+husband's, stood at a little distance, regarding Matthias with much the
+same look of consternation and care.
+
+"Great Scott!" Matthias exclaimed, pulling his wits together. "You are a
+sudden pair of people!" With a shrug and a sour smile he deprecated his
+clothing, which consisted solely of a shirt, linen trousers, and a pair
+of antiquated slippers. "If you'd only given me some warning, I'd've
+tried to dress up to your elegance," he went on.
+
+"Damn your clothes!" Tankerville exploded. He dropped a hand on
+Matthias's shoulder and swung him round to the light. "Tell us you're
+all right--that's all we want to know!"
+
+"All right?" Matthias looked from one to the other, deeply perplexed.
+"Why, of course I'm all right. Why not?"
+
+With a little gasp of relief, Helena dropped into a chair. Tankerville
+removed his hand and leaned against the table, smiling foolishly.
+
+"That's all right, then," he said. "We tried to get you on the telephone
+all afternoon, failed, were afraid you'd done something foolish, and
+took a run in to town to make sure."
+
+"What the dickens are you driving at?" Matthias demanded. "I had my
+telephone cut off the other day because I was working and didn't want to
+be interrupted. I do that frequently. Why not? What's got into you two,
+anyway? Have you gone dotty?"
+
+"No," Helena replied with a grim, pale smile; "We're sane enough--and
+thank Heaven you are! But Venetia--"
+
+"Venetia!" Matthias cried. "What about Venetia?"
+
+Tankerville avoiding his eye, it devolved upon Helena to respond to
+Matthias's frantic and imperative look.
+
+"Venetia," she said reluctantly--"Venetia eloped with Marbridge day
+before yesterday--Tuesday. She came in town in the morning to do some
+shopping, met him and was married to him at the City Hall. They sailed
+on the Mauretania yesterday. The papers didn't get hold of it--_we_ knew
+nothing!--till this afternoon. I was afraid she might have written you
+and you--in despair--"
+
+Her voice broke.
+
+After a little, Matthias turned to a heap of unopened correspondence on
+a side table and ran rapidly through it, examining only the addresses.
+
+"No," he said presently, in a level tone: "no--she didn't trouble to
+write me."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+For several days the girl had haunted the stairs, the hall, and
+door-step, alert to waylay Matthias, before suddenly she became aware
+that it was long since she had either caught a glimpse of him or heard
+the syncopated murmuring of the typewriter behind the closed door to his
+back-parlour.
+
+It required the lapse of another day or two before she found courage to
+question (with laboured indifference) the dilapidated chambermaid who
+sedulously neglected her room for lack of a tip. From this far from
+garrulous source she learned that Matthias had packed up and gone out of
+town very suddenly, without mentioning where he might be addressed
+during his absence.
+
+Alone at the window of her tiny cell, Joan stared down at the
+uninspiring vista of back-yards and disconsolately recapitulated her
+sorry fortunes.
+
+She was now close upon the end of the fortnight's residence in the hall
+bedroom; before long she would have to surrender another four dollars--a
+week's rent in advance. Of the twenty-two dollars she had received from
+Butch, eight remained in her purse. By dint of adhering to a diet
+largely vegetarian, she had managed without serious discomfort to keep
+within an expenditure of four dollars per week for food. And twice
+Maizie Dean had saved her the cost of an evening meal by inviting her to
+dine out--at the expense of friends in "the profession." But a
+continuance of such favours was not to be counted upon; and the problem
+of living a fourth week away from home was one serious and
+importunate--always assuming she should fail to secure work before her
+money ran out. She had no resources in any degree dependable: Butch,
+even if willing, would probably not be able to extend her another loan;
+she possessed nothing worth pawning; and Maizie Dean had taken prompt
+occasion to make it clear that, while she was willing to do anything
+inexpensive for a budding sister _artiste_, her tolerance would stop
+short of financial aid.
+
+"Take it from me, dear," she announced soon after their first meeting:
+"there ain't no people in the world quicker to slip you a live tip than
+folks in the business; but you gotta make up your mind to pay your own
+keep. They work too hard for their coin to give up any without a howl
+you could hear from here to Hollum; and anyway, everybody's always broke
+in the summer. If you don't land somewhere before your cash runs low,
+you might just's well make up your mind to slip back into the chain-gang
+behind the counter."
+
+She had developed--or changed--amazingly in the brief period of her
+public career. Joan experienced difficulty in recognizing in her the
+warm-hearted Irish girl who had initiated her into the duties of
+saleswoman in the stocking department. She had hardened more than
+superficially; she was now as artificial as her make-up, as the hue of
+her ashen hair. The world to her was a desert threaded by "circuits,"
+life an arid waste of "open time" punctuated with oases of "booking";
+and the fountainhead of temporal power was located in the innermost
+sanctum of the United Booking Offices.
+
+Sitting on the edge of the bed, she crossed her knees frankly, sucked
+thoughtfully at a cigarette, and waved an explanatory hand:
+
+"Here's me and Mame, thinking we was all fixed for the nex' six weeks,
+and then somethin' puts a crimp into our bookin' and we're out for Gawd
+knows how long--till next Fall, sure. That's unless we want to take a
+trip over the meal-ticket circuit--fillin' in between filums, yunno. And
+if we do that it's goin' to crab us with the Orpheum people, sure; we'd
+never get back into the real money class. So we gotta hold onto what
+little we got until we kin see more time headed our way...."
+
+On the other hand, she had been liberal with sage and trustworthy
+counsel as to the best way to go about "breaking into the game." It was
+thanks to her that Joan was now able to enter a theatrical employment
+agency without fear and trembling, and to back her application for
+chorus work with a glib and unblushing statement that she had had
+experience "in summer stock out on the Coast." And to the Sisters Dean,
+likewise, Joan owed her growing acquaintance with the intricate
+geography of the theatrical districts of New York, her ability to
+discriminate between players "resting" and the average run of Broadway
+loungers who cluttered the shady side of that thoroughfare, from
+Twenty-fifth Street north to Forty-seventh, those shimmering summer
+afternoons, and her slowly widening circle of nodding acquaintances
+among the lesser peoples of the vaudeville world.
+
+As a rule she was awake before anybody else in the establishment of
+Madame Duprat; not yet could she slough the habit of early rising. Her
+breakfast she was accustomed to get at the same dairy restaurant which
+had supplied her first meal away from home, and at the same moderate
+expense--ten cents. By ten o'clock she would be on Broadway, beginning
+her round of the agencies: a courageous, shabby figure in the withering
+sun-blast, patient and indomitable through long hours of waiting in
+crowded anterooms, undiscouraged by the brevity and fruitlessness of the
+interviews with which her persistence was sometimes rewarded, ignoring
+disappointment with the same studied calm with which she had long since
+learned to ignore the advances of loafers of the streets.
+
+Her lunches she would purchase wherever she might happen to be at the
+noon hour--or go without. By five o'clock at the latest--frequently much
+earlier--she would turn back to West Forty-fifth Street. For dinner she
+sought again the establishment that provided her breakfast. Her idle
+hours, both day and evening, she grew accustomed to waste in the double
+bedroom ("second floor front") occupied by the Dancing Deans.
+
+At such times the _soi-disant_ sisters were rarely without company. They
+were lively and agreeable creatures, by no means unattractive, and so
+thoroughly theatric in every effect of manner, speech, gesture, person,
+and thought, that the most case-hardened member of the profession could
+not but feel at home in their company. Consequently, they were popular
+with both sexes of their associates. Seldom did a day pass but they
+entertained several callers, with all of whom they seemed to be on terms
+of the most candid intimacy.
+
+So Joan grew accustomed to being hailed, whenever she opened the door of
+the sisters' room, with a formula that varied little with repetition:
+
+"Why, if it _ain't_ the kid! Hello, dearie--come right in and stop
+awhile. Say, lis'n: I want you to shake hands with my friend, Charlie
+Quard. I guess you know who Charlie is, all right; you must of seen him
+of'n--played leading juveniles with the Spangler Stock, I dunno how
+long. Charlie, this is my little friend, Miss Thursday."
+
+"In the business, I trust?"
+
+"Goin' to be before long. Just lookin' round."
+
+"Well, I wish you luck, Miss Thursday. This is the rottenest season _I_
+ever struck. There's eighty people for every job that blooms. Why,
+yunno, Maizie, I was talking only yesterday to Percy Williams, and Percy
+said--"
+
+At about this point Joan would ordinarily be forgotten, and the gossip
+would rattle on through a stifling cloud of cigarette smoke, while she
+sat and listened with grave, if not always comprehending, attention.
+
+And in this manner she met and grew familiar with the personalities of
+an astonishing crew of minor vaudeville folk, jugglers, dancers, patter
+comedians, balladists, coon shouters, performers on weird musical
+instruments, monologists, and an unclassified host of others, including
+a liberal sprinkling of plain actors and actresses, the pendulums of
+whose life alternated between small parts in popular-price stock
+companies and smaller parts in so-called dramatic sketches presented in
+vaudeville houses.
+
+To them all (if they remembered her at all) she was Joan Thursday. The
+translation from Thursby had been almost inevitable. Thursday was by far
+the easier word to remember; Joan soon grew tired of correcting the
+friends of the Dancing Deans; and accepted the change the more readily
+since it provided her with a real "stage name", and so, in some measure,
+identified her with the business to which her every aspiration was
+devoted.
+
+Of all the population of this new world, perhaps the most prominent in
+her eyes, aside from the saltatory sisters, was Mr. Quard; or, to give
+him the fullest benefit of the printed cards which (detaching them
+dexterously from the perforated edges by which they were held in an
+imitation-leather cover) he distributed regardless of expense:
+
+         _Mr. Chas. Harborough Quard_
+    Spangler Stock Co.      Variety Artists Club
+        Brooklyn                   New York
+
+He was a long, rangy animal, robustious, romantical; with a taste in the
+question of personal decoration that created compelling effects. His
+face was large, open, boldly featured, his smile genial, his laugh
+constant and unctuous. Something less than thirty, he had been on the
+stage since childhood; with the training of an actor of the old school,
+he combined immense vitality, an ample, dashing air, enviable
+self-sufficiency, the temperament of a tom-cat.
+
+Any competent stage-director could have made much of him; but in an age
+when managers cast their productions with types who "look" their parts
+in preference to players who can act them, he found few chances to
+demonstrate his ability outside the cheaper stock organizations; for
+the only character he was physically fitted to portray was that of an
+actor.
+
+An ill-starred impulse had led him to resign his latest stock connection
+in order to adventure in vaudeville with a one-act sketch written to his
+order by a hack manufacturer of such trash. Its "try-out week" in a
+provincial town had elicited no offers from other managers, and in the
+meantime his place in the stock company had been filled. At present he
+had a little money saved up, no immediate prospects of an engagement,
+good-humour, no illusions whatever.
+
+"It's no good," he informed Miss May Dean on the occasion of their first
+meeting: "I know where I get off, all right. I can play anything they
+slip me, but these Broadway guys can't see my kind of actor. Give me a
+part I can sink my teeth into, and I'll shake it until the house climbs
+on the seats and howls. But that ain't what they're after, these days."
+
+"The movies'll get you, if you don't watch out," May suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+"That's right; and I'd be a knock-out in a film gang, too; I'm just
+their kind. That's what's become of all the old boys who still think
+Fourteenth Street's the Rialto, yunno. But me, I'm too strong for the
+noise an audience makes when they like you, or don't: I'd just as
+lief be hissed as get every hand in the house. Don't believe I could
+stand acting for a one-eyed box that didn't say anything but
+'_clickety-click_.' I'd rather travel with the Uncle Tommers--honest'."
+
+He was publicly morose for a moment or two. Then he roused: "Cheer up!
+The worst is yet to come. Maybe I can stick out till next spring, when
+Grady makes his next all-star revival. Wonder what he'll exhume this
+time? If it's only something like 'The Silver King,' or 'East Lynne,' I
+may yet cop out a chance to play to a two-dollar house.... Now, lis'n:
+I'm going down on the stoop and smoke a cigarette while you girls
+colour your maps for artificial light. The eats are on me tonight."
+
+"Does that take in my little friend?" demanded Maizie, with a nod toward
+Joan.
+
+Quard threw Joan a kindly glance: "Sure. Now, get a hustle on."
+
+"But I can't," Joan protested. "I'm sorry--I'd love to--but I've got
+nothing fit to wear."
+
+"You look pretty good to me as you stand," returned Quard. "Forget it,
+kid, and kick in."
+
+"That's right," Maizie insisted. "Besides, I'll lend you a hat and a
+fresh fichu; you don't need any coat tonight, it's too rotten warm."
+
+"Anyway," Quard said over his shoulder as he left the room, "we ain't
+booked for Sherry's."
+
+In witness whereof, he introduced the girls to an obscure Italian
+boarding-house in Twenty-seventh Street, the proprietress of which
+admitted them only after examination through a grille in the front door.
+Quard explained to Joan that this precaution was necessary because the
+house served "red ink" with the meals and without benefit of a liquor
+license; hence, only friends could be admitted.
+
+They dined by gas-light in the back-yard, under an awning which served
+the double purpose of excluding observation from the neighbouring
+dwellings and compressing the heated air. Perhaps two dozen tables
+crowded the enclosure. The male guests by common consent removed their
+coats and hung them on nails in the fence. The ladies emulated by
+discarding hats and all conventionalities of a nature to impede free
+expression of their temperaments. Maizie Dean even did without her
+English accent.
+
+The meal was of a sort only to be consumed with impunity by optimists
+and Italians: a heavy soup, and all one could eat of it, spaghetti
+without end, a minute section of lukewarm blotting paper with a remote
+flavour of chicken, a salad, cheese and coffee, a half-bottle of
+atrocious red wine. Joan enjoyed it immensely; it has been said that her
+powers of digestion were exceptional.
+
+Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Conversation was free between
+tables. Personalities were bandied back and forth amid intense glee.
+Quard, consuming enormous quantities of wine, proved himself a general
+favourite, a leading spirit. After dinner he called for a virulent green
+cordial (which Joan tasted but could not drink) and later returned to
+the wine. Before the end of the evening he became semi-maudlin, and on
+leaving exploited a highly humorous inability to walk a straight line.
+On the corner of Broadway he halted suddenly, bade the three women a
+slurred good night, and without other ceremony swung himself aboard a
+Broadway car.
+
+His rudeness excited no comment from the Dancing Deans. They walked all
+the way home with Joan, unescorted. Joan was surprised to see by the
+clock in the _Herald_ building that it was almost eleven. She thought
+she had never known an evening to pass so quickly and so pleasantly.
+What little wine she had consumed seemed to have affected her not at
+all, beyond rendering her keenly appreciative of this novel experience.
+
+But she suffered the next morning from a slight and, to her,
+inexplicable headache.
+
+It was four or five days later before she saw Quard again. He called
+early in the evening--but after dinner--and sat chatting amiably with
+the women for upwards of an hour before the real purpose of his visit
+transpired.
+
+"I was talking to Reinhardt about an idea I got for a sketch, day before
+yesterday," he announced suddenly. "But he wanted fifty cash before he'd
+touch it, and seeing as it was him slipped me that other lemon, I told
+him merrily where he could go and went home and wrote it myself."
+
+"You didn't!" Maizie exclaimed admiringly.
+
+"You bet your life I did," the actor asseverated with conscious modesty.
+"Why not? It's no great stunt, writing; and besides it's all old junk
+I've done before, only hashed up a new way. All I had to do was to cop
+lines out of shows I've played in--sure-fire stuff, yunno--and write in
+names of characters. That's nothing."
+
+"Oh, no, nothin' at all!" commented May Dean from her perch on the
+window-sill. "What's an author, anyway? Eight to five, girls, he's got
+the 'script on him. Get ready to duck."
+
+"Wel-l!" Quard laughed--"you beat me to it, all right." He produced a
+sheaf of folded papers, smoothing them out upon his knee. "I just
+thought I'd see what you thought of it. If it's any good I'm going to
+read it to Schneider tomorrow and see what he'll offer me."
+
+"Who's Schneider?" Maizie asked blankly.
+
+"Agent for the film circuits," Quard replied.
+
+"You don't mean you're thinkin' of fallin' for the four-a-day!"
+
+"I'll try anything once; I'm not too proud to earn my bed and board in
+the dull season, anyhow. Besides, this thing would break into the
+Orpheum Circuit only over the dead body of Martin Beck. I'm no Georgie
+Cohan. But it oughta sandwich in between the pictures without anybody
+asking his ten cents back."
+
+"You've got your nerve with you," Maizie commented darkly.
+
+"Let him rave," May advised, exhaling cigarette smoke voluminously.
+"Shoot!"
+
+Taking this for consent, Quard rattled the sheets of paper, tilted back
+his chair, and began to read.
+
+His voice was flexible and sonorous; instinctively he declaimed the
+lines, extracting from each its full value. Now and again he lent
+emphasis to a phrase with an eloquent hand. But to Joan the composition
+was quite incoherent. She attended with wonder and a feeling of
+impatience because of her inability to understand what Quard seemed to
+relish with so much enthusiasm. It was, in fact, a worthless farrago of
+nonsense. None the less the two dancers laughed at encouraging
+intervals.
+
+Flattered, Quard rose, removed his coat and began to act the lines,
+striding up and down the narrow space between the foot of the double-bed
+and the marble mantelpiece. The night was hot; a single gas-jet
+illumined the centre of the room; Quard perspired freely. For all that,
+his stenographic acting gave the thing some slight accent of humanity.
+It became a trifle, a mere trifle, more intelligible.
+
+Seated on the window-sill, _en profile_ to the room, her slight, wiry
+body attired sketchily in a kimono and short skirt, May Dean swung her
+legs and stared out into the darkness, an ironic smile hovering round
+her thin lips. Maizie lounged on the bed, tracing a meaningless pattern
+on the counterpane with a thin and rouge-stained forefinger. Joan
+occupied the only chair other than that at the disposal of the actor.
+She was very tired, and her attention wandered, even though Quard
+managed to draw it back now and then by some vivid trick of elocution or
+gesture. Vaguely sensitive to the magnetism of the man, her thoughts
+were occupied more with indefinite speculations about his personality
+than with the semi-plagiaristic and wholly commonplace concoction of
+cheap sentiment and tried-and-true "gags" which he professed to have
+written.
+
+Physically he attracted her. Divested of his coat, his chest swelled
+impressively beneath a pink-striped silk shirt. When he lifted an arm,
+the clinging sleeve moulded itself to an admirable biceps. As he strode
+to and fro the stuff of his thin summer trousers shaped itself to legs
+that might have proved enviable to Sir Willoughby Patterne himself. His
+wide-lipped mouth disclosed an excellent outfit of large, white, strong
+teeth. His jet-black hair curled engagingly at his temples and over his
+generous pink ears. She liked his big, muscular, mobile hands....
+
+She started suddenly, to discover that he had concluded and was facing
+her with an expectant expression, and sat up and smiled faintly, with
+embarrassment, trying to remember what it had all been about.
+
+From the window, May Dean drawled languidly: "Is that the finish?"
+
+Quard waved an arm. "Curtain!" he said; and sat down.
+
+"My Gawd!" observed May thoughtfully.
+
+He laughed uncomfortably: "As bad as all that?"
+
+"It'd make a wonderful chaser," Maizie commented without lifting her
+eyes from the counterpane.
+
+Quard turned desperately back to Joan. "What do you think of it, Miss
+Thursday?"
+
+"I think so too," she said with all the animation she could muster. The
+other women laughed aloud. She flushed and added: "I mean, I think it's
+wonderful. I don't know what a chaser is."
+
+"A chaser, dearie," Maizie explained in tones of acute commiseration,
+"is an act put on in the continuous houses to chase out the
+chair-warmers and make room for more."
+
+"Well," said Quard, shuffling the manuscript, "I don't care if it is a
+chaser, so long as it stakes me to the eats till something else turns
+up."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+On that day when she discovered the disappearance of John Matthias, Joan
+left the house later than had been her wont, and returned earlier, after
+a faint-hearted and abortive attempt to interview the stage-manager of a
+new musical production then being assembled to rehearse against an early
+opening in the Autumn.
+
+The Deans were out. She had no place to go other than to her bare and
+lonely room, and she felt uncommonly hopeless and friendless.
+Subconsciously she had been holding in reserve, as a last hope, an
+appeal to the generosity of Matthias. He was a playwright, an intimate
+of managers: surely he would be able to suggest something, no matter how
+poorly paid or inconspicuous. Now, with the date of his return
+indefinite, she felt unjustly bereft of that last resource.
+
+She spent two weary, wretched hours on her bed, harassed by a singularly
+fresh and clear perception of her unfitness, for the first time made
+conscious that she had actually possessed no reasonable excuse for her
+determination to go on the stage. Her qualifications, which hitherto
+might have been expressed, according to her own estimate, by the
+algebraic X, now assumed a value only to be indicated by a cipher. She
+had a good strong voice, it's true, but no ear whatever for music; she
+didn't "know steps" (Maizie's term, denoting ability for eccentric
+dancing) and of the art of acting she was completely ignorant. In fact,
+her theatrical ambitions had been founded more upon need of money than
+upon any real or fancied passion for the stage. Other girls had done
+likewise and bettered themselves: Joan knew no reason why she should
+fall short of their enviable achievements; but she was innocent of
+dramatic feeling and even of any real yearning for applause. Only her
+looks, of which she was confident, were to be counted upon to carry her
+beyond the stage doors.
+
+She thought of her home, of her mother, her father, Edna and Butch, with
+a dull and temperate regret. Since that first afternoon she had never
+attempted to revisit them, and she felt now no inclination toward
+returning. Still, her thoughts yearned back to the miserable flat as to
+an assured shelter: there, at least, she had been safe from rude weather
+and positive hunger.
+
+As things were with her, another week would find her destitute, but
+there was still the chance that something would turn up within that
+week. She felt almost sure that something would turn up. In this
+incurable optimism resided almost her sole endowment for the career of
+an actress: this, and a certain dogged temper which wouldn't permit her
+to acknowledge defeat until every possible expedient had been
+explored....
+
+Toward evening she heard footsteps on the stairs. To her surprise they
+paused by her door, upon which fell a confident knock. Jumping up from
+her bed in a flurry, she answered to find Quard on the threshold.
+
+No one had been farther from her thoughts. She stared, agape and
+speechless.
+
+"Hello, Miss Thursday!" said the actor genially. "Can I come in?"
+
+He entered, cast a comprehensive glance round the poor little room,
+deposited his hat upon the bed and himself beside it. Leaving the door
+open, and murmuring some inarticulate response, Joan turned back to her
+one chair.
+
+"Hope I don't intrude," Quard rattled on cheerfully. "The girl told me
+the Deans was out and you in, so I took a chance and said I'd come right
+up."
+
+"I--I'm sorry Maizie isn't home," stammered the girl.
+
+"I ain't." Quard's eyes looked her over with open admiration. "I didn't
+want to see either of 'em, really. What I wanted was a little confab
+with you."
+
+"With _me_!"
+
+"Surest thing you know. I wanta talk business. I don't guess you've
+landed anything yet?"
+
+Joan shook her head blankly.
+
+"Well, I got a little proposition to make you. Yunno that sketch I wrote
+and you liked so much the other night?"
+
+"Yes...."
+
+"Well, I got hold of Schneider yesterday, and read it to him, and he
+says he can get me four or five weeks' booking at least, if I can put it
+over at the try-out. How does that strike you?"
+
+"Why--I'm glad," Joan faltered, still mystified. "It must be fine to get
+something to do."
+
+"Well, I haven't got it yet; and of course, maybe I won't get it. One of
+the first things you gotta learn in this business is, never spend your
+pay envelope till you got it in your mitt. And in this case, a lot
+depends on you."
+
+"I don't get you," Joan returned frankly. "What've I got to do with it?"
+
+Quard smiled indulgently, offered her a cigarette, which she refused,
+and lighted one for himself.
+
+"If I can't get you to play the woman's part," he said, spurting twin
+jets of smoke through his nostrils, "it's all up--unless I can hitch up
+with summonelse just like you."
+
+"You mean--you want _me_ to--to act--?"
+
+"Right, the very first time outa the box! Yunno, it's this way with
+these cheap houses: they can't afford to pay much for a turn, even a
+good one--and this one of ours is going to be about as bum as any act
+that ever broke through: take that from me. So it's up to me to find
+somebody who'll work with me for little enough money to leave something
+for myself, after I've squared up with the agent and stage-hands, and
+all that. You make me now?"
+
+"Yes; but I haven't any experience--"
+
+"That's just it: if you had, I couldn't afford you. But you gotta start
+sometime, and it won't do you no harm to get wise to what little I can
+teach you. Now the most I can count on dragging down for this act is
+sixty a week. I want twenty-five of that for myself. Fifteen, more will
+fix the agent and the rest. That leaves twenty for you. It ain't much,
+but it's a long sight better than nothing."
+
+"But--how do you know I can do it?"
+
+"That'll be all right. I know all about acting--anyway, I know enough to
+show you how to put across anything you'll have to do in this piece. Now
+how about it?"
+
+"Why, I'll be glad--"
+
+"Good enough. Now here: I've had this dope type-written, and here's your
+copy. Let's run through it now, and tonight you can start in learning.
+Tomorrow we'll have a rehearsal, and just as soon's we got our lines
+pat, we'll let Schneider have a pipe at it. Don't worry. It ain't going
+to be hard."
+
+Thus reassured, but still a trifle dubious, Joan accepted a duplicate of
+the manuscript, and composed herself to follow to the best of her
+ability Quard's second reading.
+
+This time he took less pains with his enunciation, scanned the lines
+more rapidly, and frequently interrupted himself in order to explain a
+trick of stage-craft or to detail with genuine gusto some bit of
+business which he counted upon to prove especially telling.
+
+In consequence of this exposition, Joan acquired a much clearer
+understanding of the nature of the sketch. It concerned two persons
+only: a remarkably successful stage dancer, to be played by Joan; her
+convict husband, fresh from the penitentiary, by Quard. _Scene_: the
+dressing-room of the dancer. _Time_: just after the dancer's "turn."
+Joan, discovered "on", informs the audience of her fortunate
+circumstances through the medium of a brief soliloquy. _Enter_ Quard
+(shambling gait, convict pallor, etc.) to inform her that she has been
+living in the lap of luxury during the eight years that he has been
+serving time: "I'm goin' to have my share now!" Comedy business:
+humorously brutal attitude toward wife; slangy description of prison
+life. ("They'll simply eat that up!"--_Quard._) More comedy business
+involving a gratuitous box of property cigars and a cuspidor. Suddenly
+and without shadow of excuse, husband accuses wife of infidelity.
+Indignant denials; wife exhibits portrait of child born after commitment
+of husband, and of whose existence he has heretofore been ignorant: "It
+was for him I fought my way to the top of the ladder: he has _your_
+eyes!" Incontinently husband experiences change of heart; kisses
+photograph; snuffles into cap crushed between hands; slavers over wife's
+hand; refuses her offer of assistance; announces he will go West to
+"make a _man_ of myself!" before returning to claim his wife and child.
+And the _Curtain_ falls upon him in the act of going out, all broken up.
+
+"Of course," Quard admitted, "it's bunk stuff, but we can put it across
+all right. I'm going to call it _The Convict's Return_ and bill it as by
+_Charles D'Arcy and Company_. You'll be the company. I don't want to use
+my name, because it ain't going to do me any good to have it known I've
+taken to this graft, and if I'm lucky no one's going to spot me through
+my make-up."
+
+Suddenly apprised by the failing light that the hour was growing late,
+he pocketed the manuscript and rose.
+
+"Come on out and eat--business dinner. We'll talk things over, and I'll
+fetch you home early, so's you can start getting up on your lines."
+
+They dined again at the Italian boarding-house. Quard drank but
+sparingly, considerably to the relief of Joan....
+
+She was home by half-past eight, her head buzzing with her efforts to
+remember all he had told her, and sat up till three in the morning,
+conning the inhuman speeches of her part until she had them by rote; no
+very wonderful accomplishment, considering that the sketch was to play
+less than fifteen minutes, and that two-thirds of its lines were to be
+delivered by Quard.
+
+But once with head on pillow, it was not her role that she remembered,
+but the man: his coarsely musical tones, his eloquent white hands, the
+overt admiration that shone in his eyes whenever he forgot his sketch
+and remembered momentarily Joan the woman. She felt sure he liked her.
+And she liked him well. Of the merits of his enterprise she knew
+nothing, but he had succeeded in inspiring her with confidence that he
+knew what he was about.
+
+She drifted off into sleep, comforted by the conviction that she had
+found a friend.
+
+By the time of her return from breakfast, the next morning, Quard was
+waiting for her at the lodging-house. He had already arranged with
+Madame Duprat for the use of the front parlour for rehearsals, pending
+its lease to some fortuitous tenant; and here he proceeded to work out
+the physical action of the sketch. His gratitude to Joan for knowing her
+part was almost affecting; he himself was by no means familiar with his
+own and her prompt response to cues he read from manuscript facilitated
+his task considerably. When they adjourned for luncheon he announced
+himself persuaded that they would be ready to "open" within a week.
+
+Within that period Joan learned many things. She was a tractable and
+docile student, keen-set to profit by the scraps of dramatic chicanery
+which formed the major part of Quard's stage intelligence. He himself
+had a very fair memory and had been drilled by more than one competent
+stage-director whose instructions had stuck in his mind, forming a
+valuable addition to his professional equipment. Joan soon learned to
+speak out clearly; to infuse some little semblance of human feeling into
+several of her turgid lines; to suffer herself to be dragged by one
+wrist round the room on her knees, by the romantical convict; to time
+her actions by mental counting; to "feed lines" to her partner in a
+rapid patter through the passages of putative comedy. She learned also
+to answer to "dearie" as to her given name, and to submit to being
+handled in a way she did not like but which, from all that she could
+observe, was considered neither familiar nor objectionable as between
+people of the stage. And she learned, furthermore, that May Dean's
+opinion of the venture was never to be drawn beyond a mildly derisive
+"My Gawd!" while Maizie's ran to the sense that it was all a chance and
+Joan a little fool if she didn't grab it--and anyway Joan was old enough
+to take care of herself with Charlie Quard or any man living!
+
+And it was Maizie who was responsible for insisting that Joan wheedle an
+advance of ten dollars from Quard, ostensibly toward the purchase of
+costume and make-up. But when this had been successfully negotiated, the
+dancers advised Joan to save it against an emergency, and between them
+provided her with an outfit composed of cast-offs: a black satin
+decollete bodice, an accordion-pleated short skirt of the period of
+1890, wear-proof silk stockings, a pair of broken-down satin slippers
+with red heels, a japanned tin make-up box with a broken lock, and a
+generous supply of cheap grease-paint and cold cream.
+
+Joan's debut occurred within the time-limit set by Quard and before an
+audience of two, not counting a few grinning stage-hands. The two were
+the agent Schneider, and the manager of a small moving-picture house in
+the Twenty-third Street shopping district; on the half-lighted stage of
+which their "try-out" took place at half-past ten of a rainy and
+disheartening morning. The judges sat in the darkened auditorium,
+staring apathetically and chewing large cigars. Joan, though a little
+self-conscious, was not at all nervous, and remembered her lines
+perfectly; better than this, she looked very fetching indeed in her
+makeshift costume. Quard forgot several of his speeches, floundered all
+over the stage, and in a frantic effort to redeem himself clowned his
+part outrageously. Nevertheless they were engaged.
+
+Convinced of their failure, Joan had only succeeded in removing her
+make-up and struggling into her shabby street clothing, when Quard
+knocked at the door of her dressing-room. He had played without make-up,
+and consequently had been able to catch the manager and agent before
+they could escape. Lounging in the doorway, he breathed a spirit of
+congratulation strongly tainted with fumes of whiskey.
+
+"We're on!" he declared exultantly. "What'd I _tell_ you? You needn't
+have changed, because we're going to stick here, and open today. One of
+the turns on this week's bill fell down at the last minute, and so we
+cop this chance to fill in. We go on after the first films--about a
+quarter of one; and then at four-thirty, seven-thirty, ten-forty-five.
+Now whadda yunno about that?"
+
+Joan gulped and shook her head, her eyes a little misty. For the first
+time she began to perceive that she had counted desperately on success.
+
+"I think--we're awful' lucky!" she said faintly.
+
+"Lucky nothing! I knew I could get away with it--always providing I had
+you to play up to."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"That's right. After we'd fixed things up I took Schneider down to the
+corner and bought him a drink. He said--I dunno as I ought to tell you
+this, but anyway--he said the sketch was punk (God knows it is) and
+never would've gone if it hadn't been for you. He said all the women
+would go crazy about you--you'd got the prettiest shape he'd seen in a
+month of Sundays. Yunno they get most of their afternoon houses from the
+women shoppers down here."
+
+He paused and after a moment added meditatively: "Of course, you can't
+_act_ for shucks."
+
+Joan, looking down, said nothing. Quard dropped a hand intimately across
+her shoulder and infused a caressing note into his voice.
+
+"I guess I'm a bad little guesser--eh, dearie?"
+
+Joan stood motionless for an instant. His hand seemed as if afire, as if
+burning through her shirtwaist the flesh of her shoulder. And she
+resented passionately the intimacy of his tone. Of a sudden she shook
+his hand off and moved a pace or two away.
+
+"Let me alone," she said sullenly.
+
+Quard started and jerked out a "What?"
+
+"I said, let me alone," she repeated in the same manner, looking him
+steadily in the face.
+
+He coloured darkly, mumbled something indistinguishable, and flashed
+into a short-lived fit of temper.
+
+"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded hotly.
+
+[Illustration: "What's the matter with you, anyway?" he demanded,
+hotly.]
+
+"Nothing," she replied quietly; "only I don't want to be pawed."
+
+"No?" he exclaimed with sarcasm. "Is that straight?"
+
+"Yes, that's straight--and so'm I!"
+
+Recollecting himself, Quard attempted to carry off his discomfiture with
+a shrug and a laugh: "Oh, all right. Don't get huffy. I didn't mean
+anything."
+
+"I know you didn't, but don't do it again."
+
+He turned out into the corridor; hesitated. "Well--let it go at that,
+can't you?"
+
+"All right," she said sulkily: "_you_ let it go at that."
+
+Quard tramped off without saying anything more, and, whatever his
+resentment and disappointment, schooled himself to control them, and met
+her half-way to a reconciliation when the approaching hour of their
+first public appearance brought them together in the wings.
+
+And by this time Joan had been sufficiently diverted by other
+experiences to have regained her normal poise. The dingy, stuffy, and
+evil-smelling dressing-room to which she had been assigned had suffered
+an invasion of three other women: two worn and haggard clog-dancers and
+a matronly ballad-singer who, having donned an excessively soiled but
+showy evening gown, had settled down calmly to her knitting: an
+occupation which had interfered not in the least with her flow of
+animated and not unkindly gossip. Joan gathered that her voice was the
+main support of a small family, consisting of a shiftless husband and
+three children, for the younger of whom the mother was knitting a pair
+of small, pink bootees. These last had immediately enlisted the
+sympathetic interest of the clog-dancers, one of whom boasted of the
+precocity of her only child, a boy of eight living with his grandmother
+in Omaha, while the other told simply of the death of two children, due
+to neglect on the part of those to whom she had been obliged to entrust
+them while on the road....
+
+Joan was the first to reach the entrance to the dingy "kitchen-set"
+which was to figure as a star dressing-room for the purposes of their
+sketch (and, for the purposes of subsequent offerings, as the
+drawing-room of a mansion on Fifth Avenue and the palm room of a
+fashionable hotel). About ten times the size of any dressing-room ever
+constructed, it was still atmospherically cheerless and depressing. She
+looked it over momentarily to make sure that the various simple
+properties were in place, and turned to find Quard approaching. Beneath
+the jaunty assurance which even his hang-dog make-up couldn't wholly
+disguise, she was able to detect traces of some uneasiness and anxiety.
+
+It was a fact that he had grown a trifle afraid of her.
+
+The discovery impressed her as so absurd that she smiled; and instantly
+the man was himself again. He thrust out a hand, to which with covert
+reluctance she entrusted her own.
+
+"All right now?" he asked cheerfully.
+
+She nodded: "All right."
+
+"Good enough. Let's see what kind of a house we've got."
+
+He found a peep-hole near the proscenium arch and peered intently
+through it for a moment or two; then beckoned Joan to take his place.
+But she could make but little of what seemed a dark well filled with
+flickering shadows. She turned away.
+
+"Only a handful out there," Quard assured her. "It's too early for much
+of a crowd. No good getting nervous about this bunch."
+
+"I'm not," she asserted quietly.
+
+And she wasn't; no less to her own surprise than to Quard's, she was
+conscious of no trace of the stage-fright she had heard so much about.
+Indeed a singular feeling of indifference and disappointment oppressed
+her; it was all so unlike what she had looked forward to as the setting
+for her first appearance in public. The dreary and tawdry atmosphere
+behind the scenes of the dilapidated little theatre; the weary and
+subdued accents in which her dressing-room associates had discussed
+their offspring; the _tinkle-tankle-tinkle-whang_ of a painfully
+automatic piano in the orchestra-pit; her own shabby second-hand
+costume; the brutal grotesqueness of Quard's painted countenance at
+close range--these owned little in common with those anticipations
+roused by the glitter and glamour of that fleshy show on the New York
+Theatre roof garden. She felt cheated; in perspective, even the
+stocking-counter seemed less uninviting....
+
+A muffled outbreak of laughter and brief murmur of applause filtered
+through the curtain. The piano stopped with a crash. Quard nodded and,
+touching her elbow, urged her toward the entrance.
+
+"Film's finished. Ready and steady, old girl."
+
+"I'm all right," she said sullenly. "Don't you worry about me."
+
+She heard the curtain rise with a rustling as of mighty wings penetrated
+by the shrill squeal of an ungreased block; held back a moment; and
+walked on, into a dazzling glare of footlights, conscious of no emotion
+whatever beyond desire to get finished with her part and return to the
+dressing-room. At the designated spot, near the centre of the stage, she
+paused, faced the audience with her trained smile and mouthed the
+opening lines with precisely the proper intonation....
+
+The curtain fell at length amid a few, scattering hand-claps that
+sounded much like faint-hearted firecrackers exploding at a distance.
+Joan rose from the chair in which she had been seated in a posture
+simulating abandonment to tears of joy, and walked soberly off the
+stage--barely anticipating a few stage-hands, who rushed on to make the
+changes necessary for the next act.
+
+Quard was waiting for her.
+
+"Well," he said, "it didn't go so bad, did it?"
+
+"No," she agreed listlessly.
+
+"Anyhow, they didn't throw things at us."
+
+"No." She endeavoured to smile, with indifferent success.
+
+"I got a lot more laughs with that spittoon business than I thought I
+would," he continued thoughtfully as they turned back toward the
+dressing-rooms.
+
+Joan made no reply, but when she stopped at the door of her
+dressing-room, Quard added tentatively:
+
+"Anyway, it beats clerking in a department store, doesn't it?"
+
+With some hesitation she replied: "I don't know...."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Immediately after her second public appearance in "The Convict's
+Return," Joan removed her make-up, changed to street dress and scurried
+through the rain to a Child's restaurant, not far from the theatre. In
+her excitement she had forgotten lunch and she was now thoroughly
+hungry. But she lingered purposely over the meal and even for some time
+after she had finished, preoccupied with self-dissection.
+
+She was--at last!--an actress; but she was none the less singularly
+discontented. In a very brief time she had travelled a great way from
+the Joan Thursby of East Seventy-sixth Street; a world of emotion and
+experience already dissociated them; but she seemed to have profited
+little by the journey. She felt sure that she had started the wrong way
+to prove her ability to act. And foreseeing nothing better than her
+present circumstances, she questioned gravely an inscrutable future.
+
+Instinctively she felt uneasy about this intimate, daily relationship
+with Quard. She wasn't afraid of him, but she was a little afraid of
+herself--because she liked him. Though still she dwelt in secret longing
+upon the image, half real, half fanciful, of a lover gentle and strong
+and fine--such an one as John Matthias might prove--for all that,
+Charlie Quard had the power to stir her pulses with a casual look of
+admiration, or with some careless note of tenderness in his accents.
+
+The shower slashed viciously at the restaurant windows. At that hour
+there were few other patrons in the establishment, no lights to relieve
+the dismal greyness of the afternoon, and no sounds other than an
+infrequent clash of crockery, the muffled shuffling of waitresses' feet,
+and their subdued voices, the melancholy and incessant crepitation of
+the downpour.
+
+Joan was sensible to the approach of an exquisite despondency; and in
+alarm, fearing to think too deeply, she arose, ran back to the theatre
+and on impulse paid her way in through the front, to watch the
+flickering phantasmagoria of the flying films and to sit in judgment on
+the antics of her fellows on the variety bill. She was in no hurry to
+return to the dressing-room, with its smells of grease-paint, scented
+powder, ordinary perfumes, sweat, stale cigarette-smoke, gin, and broken
+food. One of the clog-dancers claimed a tubercular tendency, for which
+she asserted gin to be a sovereign specific; but as the day ran on was
+even forgetting, at times, to cough by way of an overture to recourse to
+the bottle. The other, viewing this proceeding with public disfavour,
+had opened up an apparently inexhaustible and hopelessly monotonous
+store of reminiscence of the privations she had endured in consequence
+of "Fanny's weakness." Joan gathered that the two were forever being
+dropped from one bill after another because of Fanny's weakness.
+
+And of this she had five more days to anticipate and to endure....
+
+She crawled back to Forty-fifth Street at half-past eleven, that night,
+so dog-tired that she had neither the heart nor the strength to call on
+the Deans with her good news; this though there were sounds of discreet
+revelry audible through the door of the second-floor front....
+
+Somehow the week wore out without misadventure. Joan walked through her
+part with increasing confidence. Quard left her very much to herself
+when they were off the stage; indeed, he spent no more time in the
+theatre than was absolutely necessary. What he did out of it she did not
+know, but from the frequency with which he played his part with an
+alcoholic breath, she surmised that he was solacing himself in
+conventional manner for his degradation to "the four-a-day."
+
+On the third day the clog-dancers were dispensed with for the reason
+forecast, their place being taken by two female acrobats of a family
+troupe, who lolled about for eleven hours at a stretch in their grimy
+pink tights and had little to say either to Joan or to the matronly lady
+with the robust voice and the knitting. But the change was a wholesome
+one for the dressing-room.
+
+The following week _Charles D'Arcy & Company_ played at another house of
+equal unpretentiousness, on the East Side, and the week after that was
+divided between two other theatres. And on Wednesday of the fourth
+week--they were then in Harlem--what Joan had vaguely foreseen and hoped
+against, happened.
+
+Quard turned up in the morning with red-rimmed eyes, a flushed face and
+a thick tongue blatantly advertising a night of sleepless drunkenness.
+By sheer force of an admirable physique and the instinct of a trained
+actor, he contrived to play the first turn without mishap, snatched a
+little sleep in his dressing-room, and seemed almost his everyday self
+at the next repetition. But after that he left the theatre to drug his
+jangling nerves with more whiskey; and appeared at the final repetition
+so stupefied that he would not have been permitted to go on the stage
+but for remissness on the part of the stage-manager. Before he had been
+five minutes on view he was hooted off and the curtain was rung down
+amid an uproar.
+
+Once back in her dressing-room (where she was alone, since their act was
+the last on the bill and the rest of the performers had already left the
+theatre) Joan gave way to a semi-hysterical tempest of tears. It was her
+first experience at close quarters with a man in hopeless intoxication,
+and while Quard's surrender was too abject to terrify, she was faint
+with disgust of him and incensed beyond measure with him for having
+subjected her to those terrible five minutes before a howling audience.
+With this, she was poignantly aware that henceforth their offering was
+"cold": by morning Quard's name would be upon the black-list and
+further booking impossible to secure. She might as well count herself
+once more out of work, and now in even less hopeful circumstances than
+when first she had struck out for herself; for then she had been buoyed
+up by the fatuous confidence of complete inexperience, and then she had
+been comparatively affluent in the possession of twenty-two dollars. Now
+she knew how desperately hard was the way she must climb, and she had
+less than five dollars. What little she had been able to set aside out
+of her weekly wage had gone to purchase some sorely needed supplements
+to her meagre wardrobe.
+
+It was some time before she could collect herself enough to dabble her
+swollen eyes with cold water, scrub off her make-up, and change for the
+street.
+
+She stole away presently across an empty and desolate stage and
+through the blind, black alley leading from the stage-door to
+One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street. She felt somewhat relieved and
+comforted by the clean night air and the multitude of lights--the sense
+of normal life fluent in its accustomed, orderly channels. It seemed, in
+her excited fancy, like escaping from the foul, choking atmosphere of a
+madhouse....
+
+The theatre was near Third Avenue, toward which Joan hurried, meaning to
+board a southbound car and transfer to Forty-second Street. But as she
+neared the corner she checked sharply, and (simple curiosity proving
+stronger than her impulse to fly across the street) went more
+slowly--only a few yards behind a figure that she knew too well--a
+swaying figure with weaving feet.
+
+Vastly different from the carefully overdressed, dandified person he had
+been at their first meeting, Quard stumbled on, his hands deep in
+pockets, head low between his shoulders, a straw hat jammed down over
+his eyes. Obviously he was without definite notion of either his
+where-abouts or his destination. Passers-by gave him a wide berth.
+
+He seemed so broken and helpless that pity replaced horror and
+indignation in the heart of the girl. After all, he hadn't been unkind
+to her; but for him she would long since have gone to the wall; and ever
+since their clash on the day of the try-out, he had treated her with a
+studied respect which had pleased her, apprehensive though she had
+remained of a renewal of his advances.
+
+Suddenly, and quite without premeditation, she darted forward and
+plucked Quard by the sleeve just as he was on the point of staggering
+through the swinging doors of a corner saloon. If her impulse had been
+at all articulate, she would have said that this was, in such extremity,
+the least she could do--to try to save him from himself.
+
+"Charlie!" she cried. "No, Charlie--don't be a fool!"
+
+The man halted and, turning, reeled against the door-post. "Wasmasr?" he
+asked thickly. Then recognition stirred in his bemused brain. "Why, it's
+lil Joan Thursh'y...."
+
+"Come away," she insisted nervously. "Don't be a fool. Don't go in
+there. Go home."
+
+He moved his head waggishly. "Thash where 'm goin'--home--soon's I brace
+up a bit."
+
+"Come away!" Joan repeated sharply, dragging at his cuff. "Do you hear?
+Come away. A walk'll straighten you out better'n anything else."
+
+"Walk, eh?" Quard lifted his chin and lurched away from the door-post.
+"Y' wanna take walk with me? All right"--indulgently--"_I_'ll walk with
+you, lil one, 's far's y' like."
+
+"Come, then!" she persisted. "Hurry--it's late."
+
+He yielded peaceably, with a sodden chuckle; but as he turned the lights
+of the saloon illumined his face vividly for an instant, and provided
+Joan with a fresh and appalling problem. The man had forgotten to remove
+his make-up; his mouth and jaws were plastered with a coat of
+bluish-grey paint, to suggest a week's growth of beard when viewed
+across footlights; there were wide blue rings round his eyes, and
+splashes of some silvery mixture on his dark hair. His face was a
+burlesque mask, so extravagant that it could not well escape observation
+in any steady light. It was impossible for Joan to be seen publicly with
+him--in a street-car, for instance. But now that she had taken charge of
+him, she couldn't gain her own consent to abandon the man to the
+potentially fatal whims of his condition. For a moment aghast and
+hesitant, in another she recognized how unavoidable was the necessity of
+adopting the suggestion his stupefied wits had twisted out of her
+pleadings: she would have to walk with him a little way, at least until
+he could recover to some slight extent.
+
+Indeed, even had she desired to, she would probably have found it
+difficult to get rid of him just then; for in an attempt to steady
+himself, Quard grasped her arm just above the elbow; and this grip he
+maintained firmly without Joan's daring to resent it openly. She was to
+that extent afraid of his drunkenness, afraid of his uncertain temper.
+
+Submissively, then, she piloted him to the south side of the street,
+where with fewer lighted shop-windows there was consequently less
+publicity, and to Lexington Avenue, turning south and then west through
+the comparative obscurity of One-hundred-and-twenty-fourth Street.
+Neither spoke until they had traversed a considerable distance and
+turned south again on Lenox Avenue. The streets were quiet, peopled with
+few wayfarers; and these few hurried past them with brief, incurious
+glances if not with that blind indifference which is largely
+characteristic of the people of New York. Quard suffered himself to be
+led with a docility as grateful as it had been unexpected. It was
+apparent to the girl that he was making, subconsciously at least, a
+strong effort to control his erratic feet. He retained her arm, however,
+until they were near One-hundred-and-sixteenth Street: when, noticing
+the lights of a corner drug-store, the girl held back.
+
+A swift glance roundabout discovered nobody near.
+
+"Where's your handkerchief, Charlie?" she demanded.
+
+"Where's whash? Whashmasser?"
+
+"I say," she repeated impatiently, "where's your handkerchief? Get it
+out and scrub some of that paint off your face. Do you hear? You look
+like a fool."
+
+"'M a fool," Quard admitted gravely, fumbling through his pockets.
+
+"Well, I won't be seen with you looking like that. Hurry up!"
+
+Her peremptory accents roused him a little. He found his handkerchief
+and began laboriously and ineffectually to smear his face with it, with
+the sole result of spreading the colour instead of removing it. In this
+occupation, he released her arm. With a testy exclamation, Joan snatched
+the handkerchief from him and began to scour his cheeks and jaws,
+heedless whether he liked it or not. To this treatment he resigned
+himself without protest--with, in fact, almost ludicrous complaisance,
+lowering his head and thrusting it forward as if eager for the
+scrubbing.
+
+For all her willingness she could accomplish little without cold cream.
+When at length she gave it up, his jowls were only a few shades lighter.
+She shrugged with despair, and threw away the greasy handkerchief.
+
+"It's no use," she said. "It just _won't_ come off! You'll have to go as
+you are."
+
+"Whash that? Go where?"
+
+"Now listen, Charlie," she said imperatively: "see that drug-store on
+the corner? You go in there and ask the man to give you something to
+straighten you out."
+
+Quard nodded solemnly, fixed the lighted show-window with a steadfast
+glare, and repeated: "So'thin' to straighten m' out."
+
+"That's it. Go on, now. I'll wait here."
+
+He wagged a playful forefinger at her. "Min' y' do," he mumbled, and
+wandered off.
+
+"And--Charlie!--get him to let you wash your face," she called after the
+man.
+
+Waiting in the friendly shadow of a tree, she watched him anxiously
+through the window; saw him turn to the soda-fountain and make his wants
+known to the clerk, who with a nod of comprehension and a smile of
+contempt began at once to juggle bottles and a glass.
+
+Singularly enough, it never occurred to the girl to seize this chance to
+escape. She was now accepting the situation without question or
+resentment. Quard seemed to her little better than an overgrown,
+irresponsible child, requiring no less care. Somebody had to serve him
+instead of his aberrant wits. To leave him to himself would be sheer
+inhumanity.... But she reasoned about his case far less than she felt,
+and for the most part acted in obedience to simple instinct.
+
+She saw him drain a long draught of some whitish, foaming mixture, pay
+and reel out of the store. He had, of course, forgotten (if he had
+heard) her plea to remove the remainder of his make-up. She was angry
+with him on that account, as angry as she might have been with a
+heedless youngster. But she did not let this appear. She moved quickly
+to his side.
+
+"Come on," she said quietly, turning southward; "you've got to walk a
+lot more."
+
+He checked, mumbled inarticulately, staring at her with glazed eyes, but
+in the end yielded passively. In silence they continued to
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street, Joan watching him furtively but narrowly.
+The drug worked more slowly than she had hoped. Primarily, in fact, it
+seemed only to thicken the cloud that befogged his wits. But by the time
+they had gained the last-named street, she noticed that he was beginning
+to walk with some little more confidence.
+
+He now seemed quite ignorant of her company--strode on without a word
+or glance aside. They crossed to Central Park and, entering, began to
+thread a winding path up the wooded rises of its northwestern face.
+Momentarily, now, there was an increasing assurance apparent in the
+movements of the man. He trudged along steadily, but with evident
+effort, like one embarrassed by a heavy weariness. His breathing was
+quick and stertorous.
+
+The park seemed very quiet. Joan wondered at this, until she remembered
+that it must have been nearly midnight when they stopped at the
+drug-store. She had noticed idly that the clerk had interrupted
+preparations to close in order to wait on Quard.
+
+They met nobody afoot, not even a policeman; but here and there, upon
+benches protected by umbrageous foliage, figures were vaguely
+discernible; men and women, a pair to a bench, sitting very near to one
+another when not locked in bold embraces. Joan heard their voices,
+gentle, murmurous, fond. These sights and sounds, the intimations they
+distilled, would at a previous time have moved the girl either to
+derision or to envy; now she felt only a profoundly sympathetic
+compassion, new and strange to her, quite inexplicable.
+
+Near the top of the hill they found a bench set in the stark glare of an
+arc-light, and therefore unoccupied. Upon this Quard threw himself as if
+exhausted. He said nothing, seemed wholly oblivious of his companion.
+Immediately he was seated his chin dropped forward on his chest, his hat
+fell off, his arms and legs dangled inertly. He appeared to sink at once
+into impregnable slumber; yet Joan was somehow intuitively aware that he
+wasn't asleep.
+
+She herself was very weary, but she couldn't leave him now, at the mercy
+of any prowling vagabond of the park. Picking up his hat, she sat down
+beside him with it in her lap, glad of the chance to rest. She was at
+once and incongruously not sleepy and thoughtless. Convinced that Quard
+was coming to himself, she was no longer troubled by solicitude; her
+wits wandered in a vast vacuity, sensitive only to dull impressions. She
+felt the immense hush that brooded over the park, a hush that was
+rendered emphatic by the muffled but audible and fast drumming of the
+man's over-stimulated heart, straining its utmost to pump and cleanse
+away the toxic stuff in his blood; the infrequent rumble and grinding of
+a surface-car on Central Park West seemed a little noise in comparison.
+Now and again a long thin line of glimmering car-windows would wind
+snakily round the lofty curve of the Elevated structure at
+One-hundred-and-tenth Street. Beyond, the great bulk of the unfinished
+cathedral on Morningside Heights loomed black against a broken sky of
+clouds.
+
+At one time a policeman passed them, strolling lazily, helmet in hand
+while he mopped his brow. His stare was curious for the two silent and
+ill-assorted figures on the bench. Joan returned it with insolent and
+aggressive interest, as if to demand what business it was of his. He
+grinned indulgently, and passed on.
+
+She had lost track of time entirely when Quard stirred, sighed, lifted
+his head and sat up with a gesture of deep despondency. The movement
+roused her from a dull, lethargic, waking dream.
+
+"Feeling better, Charlie?" she asked with assumed lightness.
+
+He nodded and groaned, without looking at her.
+
+"Able to go home yet?"
+
+"In a minute," he said drearily.
+
+"Where do you live?" she persisted.
+
+He waved a hand indifferently westward. "Over there--Ninety-sixth
+Street."
+
+"Think you'll be able to walk it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right now." He groaned again, and leaned forward, elbow on
+knee, forehead in his hand. "I feel like hell," he muttered.
+
+"The best thing for you is to get to bed and get some sleep," said the
+girl, stirring restlessly.
+
+He snapped crossly: "Wait a minute, can't you?"
+
+She subsided.
+
+"I guess you know I've gummed this thing all up, don't you?" he asked at
+length.
+
+"Yes, I guess you have," she replied, listless.
+
+"And, of course"--bitterly--"it's all _my_ fault...."
+
+To this she answered nothing.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry," he pursued in a sullen voice. "I guess I can't say
+any more'n that."
+
+She sighed: "I guess it can't be helped."
+
+He leaned back again, explored a pocket, brought to light a roll of
+money, with shaking hands stripped off four bills. "Well, anyway,
+there's your bit."
+
+Taking the bills, she examined them carefully. "That's a whole week,"
+she said, surprised.
+
+"All right; it's coming to you."
+
+With neither thanks nor further protest, she put the money away in her
+pocket-book.
+
+"You've acted like a brick to me," he continued.
+
+"Don't let's talk about that now--"
+
+"I don't want you should think I don't appreciate it. If it hadn't been
+for you, I don't know when I'd've got home--chances are, not till
+tomorrow night, anyway. The old woman'd've been half crazy."
+
+Joan kept silence.
+
+"My mother," he amended, with a sidelong glance. "There's only the two
+of us."
+
+"Well," said the girl rising, "if that's so, you'd better get home to
+her; she won't be any too happy until she sees you--and not then."
+
+Reluctantly he got to his feet. "She thinks I'm a great actor," he
+observed bitterly; "and I'm nothing but a damn' drunken--"
+
+Joan interrupted roughly: "Ah, can that bunk: it'll keep till
+tomorrow--and maybe you'll mean it then."
+
+He subsided into silence, whether offended or penitent she neither knew
+nor cared. She gave him his hat, avoiding his look, and without further
+speech they found their way out to the gate at One-hundred-and-third
+Street. Here Joan paused to await an Eighth Avenue car.
+
+"You'd better walk all the way home, even if you don't feel like it,"
+she advised Quard brusquely. "It won't do you any harm, and that mop of
+yours is a sight."
+
+"All right," he assented. He moved tentatively a foot or so away,
+checked, turned back. "I suppose this is good-bye--?" he said, offering
+his hand.
+
+"I guess it is," she agreed without emotion. Barely touching his clammy
+and tremulous fingers, she hastily withdrew her own.
+
+A southbound car was swinging down to them, not a block distant. Quard
+eyed it with morose disfavour.
+
+"At that," he said suddenly, "maybe this wouldn't've happened if you
+hadn't been so stand-offish. I only wanted to be friends--"
+
+In her exasperation Joan gave an excellent imitation of Miss May Dean's
+favourite ejaculation. "My Gawd!" she said scornfully--"if you can't
+think of any better excuse for being a souse than to blame it on me....
+Good _night_!"
+
+The car pulled up for her. She climbed aboard--left him staring.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't,
+as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had
+no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this
+knowledge with a thrilling heart.
+
+Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone,
+as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She
+paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a
+typewriter.
+
+Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been
+anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He
+might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of
+him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the
+formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie
+Quard.
+
+But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure
+that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late,
+behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than
+ever before.
+
+It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so
+easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to
+let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of
+her memory.
+
+By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in
+her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness
+of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without
+approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she
+was very anxious to make him realize her again.
+
+But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as
+different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying
+that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The
+Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an
+engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed
+up and departed, all in an afternoon.
+
+So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The
+bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and
+lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of
+social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met
+there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained,
+kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once
+again removed from her reach.
+
+She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully
+through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant
+which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the
+dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls
+and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of
+inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women
+than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and
+predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women....
+
+Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes
+than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience.
+Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the
+broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would
+never go far without influence.
+
+The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe
+to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed,
+did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from
+dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had
+taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and
+a fresh shirtwaist--both recent purchases.
+
+In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the
+stoop.
+
+Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes
+were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the
+moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away,
+she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing
+consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran
+lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the
+words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative
+movement to rise was barely perceptible--a start, a sinking back. So
+that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression
+that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever _she_ might be) and
+lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed
+past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily
+closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then
+promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before
+she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.
+
+He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar
+unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring
+blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging
+manner.
+
+"Mr. Matthias--" Joan began with a slight, determined nod.
+
+"Oh--good evening," he stammered.
+
+Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in
+some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a
+cool smile.
+
+He shook his head slowly: "So sorry--I've got a shocking memory. It'll
+come back to me in a minute. Won't you--ah--come in?"
+
+Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday,"
+she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday--of course! Won't you sit down?"
+
+Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she
+accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue
+to the identity of Joan Thursday.
+
+"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said,
+choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious
+taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to
+go, and you let me stay here--"
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now.
+Joan Thursday--to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've
+often wondered what became of you."
+
+"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."
+
+"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before
+this, if that's the case."
+
+"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at
+ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him
+through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full
+justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."
+
+"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that
+could have happened--!"
+
+"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor
+me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of
+the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women
+friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."
+
+"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the
+same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted
+something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could
+be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously
+interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did
+you? At least, I seem to remember you--ah--weren't in very good form,
+financially, that night we met."
+
+"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the
+next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know
+where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs--the Deans,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You
+did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."
+
+"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any--the
+Deans didn't--at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a
+fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."
+
+"Why, that's splendid!" said Matthias, affecting an enthusiasm which he
+hardly felt. "And--you made good--eh?"
+
+"Well"--she laughed a little consciously--"I guess I did make good. But
+he didn't. He was a boozer, and they threw us out of the bill last
+Wednesday."
+
+"That's too bad," said Matthias sympathetically. "I see."
+
+And truly he did begin to see: she was out of a job and wanted
+assistance to another. It wasn't the first time--nor yet merely the
+hundredth--that he had been approached on a similar errand. People
+seemed to think that--simply because he wrote plays which, if produced
+at all, scored nothing more than indifferent successes at best!--he
+could wheedle managers into providing berths for every sorry incompetent
+who caught the footlight fever. It was very annoying. Not that he
+wouldn't be glad to place them all, given time and influence; but he
+had neither.
+
+Joan, watching him closely, saw his face darken, guessed cunningly the
+cause. And suddenly the buoyant assurance which had been hers up to this
+stage in their interview deserted her utterly. No longer enheartened by
+faith in the potency of her good looks and the appeal of her necessity,
+she became again the constrained and timid girl of unreasonable and
+inarticulate demands.
+
+After a brief silence, Matthias looked up with a smile.
+
+"I don't suppose you have anything else in sight?"
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"And you need a job pretty hard--eh?"
+
+"Oh, I do!" she cried. "I haven't hardly any money, and the Deans have
+gone away, and the agencies won't pay any attention to me--"
+
+"I understand," he interrupted. "Half a minute: I'll try to think of
+something."
+
+Unconsciously he began to pace the way his feet had worn from door to
+window.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.
+
+She started and instinctively lied: "Twenty...."
+
+His surprise was unconcealed: "Really?"
+
+She faltered unconvincing amendment: "Nearly."
+
+"No matter," he said briskly. "It comes to the same thing: you're under
+twenty. The stage is no place for girls of your age. Don't you think
+you'd better chuck it--go home?"
+
+Not trusting herself to speak, she shook her head, her eyes misty with
+disappointment.
+
+"Besides, you're too good looking...."
+
+Struck by her unresponsiveness, he paused to glance at her, and noted
+with consternation the glimmer of tears in her lashes.
+
+"Oh, I say! Don't cry--we'll find something for you, never fear!"
+
+"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I--I didn't mean to.... Only, I can't go home,
+and I must find something to do, and you'd been so kind to me, once, I
+thought--"
+
+"And I will!" he asserted heartily. "I'm only trying to advise you.... I
+don't want to preach about the immorality of the theatre. A sensible
+girl is as safe on the legitimate stage as she would be in a business
+office--safer! But theatrical work has other effects on one's moral
+fibre, just as disastrous, in a way. It's lazy work; barring rehearsals,
+you won't find yourself driven very hard--unless ambition drives you,
+and you've got uncommon ability and mean to get to the top. Otherwise,
+you won't have much to do, even if constantly engaged. You'll get
+average small parts; you may be on in one act out of three or four. But
+even if you appear in every act, you'll only be in the theatre three
+hours or so a day. The rest of it you'll waste, nine chances out of ten.
+You'll lie abed late, and once up it won't seem worth while starting
+anything before it's time to show up at the theatre. That's the real
+evil of stage life: to every hard-working actor it turns out a
+hundred--five hundred--too lazy even to act their best, of no real use
+either to themselves or to the world."
+
+He checked and laughed in a deprecatory manner. "I didn't mean to
+speechify like this, but I do know what I'm talking about."
+
+Joan had listened, admiring Matthias intensely, but thoroughly sceptical
+of his counsel, to the tenor of which she paid just sufficient heed to
+perceive that doubts admitted would condemn her cause.
+
+"I mean to succeed," she said in an earnest voice: "I mean to work hard,
+and I do believe I'll make good, if I ever get a chance."
+
+"Then that's settled!" assented Matthias promptly. "The thing to do now
+is to find out what you can do with a chance."
+
+He pawed the litter of papers on the table, and presently brought to
+light a typed manuscript in blue paper covers.
+
+"This," he said, rustling the leaves, "is the first act of a play we're
+going to put on early in September. It goes into rehearsal in a week or
+ten days. There's a small part in the first act--a stenographer in a law
+office--a slangy, self-sufficient girl--you might be able to play. As I
+say, it's small; but it's quite important. It's the fashion nowadays,
+you know, to write pieces with small casts and no parts that aren't
+vital to the action. If you should bungle, it would ruin the first act
+and might kill the play. But I'm willing to try you out at
+rehearsals--with the distinct understanding that if you don't fit
+precisely you'll be released and somebody else engaged who we're sure
+can play it."
+
+"That's all I ask," said the girl. "You--you're awful' kind--"
+
+"Nonsense: I'd rather have you than anyone else I can think of just now,
+because you're pretty, and pretty women help a play a lot; and the man
+who's putting this piece on would rather have you because he'll get you
+for less money than he'd have to pay an actress of experience. So, if
+you make good, all hands will be pleased."
+
+"Shall I begin to study now?" Joan asked, offering to take the
+manuscript.
+
+"Not necessary. Your part will be given you when the first rehearsal is
+called. I merely want to refresh my memory, to see how much you'll have
+to do."
+
+He ran hastily through the pages.
+
+"As I thought: you are on at the opening for about ten minutes, and near
+the end of the act for a two-minute scene. Twelve minutes' work a day
+for, say, twenty-five dollars a week: that isn't bad. You'll be out of
+the theatre by half-past nine every night.... You see the point I've
+been trying to make?"
+
+"Yes," Joan assented. "It seems very easy. I hope I can do it."
+
+"I'm sure you can," said Matthias. "But--how are you going to live
+between now and the opening?"
+
+Joan's eyes were blank.
+
+"Have you any money?" he insisted.
+
+"A very little," she faltered--"eighteen dollars--"
+
+"You won't get pay for rehearsals; and they'll last three weeks; after
+we open it will be another week before the ghost walks. That's--say--six
+weeks you've got to scrape through somehow. Eighteen dollars won't cover
+that. Perhaps you'd better go back to your old job until we start."
+
+"I was fired from the last, and it would take more than two weeks for me
+to find anything like it, I know."
+
+"And there you are!"
+
+Matthias tossed the manuscript back to the table, waved his hands
+eloquently and threw himself into a chair, regarding her with his
+whimsical, semi-apologetic smile.
+
+"I'm afraid," he added after a minute, "I've reached the end of my
+string. Further suggestions will have to come from you."
+
+"I don't know," said the girl doubtfully. "Maybe I can think of
+something--maybe something will turn up."
+
+"I hope so. Perhaps even I may invent something. If I do, I'll let you
+know, Miss Thursday."
+
+He arose, his manner an invitation to go, to which she couldn't be
+blind.
+
+She got up, moved slowly toward the door.
+
+"I hope I haven't bothered you much--put you out of your writing--"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted insincerely.
+
+"And you have been awful' good to me."
+
+"Please don't think of it that way."
+
+He was holding the door for her, but on the threshold she hesitated.
+
+"Unless," she ventured half-heartedly--"unless I could help you some way
+with your work."
+
+"Help me?" he exclaimed, at once amazed and amused.
+
+"I mean, copying--if you ever have any."
+
+"Type-writing?"
+
+She nodded, with a flush of hope. "When I was a kid--I mean, before I
+left school--I studied a while at a business college--nights, you know.
+They taught me type-writing by the touch system, but I couldn't seem to
+get the hang of shorthand, and so had to give it up and go to work in a
+store."
+
+"Now that _is_ a helpful thought!" he cried, turning back into the room.
+"Wait a minute. There may be something in this. Let me think."
+
+But his deliberation was very brief.
+
+"It can be done!" he announced in another moment. "I have got a lot of
+stuff to be copied. You see, about a month ago I...."
+
+He checked, his eyes clouding without cause apparent to the girl.
+
+"Well!" he went on with a nervous laugh--"I didn't feel much like work.
+Guess I must've done too much of it, for a while. Anyway, I found I had
+to quit, and went out of town for a while. Of course I couldn't stop
+work really--a man can't, if he likes his job--and so I took some
+manuscripts along and revised them in long-hand. Now they ought to be
+copied--I'd been thinking of sending them out to some public
+stenographer--but if you want the work, it's yours."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Never had any of her difficulties been adjusted in a manner more
+satisfactory to Joan. She rose at once from an abyss of discouragement
+to sunlit peaks of happiness. Installing a rented type-writing machine
+in the room adjoining her own (temporarily without a tenant and
+willingly loaned by Madame Duprat) she tapped away industriously from
+early morning till late at night, sedulously transcribing into clean
+type-script the mangled manuscripts given her by Matthias. By no means a
+rapid worker, after renewing acquaintance with the machine she made up
+for slowness by diligence and long hours. And the work interested her:
+she thought the plays magnificent; and a novel which Matthias gave her
+when his stock of old plays ran low she considered superb. It was his
+first and only book, and had not as yet been submitted to the mercies of
+a publisher. But to Joan it was something more than a book; it was a
+revelation, her primal introduction to the world of the intellect. From
+poring over its pages, she grew hungry for more, thrilled by the
+discovery that she could find interest and pleasure in reading.
+
+She began to borrow extensively from the circulation branch of the
+Public Library in Forty-second Street, and to read late into the night,
+defying the prejudices of Madame Duprat on the question of gas
+consumption....
+
+Refusing an offer of public stenographer rates, she had asked for ten
+dollars a week. This Matthias paid her, under protest that the work was
+worth more to him. The arrangement was, however, a fortunate one; for
+though at first Joan earned more than she received, after rehearsals of
+"The Jade God" had started she was seldom able to give more than two or
+three hours a day to the copying.
+
+These rehearsals furnished her with impressions vastly different from
+those garnered through her experience with "The Convict's Return."
+
+The company assembled for the first time on a mid-August morning, in the
+author's study. There were present eight men, aside from Matthias and
+the manager, his producing director and his press agent, and four women,
+including Joan. After brief introductions, the gathering disposed itself
+to attention, and Matthias, rocking nervously in his revolving
+desk-chair, read the play aloud. To most of those present the work was
+new and unfamiliar; they listened with intense interest, keenly alive to
+the possibilities of the various parts for which they had been cast.
+
+But Joan was not of these; she had typed all the parts and knew not only
+the story but her own slight though significant role (as she would have
+said) "backwards." Sitting in a shadowed corner, she devoted herself to
+studying those with whom her lines were to be cast.
+
+The leading lady was an actress who, after several attempts to star at
+the head of her own company, was reduced to playing second to the young
+and handsome matinee hero of several seasons ago, planning to return in
+triumph to the stage after an unsuccessful effort to retire from it into
+the contented estate of well-financed matrimony. Through their widely
+published photographs Joan was familiar with the features of both.
+
+She thought the star charming; good-humoured, good-looking,
+well-mannered, slight and graceful, he had all the assurance of a
+Charlie Quard and none of his vain swagger.
+
+But Joan decided on sight to detest the leading woman. She was a pale,
+ashen blonde, with a skin as colourless as snow, level dark brows,
+sharp blue eyes set close to the bridge of her pointed nose, and a
+thin-lipped, violent mouth. The first impression she conveyed was one of
+dangerous temper; the second, that she had been happy in her choice of
+photographers. Throughout the reading, she sat negligently on the arm of
+a chair, swinging a foot and staring out of the window with an air of
+immitigable disdain.
+
+Of the other women, one was a grey-haired, sweet-faced lady of perhaps
+fifty years, whose eyes softened winningly whenever they encountered
+Joan's, the other an unlovely creature of middle-age and long stage
+experience, who seemed to have no interest in life aside from her
+unfolding part. The remainder of the company, of a caste hall-marked by
+the theatre, offered nothing novel to Joan's eyes--aside from a fat,
+red-faced lump of a youth who was to act a thick-witted, sentimental
+office-boy, in love with the stenographer (Joan). This one she decided
+to tolerate on suspicion; he resembled a type which she had found
+difficult, apt to impertinence and annoying attentions.
+
+Rideout, the man financially responsible for the production, was an
+English actor of reputation and considerable ability. Carrying his
+stoutish body with an ease that almost suggested slenderness: with his
+plump, blowsy face, twinkling eyes and fat nose of a comedian: the
+insuppressible staginess of his gesture would have betrayed his calling
+anywhere. Now and again Joan surprised an anxious expression lurking
+beneath his humorous smile; she had inferred from some casual remark
+made by Matthias that Rideout was staking all he possessed on the
+success of this play.
+
+The producing manager, Wilbrow, was a short, lean-bodied American, with
+lantern jaws, large intent eyes, and a nervous frown. Joan was impressed
+with the aloof pleasantness of his manner: she was to know him better.
+
+The reading over, the company was dismissed with instructions to report
+at ten the next morning at an obscure dance-hall masquerading under the
+name of an opera house, situate in the immediate neighbourhood, between
+Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several lingered to affix signatures to
+contracts--Joan of their number; and when these were gone, there
+remained in conference the star, the leading woman, Matthias, Rideout,
+and Wilbrow.
+
+Going out to dinner that night, Joan passed Matthias bidding good-bye to
+the leading woman in the hallway. He seemed tired and wore a harassed
+look; and later, when the girl delivered the outcome of her day's
+copying, he had a manner new to her, of weary brusqueness.
+
+The first rehearsal proper was held in a stuffy and ill-ventilated room,
+so dark that it was necessary to use the electric lights even at high
+noon. The day was fortunately cool, otherwise the place had been
+insufferable. There was little attempt at acting; the company devoted
+itself, under Wilbrow's patient direction, to blocking in the action.
+They had no stage--simply that bare, four-square room. Half a dozen
+chairs and a few long benches were dragged about to indicate entrances
+and properties. Nobody pretended to know his part--not even Joan, who
+knew hers perfectly. The example of the others, who merely mumbled from
+the manuscripts in their hands, made the girl fear to betray
+amateurishness by discovering too great an initial familiarity with her
+lines. So she, too, carried her "'script," and read from it. When not
+thus engaged, she sat watching and noting down what was going on with
+eager attention.
+
+But she took away with her a depressing sense of having engaged in
+something formless and incoherent.
+
+But succeeding rehearsals--beginning with the second--corrected this
+misapprehension. That afternoon developed Wilbrow suddenly into a
+mild-mannered, semi-apologetic, and humorous tyrant. He discovered an
+individual comprehension of what was required for the right development
+of the play, and an invincible determination to get it. He never lost
+either temper or patience, neither swore nor lifted his voice; but
+having indicated his desire, wrought patiently with its subject,
+sometimes for as long as an hour, until he had succeeded in satisfying
+it. He worked coatless, with his long black hair straggling down over
+his forehead and across his glasses: an incredibly thin, energetic, and
+efficient figure, dominated by a penetrating and masterful intelligence.
+Not infrequently, taking the typed part from the hands of one of his
+puppets, he would himself give a vivid sketch of its requirements
+through the medium of intonation, gesture, and action. And to Joan,
+at least, the effects he created by these means were as striking
+in the feminine roles as in the masculine. Utterly devoid of
+self-consciousness, he had the faculty of seeming for the moment
+actually to be what he sought to suggest: one forgot the man, saw only
+what he had in mind.
+
+Another thing that surprised the girl more than a little was the
+docility with which her associates submitted to his dictation and even
+invited it. She had heard of actors "creating" roles; but in this
+company no one but the producer seemed to be creating anything. The
+others came to rehearsals with minds so open that they seemed vacuous;
+not one, whether the star, his leading woman, or any of their supporting
+players, indicated the least comprehension of what they were required to
+portray or the slightest symptom of original conception. What Wilbrow
+told them and then showed them how to do, they performed with varying
+degrees of success. So that Joan at last came to believe the best actors
+those most susceptible to domination, least capable of independent
+thought. As he gradually became acquainted with his lines and the
+business Wilbrow mapped out for him, the star began to give more
+compelling impersonations at each rehearsal; but to the girl he never
+seemed more than a carbon filament of a man, burning bright with
+incandescence only when impregnated with the fluid genius of a superior
+mentality. So, likewise, with the leading woman....
+
+As for herself, Joan was hardly happy in her endeavour to please. Having
+unwisely formed her own premature conception of her part, and lacking
+totally the technical ability to express it, she ran constantly afoul of
+Wilbrow's notions. She was called upon first to erase her own
+personality, next to forget the personality which she had meant to
+delineate, and finally to substitute for both these one which Wilbrow
+alone seemed able to see and understand. She strove patiently and
+without complaint, but in a stupefying welter of confusion. While on the
+pretended stage she was constantly terrified by Wilbrow's mild but
+predominant regard, which rendered her only awkward, witless, and
+ill-at-ease. Then, too, her attempts to imitate his brilliant and
+colourful acting were received with amusement, not always wholly silent,
+by the rest of the company. She seemed quite unable to follow his lead;
+and toward the end of the first week, throughout the whole of which (she
+was aware from the calm resignation of Wilbrow's attitude) she had
+improved not one whit, she began to despair.
+
+Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily
+excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this
+extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of
+earning her weekly stipend.
+
+On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed,
+there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow,
+Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a
+change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the
+release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now
+from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought
+and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the
+balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she
+was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals
+would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the
+stage of a Broadway theatre.
+
+She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair.
+Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout
+was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could
+purchase--and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably
+protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal
+now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in
+a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she
+earned as typist--and she had been engaged with the understanding,
+implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to
+occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of
+"The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.
+
+There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The
+admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself
+out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of
+propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And
+from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow
+upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached
+interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as
+a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His
+thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she
+could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very
+refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested
+him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of
+a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She
+worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content
+with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through
+his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would
+seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work
+and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress
+of recognized ability!...
+
+It was a truism in her conception of life that the estate of actress was
+a loadstone for the hearts of men.
+
+If success were to be denied her!...
+
+In her bedroom, behind a locked door, she hurried to her pillow and to
+tears. She had known many an hour darkened by the fugitive despairs of
+youth; but never until this day had she been so despondently sorry for
+herself.
+
+Later, the banal ticking of her tin alarm-clock penetrated her
+consciousness, and she remembered that she had work to do--to be
+finished before evening, if her promise to Matthias were to be kept. She
+rose, splashed face and eyes with cold water, and went to her typewriter
+in the adjoining room.
+
+She had really very little to do in order to complete her task--only a
+few pages of scored and interlined manuscript to reduce to clean copy;
+but her mind was not with her work. Time and again she found herself
+sitting with idle hands, thoughts far errant; and now and then she had
+to dry her eyes before she could proceed: so stubbornly did she cling to
+the sorry indulgence of self-pity! Once, even, she was so overcome by
+contemplation of her sufferings that she bowed her head upon the table
+where the manuscript lay, and wept without restraint for several
+minutes--without restraint and, toward the last, with kindling interest
+in the discovery that her tears were bedewing a freshly typed page.
+
+If Matthias were to notice, would he understand? And, understanding,
+what would he think?...
+
+With shame-faced reluctance she destroyed the blotched page and typed it
+anew.
+
+It was dark before she finished; and she was glad of this when she
+gathered up the manuscript to take to her employer. With no light in his
+room other than that of the reading-lamp with the green shade, her
+stained and flushed cheeks and swollen eyes would escape detection. It
+was not that she wouldn't have welcomed sympathetic interest, but a
+glance in the mirror showed her she had wept too unrestrainedly not to
+have depreciated the chiefest asset of her charm--her prettiness.
+
+However, she could not well avoid the meeting: the work must be
+delivered; but if she were lucky she would find him in one of his
+frequent moods of abstraction, and their interview need only be of the
+briefest. Nevertheless, she would have sent the work to him by the
+chambermaid if her week's wage had not been due that night.
+
+She waited a moment, listening at the door to the back-parlour; but
+there was no sound of voices within; and reassured, she knocked.
+
+His response--"Come in!"--followed with unexpected promptness. She
+obeyed, though with misgivings amply justified as soon as she found
+herself in the room, which was for once well-lighted, two gas-jets on
+the chandelier supplementing the green-shaded lamp.
+
+Matthias was bending over a kit-bag on the couch, hastily packing enough
+clothing to tide him over Sunday. He threw her an indifferent glance and
+greeting over his shoulder.
+
+"Hello, Miss Thursday! I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten
+me. I'm going to run down to Port Madison until Monday morning--last
+chance I'll have for a day in the country for some time, probably.
+Chances are, Wilbrow will keep us at work next Sunday. Got that 'script
+all ready?"
+
+Joan, depositing it on the table, murmured an affirmative in a voice
+uncontrollably unsteady. Before entering she had been quite sure of her
+ability to carry off the short interview without betraying her harrowed
+emotions. But to find the man about whom they centred packing to leave
+town--to leave her!--added the final touch of misery to her mood. And
+the inflection of her response could not have failed to strike oddly on
+his hearing.
+
+Uttering a wondering "_Hello!_" he straightened up and swung round to
+look at her. And a glance sufficed: his smile faded, was replaced by a
+pucker of sympathy between his brows.
+
+"Why, what's the trouble?"
+
+Joan averted her face. "N-nothing," she faltered. Her lip trembled, her
+eyes filled anew. She dabbed at them with a wadded handkerchief.
+
+Matthias hesitated. He drew down the corners of his mouth, elevated his
+brows, and scratched a temple slowly with a meditative forefinger. Then
+he nodded sharply and, crossing to the door, closed it.
+
+"Tell me about it," he said, coming back to the girl. "Things not going
+to suit you, eh?"
+
+She shook her head, looking away. "I--I--!" she stammered--"_I_ can't
+act!"
+
+"O nonsense!" he interrupted with kindly impatience. "You mustn't get
+discouraged so easily. Naturally it comes hard at first, but you'll
+catch on. Everything of this sort takes time. I was saying the same
+thing to Wilbrow today."
+
+"Yes," she mumbled, gulping--"I--I know. I was watching you. H-he and
+Mr. Rideout wanted to fire me, didn't they?"
+
+"What? Oh, no, no!" Matthias lied unconvincingly. "They--they were just
+wondering.... I assured them--"
+
+"But you hadn't any right to!" the girl broke in passionately. "I can't
+act and--and I know it, and you know it, as well as they do. I can't--I
+just can't! It's no use.... I'm no good...."
+
+Of a sudden she flopped into a chair, rested her head on arms folded on
+the table, and sobbed aloud.
+
+Matthias shook his head and (since she could not see him) permitted
+himself a gesture of impotent exasperation. This was really the devil of
+a note! Women were incomprehensible: you couldn't bank on 'em, ever.
+Here was he preparing to catch a train, and not too much time at
+that....
+
+But a glance at the clock reassured him slightly; he had still a little
+leeway. All the same, he didn't much relish the prospect of being
+compelled to invest his spare minutes in attempting to comfort a silly,
+emotional girl. And, besides, somebody in the hallway might hear her
+sobbing....
+
+This last consideration took him somewhat reluctantly to her side.
+"There, there!" he pleaded, intensely irritated by that feeling of
+helplessness which always afflicts man in the presence of a weeping
+woman, whether or not he has the right to comfort her. "There--don't
+cry, please, Miss--ah--Thursday. You're all right--really, you are.
+You--you're--ah--doing all this quite needlessly, I give you my word."
+
+He might as well have attempted to stem a mountain torrent.
+
+"I wish I could make you understand this is all quite unnecessary," he
+groaned.
+
+"I--I'm so mis'able!" came a wail from the huddled figure.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably--"awfully sorry, truly. But you--I'm
+not afraid you won't make good, and I don't intend to let you go until
+you've had every chance in the world. That's a promise."
+
+He ventured to give her quaking shoulder a light, encouraging pat or
+two, and rested his hand upon the corner of the table.
+
+"Come, now--brace up--please. I--"
+
+With a strangled sob Joan sat up, caught his hand and carried it to her
+lips. Before he could recover from his astonishment it was damp with her
+tears and kisses.
+
+Instantly he snatched it away.
+
+"You--you're so good to me!" she cried.
+
+Matthias, horrified, stepped back a pace or two, as if to insure himself
+against a repetition of her offence, and quite mechanically dried his
+hand with a handkerchief. And then, in a flash, he lost his temper.
+
+"What the devil do you mean by doing that to me?" he demanded harshly.
+"Look here--you stop this nonsense. I won't have it. I--why--it's
+outrageous! What right have you got to--to do anything like that?"
+
+The shock of his anger brought the girl to her senses. Her tears ceased
+in an instant, as if automatically. She rose, mopping her face with her
+handkerchief, swallowed one last sob, and moved sullenly toward the
+door.
+
+"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I--you've been very kind to me--I forgot
+myself. I'm sorry."
+
+"Well ..." he said grudgingly, in his irritation. "But don't let it
+happen again."
+
+"There's no chance of that," the girl retorted with a brief-lived flash
+of spirit. "Good night."
+
+"Good night," he returned.
+
+She was gone before he recovered; and then compunction smote him, and he
+followed her as far as the hallway.
+
+In the half-light of the flickering gas-jet, he saw her only as a shadow
+slowly mounting the staircase. And a glance toward the front door
+discovered indistinct shapes of lodgers on the stoop.
+
+"Miss Thursday!" he called in a guarded voice.
+
+She heard, hesitated a single instant, then with quickened steps resumed
+the ascent.
+
+He called once again, but she refused to listen, and he returned to his
+study in a state of insensate rage; which, however, had this time
+himself for its sole object--Joan's transgression quite lost sight of in
+remorse for his brutality. He could not remember ever having spoken to
+any woman in such wise: no man had any right to speak to any woman in
+such a manner, for any cause, however exasperating.
+
+Tremendously disgusted with himself, and ashamed, he tramped the floor
+so long, trying to quiet his conscience, and made so many futile
+attempts to apologize to the girl by word of hand--one and all either
+too abject or too constrained--that he had lost his train before he
+produced the lame and halting effort with which he was at length fain to
+be content.
+
+A later train was bearing him under the East River to Long Island when
+Joan read his message.
+
+A servant had taken it to the girl's room and, knocking without
+receiving an answer, concluded that Joan was out and slipped it under
+the door.
+
+When the descending footsteps were no longer audible, Joan rose from the
+bed, lighted the gas, and with blurred vision deciphered the lines:
+
+     "DEAR MISS THURSDAY:--Please forgive me for my unmannerly
+     exhibition of temper. I regret exceedingly my inability to make
+     you understand how sorry I am to have hurt your feelings.
+
+     "And do please understand that there is no grave
+     dissatisfaction with your work at rehearsals. Remember that you
+     have two weeks more in which to show what you can do.
+
+     "I shall hope that you are not too deeply offended to overlook
+     my loss of temper and to continue typing my book; if possible
+     I'd like to have another chapter by Monday night.
+
+     "Sincerely yours,
+
+     "JOHN MATTHIAS."
+
+     "P. S.--I enclose--what I'd completely forgotten--the regular
+     weekly amount--$10."
+
+She fell asleep, at length, with this note crushed between her pillow
+and her cheek.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Her work proved invaluable distraction for the greater part of that long
+and lonely Sunday. When not at her typewriter she was tormented by
+alternate fits of burning chagrin and of equally ardent gratitude toward
+Matthias. Had this last been in town and chanced to meet her, she must
+either have quitted him definitely or have betrayed her passion
+unmistakably even to the purblind eyes of a dreaming dramatist. As it
+was, the girl had time to calm down, to recognize at once his
+disinterestedness and her own folly. If her infatuation did but deepen
+in contemplation of his generosity, she none the less regained poise
+before bedtime and with it her determination to succeed in spite of her
+stupidity, if only to justify his kindness.
+
+But the morning that took her back to rehearsals found her in a mood of
+dire misgivings. She would have forfeited much--anything other than
+their further association--to have been spared the impending encounter
+with Matthias. And although the author was not present when she reached
+the theatre, her embarrassment hampered her to a degree that rendered
+her attempts to act more than ever farcical.
+
+Wilbrow, seated in a chair on the "apron" of the stage, his back to the
+lifeless footlights, did not interrupt her once; but despair was patent
+in his attitude, and despair informed his eyes, and not long after her
+scene was finished the producer for the first time betrayed indications
+of temper.
+
+"Blaine!" he said abruptly in a chilling voice to one of the minor
+actors--"don't you _know_ there's a window over there--up left centre?"
+
+The player thus addressed, who had been idling purposelessly near the
+centre of the stage, looked up with a face of blank surprise.
+
+"Sure," he said--"sure I know it."
+
+"That's something, at least!" Wilbrow commented acidly. "I'm glad you
+remember it. If I'm not mistaken, I've reminded you of that window twice
+every day since Monday."
+
+"Yes," agreed the other with a look of painful concentration; "I guess
+that's right, too."
+
+"And yet you can't remember what I've told you just as often--that I
+want you to be up there, looking out of the window, when _Sylvia_
+enters!"
+
+The actor turned out expostulatory palms. "But, Mr. Wilbrow, what for? I
+don't see--"
+
+"Because," the producer interrupted incisively, "the stage directions
+indicate it; because the significance of this scene requires you
+to be there, looking out, unaware of _Sylvia's_ entrance; because
+you look better there; because it dresses the stage; because you're
+in the way anywhere else; because I--God help me!--because
+_I--want--you--to--be--there_!"
+
+A smothered giggle broke from a group of players technically off-stage.
+Wilbrow glared icily toward that quarter.
+
+"Yes, I know," Blaine agreed intelligently. "But how do I _get_ there?"
+
+The front legs of Wilbrow's chair rapped the boards smartly as he jumped
+up. In silence, he grasped Blaine's arm and with a slightly exaggerated
+melodramatic stride propelled him to the indicated spot, released him,
+and stood back.
+
+"Walk!" he announced with an inimitable gesture of tolerant contempt;
+and went back to his chair. Not a line of his face had changed. He sat
+down, nodded to the leading woman.
+
+"All right, Mary," he said; and to another actor: "Now, the cue for
+_Sylvia_, please!"
+
+Joan shivered a little.
+
+Matthias did not come in until after the girl had finished her part in
+the afternoon rehearsal. She caught sight of him in the darkened
+auditorium just as she went off; and hurried from the house in tremulous
+dread.
+
+But a meeting was inevitable; and that evening, just before the dinner
+hour, found her reluctantly knuckling the door of the back-parlour. The
+voice of Matthias bade her enter, and she drew upon all her scant store
+of courage as she turned the knob. To her immense relief he was not
+alone. Rideout and Moran, the scene painter, were in consultation with
+Matthias over two small model stages set with painted pasteboard
+scenery.
+
+Matthias greeted her with a preoccupied smile and nod.
+
+"Oh, good evening, Miss Thursday. More 'script, eh? Thank you."
+
+Silently Joan gave him the manuscript and left the room. But the door
+had no sooner closed than it was re-opened and again closed. She turned
+to face this dreaded crisis.
+
+His smile was friendly and pleasant if a trace uncertain. He made as if
+to offer his hand, and thought better of it.
+
+"Oh, Miss Thursday.... I sent you a note...."
+
+She nodded, timid eyes avoiding his.
+
+"Am I forgiven?"
+
+"I--I--if you'll forgive me--" she faltered.
+
+"Then that's all right!" he cried heartily. "I'm glad," he added with
+unquestionable sincerity--"and sorry I was such a brute. I ought to have
+understood what a strain you'd been under. Shall we say no more about
+it?"
+
+She nodded again: "Please...."
+
+"Good!" He offered his hand frankly, subjected hers to a firm, cool
+pressure, and moved back to his study door. "Good night."
+
+She whispered her response, and ran upstairs to her room, almost beside
+herself with delight.
+
+It was all right!
+
+Best of all, the advances had come from him; he it was who had sued for
+pardon where the fault was hers--clear proof that he thought enough of
+her to wish to retain her friendship!
+
+With a glad and comforted heart she settled down to attack anew the
+vexatious problem of her role in "The Jade God."
+
+But for all her worry and good will, the next morning's rehearsal of her
+scenes passed off in the same terrible silence as had marked Monday's.
+And in the same afternoon the storm broke.
+
+After plodding through her first scene, Joan was about to go off when
+Wilbrow called her.
+
+"Miss Thursday," he said quietly, "one of three things has got to
+happen--_now_: either you'll follow my instructions, or you'll quit, or
+I will. I've told you what I want so many times that I'm tired repeating
+myself. Now we're going to go over that scene again and again, if it
+takes all afternoon to get what I'm after. _But_, before we start, I
+will ask you to bear one thing in mind: this isn't an ingenue part;
+there's no excuse for acting it like a petulant school-girl. Even pretty
+stenographers are business-like in real life--sometimes--and we're
+trying to secure some semblance of real life in this production. In
+other words, I want you to forget Billie Burke and try to act like a
+human being who's a little sore on her job and her employer, but not
+sore enough to chuck it just yet. Now, if you please--begin right at the
+beginning."
+
+For an instant Joan stood hesitant, on the verge of refusing. There
+seemed to be no satisfying this man: he either didn't or wouldn't
+understand; she tried desperately to please him--and her sole reward was
+to be held up to the derision of the entire company! It was
+intolerable! And of a sudden she hated Wilbrow with every atom of her
+being. But ... if she were to talk back or refuse to go on, Matthias
+would be forfeited from her life.
+
+She choked down her chagrin, resisted the temptation to wither Wilbrow
+with a glare, and sulkily resumed her place in the chair beside another
+chair that was politely presumed to be her typewriter desk.
+
+At once the fat boy whom she detested crossed the indefinite line
+dividing the scene from "off-stage," and leering insolently, spoke the
+opening line of the play. Seething with indignation, the girl looked up
+and in cutting accents shot her reply at him. She was pleased to
+surprise a look of dumb amazement in his eyes. At all events, she had
+succeeded in letting _him_ know just how she felt toward him! And this
+success inspired her to further efforts. She rattled through the
+remainder of the scene with the manner of a youthful termagant.
+
+When she had finished, Wilbrow said nothing beyond: "Again, please."
+
+The demand served only to deepen her resentment, and the second
+repetition differed not materially from the first.
+
+Ceasing to speak, she flounced away, but Wilbrow's voice brought her
+back.
+
+"Very good, Miss Thursday," he said mildly--"very good indeed. But
+why--in the name of Mike!--if you _could_ do it--why wouldn't you until
+now?"
+
+"Because," Joan stammered--"because--!"
+
+But she didn't dare say what she wished to, and checked her tongue in a
+fit of sulks more eloquent than any words she could have found.
+
+Wilbrow waited an instant, then laughed quite cheerfully.
+
+"The usual reason, eh? I might have guessed you had a sure-'nough one
+concealed about you.... That's all for today. Tomorrow morning at nine."
+
+Privately pondering this experience, Joan surprised its secret, and
+drew from it a conclusion that was to have an important influence upon
+her professional future: in order to act convincingly, she must herself
+feel the emotions accredited to her part. As applied to her individual
+temperament, at that stage of its development, this rule had all the
+inflexibility of an axiom. Others might--as others do--act in obedience
+to the admonitions of their intelligence: Joan could at that stage act
+only according to the promptings of her emotional self.
+
+So she encouraged herself to hate Wilbrow with all her heart, to despise
+him without ceasing night or day; no charitable thought of the manager
+was suffered to gain access to her humour at any hour. And so admirably
+did she succeed in impregnating her mind with virulent dislike of the
+man, that she afforded him no end of amusement. She made a point of
+coming to the rehearsals early enough to infuriate herself with
+contemplation of him in the flesh; and of walking up and down, before
+and between her scenes, thinking evil of him. The twinkle with which his
+eyes followed her, in place of their erstwhile calm indifference or
+resignation, worked only to intensify her rancour. Curiously enough, a
+clear comprehension of the illogical absurdity of it all made her temper
+even more bitter.
+
+One day just before the final rehearsals, Wilbrow, meeting her at the
+stage-door, planted his slender body squarely in her way.
+
+"Good morning!" he said cheerfully, with a semi-malicious smile. "My
+congratulations, Miss Thursday! You're doing nobly."
+
+"Thanks," Joan said curtly, pausing perforce.
+
+"You ought to be very grateful to me. Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder what you'd do under the direction of a man you happened to
+like?"
+
+"I don't know." Joan gave him a sullen look. "Will you please let me
+pass."
+
+"Delighted." He moved aside with mocking courtesy. "I ask only one thing
+of you: don't fall in love with me before our first night. I haven't got
+time to sour another sweet young thing's amiable disposition.... Keep on
+hating me as hard as you like--and we'll make at least a half-portion
+actress of you yet...."
+
+Toward the end of the second week, Joan began to notice that Rideout was
+growing less assiduous in attendance. At first inclined to lay this to
+his satisfaction with the progress--to her the production seemed to be
+taking on form and colour in a way to wonder at--she later overheard a
+chance remark of one of her associates, to the effect that Rideout was
+himself rehearsing with another company.
+
+"Well," someone commented, "if it was my coin back of this show, I'd
+stick by it if I had to play the office-boy."
+
+"I guess," was the reply, "Rideout ain't got any too much outside what
+he's sunk in this production. Shouldn't wonder if he needs what he's to
+get with Minnie Aspen."
+
+"Mebbe. He's a good trouper. What does he drag down, anyway?"
+
+"Four hundred a week."
+
+"Nix with those Lambs' Club figures. I mean regular money."
+
+"Oh, two hundred and fifty, sure."
+
+"Now you've said something...."
+
+During the third week it was announced that "The Jade God" would open in
+Altoona on the following Monday. And at the same time Joan discovered
+that she was expected to provide her own costume, a simple affair but
+unhappily beyond the resources of either her wardrobe or her
+pocket-book. In despair she took the advice of Mrs. Arnold (the
+sweet-faced lady of fifty, whom Joan counted her only friend on the
+company) and approached Rideout's personal representative, Druggett,
+with a demand for an advance. With considerable reluctance Druggett
+surrendered fifteen dollars, and promised her as much more on Monday,
+toward expenses on the road. And again on the advice and introduction of
+Mrs. Arnold, the girl succeeded in satisfying her needs at an
+instalment-plan clothing-house: paying eight dollars down on a bill of
+about forty and agreeing to remit the balance at the rate of four
+dollars each week.
+
+The final dress-rehearsal was called for Saturday morning. They were to
+leave New York Sunday night. But on Friday afternoon a sense of
+uneasiness and uncertainty invaded the temper of the organization.
+Wilbrow neglected the players to engage in protracted conferences with
+Matthias, Rideout, Moran, and Druggett, out of earshot, at the back of
+the auditorium. One or two weather-wise "troupers" hazarded gloomy
+surmises as to the nature of the "snag": that most favoured involved a
+"shake-up with the Shuberts" over some change in their route. With a
+singular unanimity the prophets of disaster either avoided or overlooked
+the actual cause of the trouble.
+
+At ten o'clock the next morning--a little late--Joan, with her costume
+in the dilapidated wicker suit-case, hurried into the theatre to find
+the company scattered about the stage in poses variously suggestive of
+restless dejection. Neither the star nor the leading woman was present,
+and there was no scenery in sight, other than that belonging to the
+production which occupied the same stage nightly. Rideout was nowhere to
+be seen, but the author, the producer, and Druggett were engaged in
+earnest but inaudible argument "out front." From their manner Joan
+inferred that Druggett was advocating some course actively opposed by
+Wilbrow and passively by Matthias. The group broke up before she found
+opportunity to question her associates. Druggett, in manifest dudgeon,
+turned sharply and marched out of the house, while Wilbrow strode
+purposefully back to the stage by way of the passage behind the boxes,
+Matthias following with an air of profound disgust and despondency.
+
+From the centre of the stage the producer addressed the little
+gathering.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said sharply; and waited until he had all
+their attention. "There'll be no rehearsal today, and--and unless
+something quite unexpected happens, we won't open Monday. The truth is,
+there isn't money enough behind this show to finance it beyond Altoona.
+Moran can't collect on his scenery, and won't deliver. Mr. Matthias has
+offered to fix Moran up if we agree to go out, but I can't see it that
+way. Mr. Rideout's proposition is that we go on the road and run our
+chances of making expenses--but I don't have to tell you people what a
+swell show we'd have of breaking even on a tank route at this season of
+the year--hot weather still with us, and all that. We _might_--but
+that's about all you can say. And I don't think any of us want to count
+ties from Altoona....
+
+"Mr. Druggett thinks that Mr. Rideout will be able to make a deal with
+the Shuberts, but I doubt it. Just now they're all tied up with their
+own productions and have no time to waste on a gambling risk like this.
+Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll all be notified. But I wouldn't, if I
+were you, pass up another engagement on the off-chance of this thing
+panning out after all.
+
+"I'm sorry about this--we're all sorry, naturally. We all lose. Mr.
+Matthias here loses as much as any of us--the rights in a valuable
+property for several months, at the inside. I'm out fifteen hundred
+dollars I was to get for putting the show on. And Rideout's out the two
+thousand real coin he's invested in expectation of backing which failed
+to materialize. Personally I refused to shoulder the responsibility of
+letting you go out in ignorance of the real state of affairs. That's
+all."
+
+He hesitated an instant, as if not satisfied that he had dealt fully
+with the situation, and glanced a little ruefully from face to face of
+the company. But for the moment none made any comment. And with an
+uncertain nod to the author, Wilbrow turned and disappeared through the
+stage-door.
+
+Matthias waited a trifle longer, as though anticipating trouble with the
+disappointed players; but there was no feeling manifest in their
+attitude toward him other than sympathy for a fellow-sufferer. And
+presently he consulted his watch and followed the stage-director.
+
+Those left in the theatre discussed the contretemps in subdued and
+regretful accents, betraying surprisingly little rancour toward anyone
+connected with it. Even Rideout escaped with slight censure. He was, in
+the final analysis, one of them--an incurable optimist who had erred
+only in banking too heavily on hope and promises.
+
+By twos and threes they gathered up their belongings and straggled off
+upon their various ways, a sorry, philosophic crew. Within ten minutes
+their dissociation was final and absolute.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Late in the evening, Matthias gave it up, and shaking off Rideout (whose
+only hope had resided in the author's anxiety to save his play) betook
+himself to an out-of-the-way restaurant to idle with a tasteless meal.
+
+He was at once dog-weary and heart-sick.
+
+The net outcome of some ten hours of runnings to and from, of meetings
+and schemings, of conferences by telephone and of communications by
+telegraph with those who had promised financial support to Rideout's
+project, was an empty assurance, indifferently given by the Shuberts, to
+the effect that, if nothing happened to make them think otherwise, they
+might possibly be prepared to consider the advisability of producing
+"The Jade God" about the first of January.
+
+The truth of the situation was that neither the Shuberts nor any other
+managerial concern was likely (as Wilbrow put it) "to look cross-eyed at
+the piece" until they could get full control of it; which would be in
+some three months, when Rideout's contract to produce would expire by
+limitation. And since Rideout might be counted upon to hold on to his
+contract rights till the last minute and leave nothing else undone in
+the effort to recoup his already substantial losses, it was useless to
+consider the play as anything but a property of potential value
+relegated indefinitely to abeyance.
+
+Matthias believed in the play with all his heart. During the last three
+weeks he had watched it come to life and assume the form he had dreamed
+for it, coloured with the rich hues of his imagination and quick with
+the breath of living drama. And because he possessed in some measure
+that rare faculty of being able to weigh justly the work of his own
+hand, and had looked upon this and seen that it was good, he had counted
+on it to win him that recognition which, more than money, his pride
+craved--partly by way of some compensation for what it had suffered at
+the hands of Venetia Tankerville.
+
+He was still sore with the hurt of that experience. Privately he doubted
+whether he would ever wholly recover from it; but the doubt was a very
+private one, never discovered even to his most sympathetic friends, not
+even to Helena, whose scorn of her sister-in-law remained immeasurable.
+Fortunate in having been able to afford those several weeks in the
+wooded hills of Maine, in their fragrant and passionless silences
+Matthias had found peace and regained confidence in his old, well-tried,
+wholesome code of philosophy; which held that though here and there a
+man ill-used by chance or woman might be found, the world was none the
+less sound and kind at heart, and good to live in.
+
+For all that, he could not easily endure the thought of Venetia's
+lowering herself to use him to further her love affair with Marbridge;
+of Venetia going from his arms and lips to the lips and arms of that
+insolent animal, Marbridge: the one amused by her successful cunning,
+the other contemptuous in his conquest. And he often wondered with what
+justice he judged the woman. It comforted him a little, at times, to
+believe that she had not acted so cruelly altogether as a free agent, to
+think her meeting with Marbridge in New York a freak of chance and fate,
+her elopement an unpremeditated and spontaneous surrender to the
+indisputable magnetism of the man. Marbridge commanded the reluctant
+admiration of men who did not like him--who knew him too well to like
+him. How much more easily, then, might he not have overcome the scruples
+of a girl untutored in the knowledge of her own heart....
+
+Or had it all been due merely to the fact that John Matthias was not a
+man to hold the love of women? Such men exist, antipathetic to the
+Marbridges of the world. Was he of their unhappy order, incapable of
+inspiring enduring love?
+
+He could review a modest cycle of flirtations with women variously
+charming and willing to be amused, light-hearted attachments and
+short-lived, one and all, those that might have proved more lasting
+broken off without ill-will on either side--though always by the woman.
+Venetia alone had named Love to him as if it stood to her for something
+higher and more significant than the diversion of an empty hour--Venetia
+who was now in Italy, the bride of Marbridge!
+
+And yet, oddly enough, it wasn't his memories of Venetia and his regrets
+and wounded self-esteem that rendered insipid his belated dinner and
+made him presently abandon it in favour of the distracting throngs of
+Broadway. They were thoughts of another woman altogether that urged him
+forth and homeward--a poignant sympathy for Joan Thursday, the
+friendless and forlorn, whose high anticipations had with his own that
+day gone crashing to disaster. He couldn't remember what had made him
+think of her, but now that he did, it was with disturbing interest.
+
+He found himself suddenly very sorry for the girl--much more sorry for
+her than for himself. What to him was at worst a staggering reverse, to
+her must seem calamitous beyond repair.
+
+It wasn't hard to conjure up a picture of the child, pitifully huddled
+upon her bed, in tears, heart-broken, desolate, perhaps (since he had
+not been home to pay her) supperless and hungry!
+
+Matthias quickened his stride. His suddenly awakened and deep solicitude
+tormented him. He had received evidence that Joan's was a nature
+tempestuous and prone to extremes: he didn't like to contemplate the
+lengths to which despair might drive her.
+
+Through the texture of this new-found care ran a thread of irritation
+that it should have proved a care to him. He realized that he must of
+late have been giving a deal of thought to the girl. Formerly he had
+been aware of her much as he was of Madame Duprat; such kindness as he
+had shown her had been no greater than, and of much the same order as,
+he would have shown a stray puppy. Tonight he found himself unable to
+contemplate her as other than a vital figure in his life--a creature of
+fire and blood, of spirit and flesh, at once enigmatic and absolute,
+owning claims upon his consideration no less actual because passive. He
+who had pledged his ability and willingness to find her a foothold on
+the stage, was responsible for her present distress and disappointment.
+And if his good offices had been sought rather than voluntary, still was
+he responsible; for she wouldn't have dreamed of seeking them if he
+hadn't in the first place insisted on putting her under obligation to
+him. He had in a measure bidden her to look to him; now it was his part
+to look out for her.
+
+Hardly a pleasant predicament: Matthias resented it bitterly, with
+impatience conceding the weight of that doctrine which teaches the fatal
+responsibility of man for his hand's each and every idle turn. He had
+paused to pity a stray child of the town; and because of that, he now
+found himself saddled with her welfare. A situation exasperating to a
+degree! And, he argued, it was merely this subconscious sense of duty
+which had of late held the girl so prominently in his mind--ever since,
+in fact, that night when she had broken down and impulsively kissed his
+hand. Just that one hot-headed, frantic, foolish act had primarily
+brought home to Matthias his obligations as the object of her unsought,
+unwelcome gratitude....
+
+He found Joan waiting on the stoop: a silent and vigilant figure, aloof
+from the other lodgers--a woman and two or three men lounging on the
+steps. And as these moved aside to give Matthias way, Joan rose and
+slipped quietly indoors, where in the hall she turned back with a
+gesture that too clearly betrayed the strain and tensity of her
+emotions; but, to his gratification, she was dry of eye and outwardly
+composed.
+
+"You were waiting for me?" he asked; and taking assent for granted
+rattled on with a show of cheerful contrition: "Sorry I'm late. There
+were ten dozen stones we had to turn, you know."
+
+Her eyes questioned.
+
+He smiled, apologetic: "No use; Rideout simply can't swing it."
+
+"I've finished type-writing that book," she announced obliquely.
+
+"Have you? That's splendid! Will you bring it to me? And then we can
+have a little talk."
+
+She nodded--"I'll go fetch it right away"--and scurried hastily up the
+stairs as he went on to his room.
+
+Leaving the door ajar and lighting his reading-lamp, Matthias closed the
+shutters at the long windows, adjusting their slats for ventilation.
+Then for some minutes he was left to himself. Resting against the edge
+of his work-table, he studied ruefully a cigarette which he was too
+indifferent or too distracted to continue smoking. Smouldering between
+his fingers, its slender stalk of pearly vapour ascended with hardly a
+waver in the still air, to mushroom widely above his head. It held his
+eyes and his thoughts in dreaming.
+
+He was thinking, simply and unconsciously, of the Joan he had just
+realized in the half-light of the hallway: a straight, slim creature
+with eyes like troubled stars, her round little chin held high as if in
+mute defiance of outrageous circumstance; vividly alive; giving a
+strange impression, as of some half-wild thing, at once timid and
+spirited, odd and--beautiful.
+
+To the sound of a light tap on the open door, the girl herself entered,
+a mute incarnation of that disturbing memory. She put down the
+manuscript before acknowledging his silent and intent regard. But
+becoming aware of this, her eyes wavered and fell, then again steadied
+to his. He was vastly concerned with the surprising length of her dark
+silken lashes and the delicate shadows on her warm, rich flesh. And he
+was sensitive to the virginal sweetness and fluent grace of her round
+and slender body. Vaguely he divined that the calm courage of her
+bearing was merely a naive mask for a nature racked by intense
+feeling....
+
+"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the manuscript. "I
+finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any
+evidence of consciousness.
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found
+money, and paid her for the week.
+
+"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want
+any more type-writing done for a while?"
+
+"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over.
+Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door:
+people all the time passing through the hall...."
+
+She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with
+his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having
+closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her
+circumstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its
+customary efficiency of grasp.
+
+He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable
+embarrassment.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the manuscript she had just
+delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long
+fingers--"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I--"
+
+She interrupted him sharply: "O no, you're not!"
+
+He looked up quickly, amazed and disconcerted by the hint of anger in
+her tone. A little tremor ran through her body and she lifted her chin a
+trace higher while she met his stare with eyes hot and shining. Red
+spots like signals blazed in her either cheek.
+
+Confused, he stammered: "I beg your pardon--!"
+
+"I say you're not sorry. You're glad. You're glad, just like anybody
+else might be. _I_ don't blame you."
+
+She shot these words at him like bullets, with a disturbing display of
+passionate resentment. He opened his lips to speak, and thinking better
+of it, or else not thinking at all in his astonishment, gaped witlessly,
+wholly incapable of conceiving what had got into the girl.
+
+With a flush of scornful satisfaction her eyes remarked these evidences,
+so easily to be misinterpreted; then quickly she lowered her head and
+turned away, leaning against the table, her back to the light and face
+in shadow.
+
+"_I_ don't blame you," she repeated in a sullen murmur.
+
+He demanded blankly: "My dear girl, what _do_ you mean?"
+
+"I mean.... Why, just that you're glad to get rid of me!" she returned,
+looking away. He noticed the nervous strength with which her hands
+closed over the edge of the table, the whitening of their small
+knuckles.... "It's perfectly natural, I guess. I've been a nuisance so
+long, you've got every right to be tired of having me hang around--"
+
+"But, my dear young woman--!"
+
+She interrupted impatiently: "Oh, don't call me that. It don't mean
+anything. I guess I know when I'm not wanted. I'll go now and never
+bother you any more."
+
+Moving a pace or two away, she resumed before Matthias could muster
+faculties to cope with this emergency:
+
+"All the same, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate
+how good you've been to me--and patient, and all that. I am
+grateful--honest'--but I'm not as dumb as you think: I know when I'm in
+the way, all right!"
+
+"But you entirely misunderstand me--"
+
+"O no, I don't! You've made yourself plain enough, if you didn't think I
+had sense enough to see. It don't take _brains_ to see through a man
+who's only trying to be polite and kind--all the time bored--"
+
+"But, Miss Thursday--"
+
+She turned toward the door.
+
+He made a gesture of open exasperation. This was all so unfair! He had
+only meant to be kind and considerate and--and everything like that! And
+now she had drawn against him one of those unique and damnable
+indictments which seem to be peculiarly the product of a certain type of
+feminine mentality, and against which man is constitutionally incapable
+of setting up any effective defence, reason and logic alike being
+arbitrarily ruled out of court by the essential injustice of the charge.
+She chose to accuse him of having adopted toward her a mental attitude
+of which he was wholly guiltless; and there was no way by which he might
+persuade her of his innocence!
+
+And it was so confoundedly clear that she considered herself,
+temporarily at least, abused and altogether justified of her complaint!
+
+"Please," he begged, "don't go yet. Give _me_ a chance!"
+
+Her hand was on the knob. She hesitated, with an air of expectant and
+generous concession.
+
+"You're really quite unfair," he began; but paused to regain control of
+himself and to wonder a little, blindly, why it was that he tolerated
+her impudence--for it couldn't be called anything less. It would be much
+more sensible and quite just to bow to her construction of their
+indefinite relations and let her go her ways without more argument.
+
+In spite of everything, he could not refrain from one last attempt to
+set himself right.
+
+"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you
+insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've
+really wanted to help you--"
+
+"Why?"
+
+The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly
+know...."
+
+"Didn't you know better?"
+
+"I don't understand you--"
+
+Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded
+from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted
+quietly, "that a man like you can't be just _kind_ to a girl like me
+without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the
+show had gone out--and everything--but now, with that hope gone--and
+nothing more to do for you--with no prospects but to lose you--the only
+friend I've got in the world--!"
+
+Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to
+stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling
+violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and
+bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's,
+saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"
+
+"Oh, can't you see!"
+
+With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a
+face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been
+numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp
+upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.
+
+In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms.
+She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite
+wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a
+breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with
+all her strength, in an ecstasy of impassioned tenderness.
+
+Bending his head, Matthias found her lips.
+
+"My dear, dear girl!" he murmured.
+
+"Oh," she breathed, "I have loved you always--always!"
+
+"If I had only known, if I had only guessed--!"
+
+"How could you? _I_ didn't know ... not till a little while ago....
+And even then, I couldn't have told you ... only the thought of losing
+you ... my dear, my dear!"
+
+"I never guessed...."
+
+"You're not sorry? You're not angry with me--?"
+
+"Angry? I adore you!"
+
+"You will love me always?"
+
+"Always and forever."
+
+"And never send me away from you?"
+
+"You shall never leave me but of your own will."
+
+"I think I was going mad with the thought of losing you!"
+
+"My beloved girl!..."
+
+The dusky stillness of the room was murmurous with whispers, sighs,
+terms of endearment half smothered and all but inaudible.
+
+To these a foreign and alarming sound: a rapping at the door.
+
+Matthias lifted his head, wincing from the interruption. The girl in his
+arms moved feebly, as if to disengage. He held her for a moment still
+more close. Her heart sounded sonorously against his bosom. "Hush!" he
+said in a low and warning voice. And then the rapping was repeated. At
+once he released her. She moved away, blushing and dishevelled, the
+fragrant freshness of her starched linen waist a crumpled disorder, her
+hair in disarray; her crimson face one of many evidences of the tumult
+of her senses.
+
+In the hallway a man's voice said: "He must be in. There's a light--"
+
+A woman answered impatiently: "Of course he's in; but the chances are
+he's asleep." She called in a louder tone: "Jack--Jack Matthias!"
+
+Recognizing the voice of his aunt, that person groaned aloud--"O
+Lord!"--stole a glance at Joan, hesitated, shrugged, as if to say:
+There's no help for it! Then he answered the door.
+
+Helena swept in with a swirl of impatient skirts. "Good heavens!" she
+cried. "What ails you, Jackie? We knocked half a dozen times. Were
+you--?"
+
+Her glance encountering Joan, the words dried on her lips.
+
+Tankerville, at her heels, jerked a motor gauntlet from his fat hand in
+order to grasp that of Matthias. "Surprised you--eh?" he
+chuckled--"getting in so late. Well, it's all accidental. We were bound
+home--been visiting the Hastings for a week, you know--but the car broke
+down just this side of Poughkeepsie and delayed us and...."
+
+He became distressfully aware of his wife's silence, simultaneously
+ascertained the cause of it, and cut his speech short in full stride.
+
+Matthias laughed a little, quietly: no good trying to carry off this
+situation; by many a clue aside from Joan's confusion, they were
+betrayed.
+
+"You've caught us," he said cheerfully. "We may as well own up. Helena,
+this is Joan--Miss Thursday--my fiancee. And Joan, this is my aunt, Mrs.
+Tankerville--and her husband."
+
+And immediately he was conscious of the necessity of bridging the pause
+that would inevitably hold these three confounded, pending adjustment to
+his amazing announcement.
+
+"We had intended to keep it quiet for a while," he pursued evenly,
+shutting the door.... "Helena, let me help you with that cloak.... But
+since you've declared yourselves in, we can only ask you to hold your
+peace until we're ready. I'm sure we can count on you both."
+
+Tankerville puffed an explosive: "Oh--certainly!"
+
+Helena glanced shrewdly from Joan to Matthias. He smiled his confidence
+in her, knowing that he might count upon her doing the right thing to
+put the girl at ease--just shoulders of the girl as positively as he
+might count upon her violent opposition to the match as soon as she
+discovered that he had engaged himself to her pet abomination, a woman
+of the stage.
+
+With a bright nod to him, she turned back to Joan; drew slowly near to
+her; dropped kindly hands upon the shoulders of the girl.
+
+"But, my dear!" she exclaimed in a tone of expostulation--"you are
+beautiful!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Escorting his aunt to the car, Matthias helped her in, closed the door,
+and then, with a grin of amused resignation masking that trepidation to
+which he was actually a prey, folded his arms on the top of the door and
+invited the storm with one word of whimsical accent: "Well?"
+
+"Is it true?" she demanded, as if downright incredulous.
+
+"Most true," he insisted with convincing simplicity.
+
+The tip of one gloved finger to her chin, Helena considered remotely.
+
+"She's very beautiful," she conceded, "and sweet and fetching and
+hopelessly plebeian. She'd be wonderful to have around, to look at; but
+to listen to.... Oh my dear! what _are_ you thinking of?"
+
+"Cut it," Tankerville advised from his corner. "None of your funeral,
+old lady."
+
+"That consideration never yet hindered a Matthias," his wife
+retorted--"or a Tankerville, either, as far as I've been gifted to
+observe. However"--she turned again to her nephew--"you are presumably
+in love, and I hope you'll be happy, if ever you marry her. I shan't
+interfere--don't be afraid--but ... I could murder Venetia for this!"
+
+"Good night," said Matthias, offering his hand.
+
+But instead of taking it, his aunt leaned forward, caught his cheeks
+between both hands, and kissed him publicly.
+
+"Good night," she murmured in a tragical voice. "And Heaven help you!...
+When is it going to be?"
+
+"We haven't settled that yet," he laughed; "but you may be sure I shan't
+marry until I'm able to support my wife in a manner to which she's
+unaccustomed."
+
+He returned to Joan with--until he recrossed the threshold of his
+study--a thought ironic concerning the inconsistency of Helena's
+veneration of caste with her union to fat, good-natured, pretentiously
+commonplace George Tankerville. For that matter, the Matthias dynasty
+itself was descended from a needy, out-at-elbows English adventurer who
+had one day founded the family fortunes by taking title to Manhattan
+real estate in settlement of a gambling debt and on the next had died in
+a duel--the only act of thoughtful provision against improvidence
+registered in his biography. So Matthias wasn't much disposed to
+reverence his pedigree: social position, at least as a claim upon his
+consideration, meant little to him: the only class distinctions he was
+inclined to acknowledge were those created by the intellect and of the
+heart. In his private world people were either intelligent or stupid,
+either kindly or (stupidly) egoistic. To the first order, with humility
+of soul he aspired; for the other he was, without condescension,
+heartily sorry....
+
+But there was nothing half so analytical as this in his temper when he
+rejoined Joan: only wonder and rejoicing and delight in her.
+
+He found her near the door, tense and hesitant, as though poised on the
+point of imminent flight. There was in her wide eyes a look almost of
+consternation; they seemed to glow, shot with the fire of her lambent
+thoughts. A doubting thumb and forefinger clipped her chin; a thin line
+of exquisite whiteness shone between her scarlet lips.
+
+Closing the door, he opened his arms. She came to them swiftly and
+confidently. Doubts and fears vanished in the joy of his embrace; she
+was no longer lonely in a world unfriendly.
+
+From the eloquent deeps of their submerged and blended senses, words now
+and again floated up like bubbles to the surface of consciousness:
+
+"You still love me?"
+
+"I love you."
+
+"It wasn't pity--impulse--Jack--?"
+
+"It was--love. It is love. It shall be love, dear heart, forever and
+always...."
+
+"You _told_ her--your aunt--we were engaged!"
+
+"Aren't we?"
+
+A convulsive tightening of her arms....
+
+A whisper barely articulate: "You really ... want me ... enough to marry
+me?"
+
+"I love you."
+
+"But...."
+
+"Isn't that enough?"
+
+"But I am--only me: nothing: a girl who dares to love you."
+
+"Could any man ask more?"
+
+"You.... What will your friends say?... You'll be ashamed of me."
+
+"Hush! That's treason."
+
+"But you will--you won't be able to help it--"
+
+A faint, half-hearted cry of protest: words indistinguishable, silenced
+by lips on lips; a space of quiet....
+
+"How shall I make myself worthy of you?"
+
+"Love me always."
+
+"How shall I dare to meet your family, your friends--?"
+
+"You will be my wife."
+
+"But that won't be for a long time...."
+
+"Yes, we must wait--be patient, Joan." She lifted her head, wondering.
+"But don't fear; love will sustain us."
+
+"I will be patient. You'll have to give me time to learn how not to
+disgrace you--"
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+"I mean it. I must be somebody. I'm nobody now."
+
+"You are my dearest love."
+
+"I must be more, to be your wife. Give me time to learn to act. When I
+am a success--"
+
+"No more of that!" There was definite resolution in the interruption.
+"You must give up all thought of the stage."
+
+"But I want to--"
+
+"It's not the place for you--for my wife that is to be."
+
+"But we're not to be married for a long time, you say."
+
+"I'm a poor man, dear--I have enough for one, not enough for two. It may
+be only weeks, it may be months or years before my work begins to pay."
+
+"But meantime I must live--support myself, somehow."
+
+"You will leave that to me?"
+
+"I must do something--be independent--"
+
+"Won't you leave it all to me? I will arrange everything--"
+
+"I'll do whatever you wish me to."
+
+"And forget the stage--?"
+
+"I don't know--I'll try, Jack."
+
+"You must, dear one."
+
+It was not a time for disagreements. Joan clung more closely to him. The
+issue languished in default, was forgotten for the time....
+
+Transports ebbed: the faintest premonitory symptoms of a return to
+something resembling sanity made their appearance; of a sudden Matthias
+remembered the hour.
+
+"Do you know," he said with tender gravity, having consulted his watch,
+"it's after eleven?"
+
+"It doesn't seem possible," she laughed happily.
+
+"And I'm hungry," he announced. "Aren't you?"
+
+She dared to be as frank as he: "Famished!"
+
+"Come along, then! Run, get your hat. It gives us an excuse for at least
+two hours more...."
+
+By the time she had repaired the damage this miracle had wrought with
+her appearance, Matthias had walked to the Astor and brought back a
+taxicab. The attention affected Joan with a poignant and exquisite
+sense of happiness.
+
+It was only her second ride in a motor vehicle. The top being down, they
+sat very circumspectly apart; but Matthias captured her hand and eye
+spoke to eye with secret laughter of delight, each reading the other's
+longing thought. The speed of the cab and its sudden slackening as it
+picked its path down Broadway, the flow of cool air against her face,
+the swimming maze of lights through which they sped, the sense of luxury
+and protection, added the last touch of delirious pleasure to Joan's
+mood.
+
+Matthias had chosen the cafe of "Old Martin's," at Twenty-sixth Street,
+the first place that suggested itself as one where they could sup
+without the girl being made to feel out of place in her modest
+work-a-day attire; but his thoughtfulness was misapplied: Joan was
+exalted beyond such annoyances; and those feminine glances which she
+detected, of pity, disdain, and jealousy, she took complacently as
+envious tributes to her prettiness and her conquest.
+
+From a seat against the wall, in a corner, she reviewed the other
+patrons of the smoke-wreathed room with a hauteur of spirit that would
+have seemed laughable had it been suspected. She thought of herself as
+the handsomest woman there, and the youngest, of Matthias as the most
+distinguished man and--the luckiest. The circumstances of the place and
+her partner enchanted her to distraction.
+
+The food Matthias ordered she devoured heedlessly; but there was a
+delicious novelty in the experience of sipping her first glass of
+champagne. It was, for that matter, the first time she had ever tasted
+good wine, or any kind of alcoholic drink other than an occasional glass
+of lukewarm beer, cheap and nasty to begin with and half-stale at best,
+and that poisonous red wine of the Italian boarding-house to which
+Charlie Quard had introduced her. She had never dreamed of anything so
+delicious as this dry and exhilarating draught with its exotic bouquet
+and aromatic bubbles.
+
+With a glowing face and dancing eyes she nodded to Matthias over the rim
+of her goblet.
+
+"When we are rich," she laughed softly, "I'm never going to drink
+anything else!"
+
+He smiled quietly, enjoying her enjoyment; but, when emptied, the
+half-bottle he had ordered was not renewed.
+
+There was without that enough intoxication in his fondness, in the
+simulacrum of gaiety manufactured by the lights, the life, the laughter,
+and in the muted, interweaving strains of music. Joan felt that she was
+living wonderfully and intensely, a creature of an existence
+transcendent and radiant.
+
+It was after one when another taxicab whisked them homeward through the
+quieting streets. She sat as close as could be to her lover and would
+not have objected on the grounds of "people looking" had he put an arm
+round her. Though he didn't, she was not disappointed, sharing something
+of his mood of sublimely sufficient contentment. But when he bade her
+good night at the foot of the stairs in the deserted and poorly lighted
+hallway, she gave herself to his caresses with a passion and abandon
+that startled and sobered Matthias, and sent him off to his room and bed
+in a thoughtful frame of mind.
+
+Lying awake in darkness until darkness was dimly tempered by the
+formless dusk that long foreruns the dawn, he communed gravely with his
+troubled heart.
+
+"Things can't go on this way--as they've started. There's _got_ to be
+sanity.... It's myself I've got to watch, of course," he said with
+stubborn loyalty to his ideal. "I mustn't forget I'm a man--nine years
+older--nearly ten.... Why, she's hardly more than a kiddie.... She
+doesn't _know_.... I've got to watch myself...."
+
+And in her room, four floors above, Joan sat as long before her bureau,
+chin cradled on her slim, laced fingers, eyeing intently the face shown
+her by gas-light in the one true patch of the common, tarnished mirror.
+
+When at length she rose, suddenly conscious of a heavy weariness, she
+lingered yet another long moment for one last fond look.
+
+"It's true," she told herself with a little nod of conviction; "I am
+beautiful. _She_ said I was ... he thinks I am ... I must be...."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into
+the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing
+this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view
+remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement
+and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from
+them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.
+
+Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: _I am
+beautiful_.
+
+Her second, not _I love him_, but _He loves me_.
+
+And her third grew out of the second: _I can make him do what pleases
+me_.
+
+Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very
+self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the
+level of humanity!
+
+A fit of petulance, beauty in tears, a whispered word of passion:
+strange and strangely simple incantation to have turned a world upside
+down! How easily was man suppled to the spell!
+
+The sense of power ran like wine through her being: she felt herself
+invincible, an adept of love's alchemy; she had surprised its secret,
+and now the world of man's heart lay open to the practices of her
+disastrous art. For a moment she experienced an almost terrifying
+intimation of empires ripe for conquest that lay beyond Matthias; but
+from this she withdrew her troubled gaze; nor would she look again; not
+yet....
+
+She considered his mad extravagance of last night--taxicabs, champagne,
+tips! Was he, then, able to afford such expenditures? In her
+understanding they went oddly with his pretensions to decent poverty. Or
+had he merely lost his head under the influence of her charms? This last
+theory pleased her; she adopted it with reservations: the question
+remained one to be cleared up.
+
+He disapproved of a career upon the stage for her?... Joan smiled
+indulgently: that matter would be arranged in good time. She meant to
+have her way....
+
+At a tap on her door she changed suddenly from the aloof egoist to a
+woman athrill before the veil of portentous mysteries. She sat up in
+bed, called out to know who was knocking, gave permission to the
+chambermaid to enter, and received a note in the hand of Matthias.
+
+"_Past twelve o'clock_," she read, "_and still no sign of you,
+sweetheart. I give you thirty minutes to dress and come to me. If you
+don't, I'll come for you. After breakfast, we'll run out of town for the
+day--our first day together!_ MATTHIAS."
+
+Half wild with delight, she hurried through her toilet and ran
+down-stairs to find her lover waiting in the hallway, watch in hand.
+
+He closed it with a snap, and made her a quaintly ceremonious bow. "In
+two minutes more--!" he observed in a tone of grave menace. "But before
+we go out, have the kindness to step into my humble study. I have
+somewhat to say to you."
+
+She appeared to hesitate, to be reluctant and preoccupied occupied.
+
+"What about?" she demanded distantly.
+
+But her dancing eyes betrayed her.
+
+"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant
+universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"
+
+Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by
+the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a
+charming diffidence.
+
+In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken;
+returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first
+submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded....
+
+She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and
+sweet and nameless longing....
+
+At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans
+for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long
+Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by
+the prospect--the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was
+comprised in a few trips to Coney Island--consented with a strange
+mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a
+conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.
+
+"I didn't know you had an automobile."
+
+"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."
+
+"But ... but ... won't it be awf'ly expensive?"
+
+"Don't worry, dear."
+
+"But, you know, you aren't--rich."
+
+"I'm a magnate of happiness, at all events: and today is _our_ day, the
+first of our love, sweetheart. For twelve long hours we're going to
+forget everything but our two selfish selves. Why fret about tomorrow?
+It always does manage to take care of itself, somehow. And frankly, I
+don't care to be reminded of its existence today; for tomorrow I
+work...."
+
+A day of quicksilver hours slipping ever from their jealous grasp; of
+hours volatile and glamorous: in Joan's half-dazed consciousness, a
+delectable pageant of scenes, sensations and emotions no sooner
+comprehended than displaced by others no less wonderful....
+
+Abed long after midnight, visions besieged her bewilderingly: a length
+of dusty golden highway walled by green forest, with a white bridge
+glaring in sunlight at the bottom of a hill; the affrighting onrush of
+great motor-cars meeting their own, and the din and dust of their
+passage; the bright harbour of Huntington, blue and gold in a frame of
+gold and green, viewed from the marble balustrade of the Chateau des
+Beaux Arts; the wrinkled, kindly, comprehending face of a waiter who
+served them at dinner; the look in her lover's eyes as she repeated, on
+demand, guarded avowals under cover of the motor's rumble; the ardent
+face of a boy who had seemed unable to cease staring at her in the
+restaurant; silver and purple of the road by night; wheeling ranks of
+lights dotting the desolation of suburban Brooklyn; the high-flung span
+of Queensboro' Bridge, a web of steel and concrete strung with
+opalescent globes; the glare of the city's painted sky; the endless
+pulsing of the motor; their last caress on parting at the foot of the
+stairs....
+
+On the morrow she went back to her typewriter like Cinderella to her
+kitchen. But what work Matthias was able to invent for her was neither
+arduous nor urgent; she was able to take her time on it, and wasted many
+an hour in dreaming. Her mind was, indeed, more engaged with thoughts of
+new frocks than with the circumstances of her love or her services to
+her lover.
+
+She was to receive thenceforward twenty-five instead of ten dollars a
+week. Matthias had experienced little difficulty in over-ruling her
+faint protestations: they were to be together a great deal, he argued,
+and she must be able to dress at least neatly; moreover, by requiring
+her promise to marry him at some future time when his fortunes would
+permit, he had in a measure made her dependent upon him; she couldn't
+reasonably be asked to wait for long on a bare pittance.
+
+His arguments were reinforced by one he knew nothing of, a maxim culled
+from the wisdom of Miss Maizie Dean: _It was up to a girl to look out
+for herself first, last, and all the time_. The platitude had made an
+ineffaceable impression upon Joan's sense of self-preservation. And if
+Matthias were able to afford nightly dinners for two at good
+restaurants, in addition to theater tickets several times a week, he
+ought to be able to afford a decent compensation to his stenographer;
+especially when it was his wish that she refrain from attempting to earn
+more money on the stage.
+
+It was, however, true that no offer had come to Joan of other theatrical
+work, and that the issue of her ambition remained in abeyance, a subject
+which she didn't care to raise and which Matthias, since that first
+night, had considered settled.
+
+Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance
+from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the
+other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some
+favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not
+obligatory--the cafe of their first supper by preference, or else the
+Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few
+minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the
+approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work,
+they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up
+Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance
+upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his
+work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous
+drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have
+good but inconspicuous seats.
+
+In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and
+since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they
+witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of
+social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an
+amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the
+quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of
+the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays
+furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As
+plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools
+of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her
+gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress
+portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation
+whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their
+gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something
+of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion
+of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the
+girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified
+to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with
+varying discretion and success.
+
+She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his
+friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For
+long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact,
+distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was,
+summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very
+guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted
+the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone,
+dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its
+own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of
+the feminine toilet.
+
+Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of
+imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the
+improvement in his fiancee without realizing it objectively; what
+pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of
+innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was
+inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine:
+he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not
+possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the
+mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined
+efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.
+
+It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under
+the strain of it all....
+
+"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an
+evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God"
+company. "He's dickering with Algerson--thinks the thing may possibly
+come to a deal before long."
+
+"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.
+
+"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play--at a bargain to
+himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's
+hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few
+days."
+
+"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking
+her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that
+she had never heard it before.
+
+"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now
+he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."
+
+"And if he gets 'The Jade God'--when will he put it on?"
+
+"Can't say--haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested
+as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can
+be ratified."
+
+"But you'll consent?"
+
+"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it
+stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective
+bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."
+
+Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork;
+glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the
+tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.
+
+"I wonder ..." she murmured abstractedly.
+
+"You wonder what--?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her
+thought.
+
+She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if--if he gets the
+piece--Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"
+
+"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want
+you to stick at that game."
+
+"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.
+
+Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson
+will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes
+to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean,
+he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until
+he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his
+hands."
+
+"You think he will produce out West?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"And will you have to go?"
+
+"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses.
+Although ... I don't know ... perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the
+only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most
+certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production--and his
+expenses to the Coast and back, besides.... It would be a shame to let a
+valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."
+
+"Then you may go, after all?"
+
+"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it
+over."
+
+Joan sighed.
+
+A week elapsed before the subject came up again.
+
+Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had
+sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the
+back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its
+heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the
+people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan
+could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as
+wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable
+prejudice of her lover.
+
+And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her
+thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires,
+seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.
+
+Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized
+that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in
+his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance,
+or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of
+intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to
+join issue with his will.
+
+And yet ... she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she
+felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been
+better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of
+living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she
+might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and
+honest than that which he offered her.
+
+But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in
+her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion....
+
+Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before
+sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving
+vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.
+
+Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair,
+knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm
+tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience
+stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something
+of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood.
+He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at
+arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside
+quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect
+the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her
+sweet lips, and again drew her to him.
+
+"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude.
+"What is it? Tell me."
+
+"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing--only--I guess--I'm
+a little blue--lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be
+at work or--with you always."
+
+"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now--I
+believe in my very soul."
+
+"Till when--?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with
+eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till
+when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"
+
+"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to
+me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract
+this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!"
+
+"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to
+produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+There was an interval....
+
+"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness
+for you, dear--not more than a few weeks--"
+
+"Why?" she demanded sharply.
+
+"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I
+couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."
+
+"When do you leave?"
+
+"Monday--the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los
+Angeles."
+
+"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.
+
+"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may
+have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."
+
+"Then I'm to be left--here--alone--with nothing to do but wait--perhaps
+more than a month!"
+
+"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends--"
+
+"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me
+with you," she pleaded earnestly.
+
+"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one
+thing, it wouldn't--O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!'
+but--it wouldn't look right. We're not married."
+
+"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.
+
+He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I
+haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you
+here."
+
+For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders,
+exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of
+much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and
+releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.
+
+Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.
+
+"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks'
+separation, Joan!"
+
+She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a
+cigarette and lighted it.
+
+"Surely you can wait that long--"
+
+"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be,
+it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."
+
+"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he
+grumbled. "But I don't see...."
+
+She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments,
+then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little
+collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence.
+One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much
+attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him
+an exclamation: "Hello!"
+
+"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.
+
+"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"
+
+"Tanglewood?"
+
+"My Aunt Helena's home--down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She
+has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to
+go?"
+
+A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate,
+and temporarily to forego further petulance.
+
+"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.
+
+"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be
+anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned
+over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll
+be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes--sweetheart!"
+
+Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck.
+She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some
+of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced
+her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination
+stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant
+novel-reading and theater-going.
+
+On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena's invitation she
+went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks' savings with that
+delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman
+of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent
+days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the
+pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy hoarded
+dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her association with
+Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)
+
+Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple
+evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably
+faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much
+higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an
+end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had
+the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully
+becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of
+its kind that she had ever owned.
+
+As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch
+at Martin's, she told herself that she would never know greater
+happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the
+figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.
+
+But after luncheon--over which they lingered until they were quite alone
+in the eastern dining-room--with some hesitation, and having assured
+himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled
+in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case,
+and passed it across the table.
+
+"I'd meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward
+smile. "But I don't think I can wait...."
+
+Joan opened the box--and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart
+seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she
+grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!
+
+Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life;
+and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that
+night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....
+
+Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature
+calculated to dissipate that glamour--save, perhaps, in one untoward
+circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided
+against.
+
+A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as
+violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end
+visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But
+Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the
+man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis
+lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan's way was made
+smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the
+moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible
+suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The
+smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville's
+obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the
+stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at
+her ease) facilitated matters immensely.
+
+Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid--was, indeed, given no
+reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the
+establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them
+herself, she received at Helena's hands the indispensable service of
+"hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means
+overshadowed by Helena's or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the
+men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her
+ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New
+York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of
+their terrors.
+
+Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring
+friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville
+to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone
+with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of
+Tanglewood....
+
+But it wasn't until the first hours of a still and splendid September
+Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its
+foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its
+grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its
+location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her
+perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new
+world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave
+her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the
+South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a
+short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....
+
+Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least
+comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at
+the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the
+manoeuvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the
+breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather
+extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common
+ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the
+depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light
+banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her
+extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic
+environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own
+ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow,
+strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.
+
+The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun--the
+season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The
+Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies
+bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an
+exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame
+in the mortal passion of Indian summer.
+
+In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet
+ineluctable hint of melancholy....
+
+From landward, with unusual resonance in the deep quiet of that hour,
+sounded the long, dull, whining purr of a motor-car.
+
+Helena lowered the glasses, turned an ear to the sound, and came slowly
+back to the tea-table and Joan. Her faint smile, together with a slight
+elevation of her delicately darkened brows, indicated surprise.
+
+Engrossed in their argument, Matthias and Tankerville gave no heed to
+the threatened visitation.
+
+Resentfully, Joan detached her attention from the diamond Matthias had
+given her, and at discretion tossed aside a cigarette which she had been
+pretending to like because Helena smoked quite openly, and it was
+consequently the smart thing to do.
+
+Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces
+toward the house, paused, waited. A woman's laugh with an accent of
+cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed
+Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his
+chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a
+light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the
+time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even
+though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. She was
+unquestionably the loveliest creature Joan had ever seen. Without
+moving, but staring, the girl sat transfixed with distrust and poignant
+envy.
+
+With a cry of wonder--"Venetia!"--Helena ran to greet these unpresaged
+guests.
+
+Meeting, the two women indulged in an embrace almost theatrically
+perfunctory. The commonplaces of such situations were breathlessly
+exchanged. Then Helena, disengaging turned to the man and extended a
+hand.
+
+"Well, Mr. Marbridge!..." she cried with a light note of semi-reproof in
+her laughter.
+
+At this, with a brightening smile, Marbridge bent over her hand, saying
+something indistinguishable to Joan.
+
+She was watching the meeting between Matthias and Venetia Marbridge.
+
+He held both her hands, and she permitted him to retain them, for a
+longer moment of silent greeting than Joan thought necessary. But this
+circumstance alone betrayed whatever constraint was felt by either. A
+smile, vague and perhaps not lacking a thought of tender sadness,
+touched the lips and eyes of Venetia. Matthias returned his twisted and
+indefinitely apologetic grin.
+
+"More than ever charming, Venetia!"
+
+"Thank you, Jack."
+
+If there were any hint of challenge in her tone or her straightforward
+eyes, Joan didn't detect it.
+
+George Tankerville submitted with open resignation to the embrace of his
+sister.
+
+"I suppose I've got to stand for this," he observed with philosophy. "Do
+you mean me to infer that you're humble and contrite?"
+
+"Not in the least," Venetia retorted defiantly.
+
+"Oh, very well," said he. "That being the case, I extend to you my
+belated blessing. How did you leave things on the other side?"
+
+"Much as usual--and by steamer."
+
+"When'd you get back?"
+
+"Last Monday...."
+
+Venetia became openly aware of Joan. Matthias interposed.
+
+"Miss Thursday--my fiancee. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge."
+
+[Illustration: "Miss Thursday--my fiancee. Joan, this is Mrs.
+Marbridge."]
+
+"Truly?"
+
+The shock told; she had been playing off very deftly a painful
+contretemps, but this announcement dashed Venetia. Momentarily she
+hesitated, scarlet lips apart but inarticulate, widening eyes of violet
+a shade darker, with--if possible--a pallor deeper even than that most
+striking attribute of her beauty. But the check could have been apparent
+only to the initiate or to a strongly intuitive intelligence.
+
+"I _am_ so glad!" she cried with sincerity--"so glad for both of you!"
+Impulsively she caught Joan's hands, drew the girl to her--"May I, my
+dear? We're to be great friends, you know!"--kissed her; then swinging
+round--"Vincent!" she called gaily. "Such news! Do come here
+immediately!"
+
+Marbridge showed a face strongly marked with the enquiry of his heavy,
+lifting eyebrows. His glance comprehended Joan with kindling interest.
+With Helena he approached, his heavy body rolling a little in spite of
+the elasticity of his stride.
+
+"My husband, Vincent Marbridge. Vincent, this is Joan Thursday. She's
+engaged to Jack Matthias. Isn't it wonderful? And aren't they both
+fortunate? And _isn't_ she pretty?"
+
+Marbridge's unctuous and intimate smile accompanied his reply: "Yes to
+all--twice yes to your last question." His warm strong hand closed
+over Joan's diffident fingers. "My heartiest congratulations to you
+both.... Ah, Mr. Matthias, how are you? So we meet again--at
+Tanglewood!"
+
+The hands of the two men touched and fell apart. But this clue was
+wasted upon Joan, who stood silently abashed and sullen with
+consciousness of her own inept awkwardness as contrasted with the
+amiable aplomb of these people with whom good breeding was a cult, the
+practice of the art of self-possession its primary rite.
+
+To Marbridge she stammered: "Pleased to meet you." And immediately felt
+her face burning and as if she could faint for sheer mortification.
+
+It was Helena who, pitiful for the gaucherie of the girl, saved the
+situation by raising the issue of tea. Venetia demurred: they were, it
+seemed, visiting friends in Southampton; had driven over only for a call
+of a moment; would be late for dinner if they tarried. But Marbridge
+settled the question by dropping solidly into a chair and announcing
+that there he was and there would stay pending either tea or a highball.
+Venetia, unable to disguise a flush of resentment, showed her back to
+her husband and devoted herself to George Tankerville. As Helena
+summoned a servant, Marbridge hitched his chair closer and inaugurated a
+rather one-sided conversation with Joan.
+
+Again in her basket-chair, knees daintily crossed in imitation of a pose
+mentally photographed from the stage, Joan experienced renewed
+consciousness of her attractions, and with it regained a little ease. It
+could scarcely be otherwise under the wondering regard that Marbridge
+bent upon the girl. His admiration was unconcealed, and to Joan at first
+the sweeter since it was diverted from his wife.
+
+But insensibly the situation began to affect her less pleasantly. She
+grew sensitive to an effect of strain in the atmosphere, made up in
+equal parts of Venetia's indignation, Matthias's annoyance, Helena's
+suave but quite fruitless efforts to interpose and distract the interest
+of Marbridge to herself.
+
+And there was a confusing and disturbing element of familiar and
+personal significance in the man's undeviating and brazen stare. Truly,
+in the older sense of the word, impudent, it hinted an understanding so
+complete as to be almost shameful--worse, it educed a real if unspoken
+response from the girl; unwillingly she admitted the existence of a bond
+of sympathy between herself and this man whom she had never seen before,
+a feeling more true and intimate than that which her association with
+Matthias had inspired, than any she had ever known. For a time she
+fought against this impression, in a bewilderment that evoked from her
+only witless and hesitant responses. Then suddenly encountering his
+eyes--actually against her will--she was stricken dumb and breathless by
+comprehension of their intent; in effect, they stripped her: bodily and
+mentally they made her naked to this man.
+
+Nor was this the sum: for the merest fraction of a moment Joan felt
+herself answering: in her bosom a strange oppression, strangely
+troubling and sweet; in her own eyes a kindling light, sympathetic,
+shameless....
+
+Instantly quenched: distress and affronted modesty incarnadined her
+face, veiled her eyes. Almost unconsciously she turned away.
+Indistinctly she saw the white face of Venetia, set and hard, with a
+scornful lip for her husband. Shifting to view the object of his
+admiration, it showed no change of expression. Her voice cut incisively
+through his lazy, drawling accents.
+
+"This is quite impossible," she said coolly, consulting a jewelled watch
+on her slender, gloved wrist. "If we stay another instant we shall be
+unforgivably late. But"--to Helena--"thank you so much, dear, for
+wanting us to stop.... Vincent, I am going."
+
+She moved slowly toward the house. Marbridge kept his seat.
+
+"Nonsense!" he expostulated. "Plenty of time. Tea's just coming. And I'm
+dying the death of a dog with thirst."
+
+"I am going," Venetia repeated in an uninflected voice.
+
+His dark face darkening, Marbridge glanced to Helena, to Tankerville,
+ignored Matthias, looked back to Joan: gaining as little encouragement
+from her, as from his host and hostess, since she dared not again meet
+his gaze. With a movement of his heavy shoulders and a chuckle he heaved
+himself out of the chair.
+
+"Oh, _all_ right," he called indulgently to his wife: "coming!... All
+women are crazy, anyhow," he confided to the others. "You've got to let
+'em have their own way. So--good night. Hope I'll have the pleasure of
+seeing you-all soon again."
+
+He extended a hand to Helena--who gave him cool fingertips--and paused
+before Joan.
+
+"Au revoir, Miss Thursday...."
+
+The girl was unconscious of the proffered hand. Her eyes averted, she
+murmured a good night.
+
+His smile broadening, Marbridge turned to Matthias; received from him a
+look that was as good as a kick, gave back a grin of graceless
+effrontery; and swinging, linked arms with Tankerville.
+
+"Come along, George--take a look at our new car. She's a wonder!"
+
+Civilly playing his part, Tankerville submitted.
+
+They disappeared--Marbridge gabbling cheerfully--into the house. Joan
+uncurtained her eyes. Her lover, with a face of thunder, was looking
+toward his aunt; who made a slight negative motion of her head, with an
+admonitory flutter of one hand: a servant with a tray was drawing near.
+Matthias answered her with a gesture of controlled wrath; turned to the
+balustrade; stood there staring straight into the angry sunset glow.
+
+On the drive a motor snorted, snored, drew away with a whine
+diminuendo....
+
+Throughout the remainder of Joan's visit the incident was not once
+referred to. But it had had its curious and disturbing effect upon the
+girl. She remembered it all very vividly, reviewed it with insatiable
+inquisitiveness. From this she derived a feeling, which she resented, of
+having witnessed a scene fraught with significance indecipherable to
+her.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+A little after the hour of four on Monday afternoon, Joan emerged from
+that riotous meander of hideous wooden galleries, ramps, passages,
+sheds, and vast echoing caves of gloom, which in those days encumbered
+the site of the new Grand Central Station; and with a long breath of
+relief turned westward on Forty-second Street.
+
+She walked slowly and without definite aim; yet she had never felt so
+keenly the quickness and joy of being alive. Her idle fancy invested
+with a true if formless symbolism her escape from that amazing labyrinth
+of shadows to the clear, sweet sunlight of the clamorous, busy street:
+as if she had eluded and cast off convention and formality, the
+constraint of a settled future and the strain of aspirations to be other
+than as Nature had fashioned her; and was free again of the enchanting
+ease of being simply herself.
+
+She had within five minutes said good-bye to her betrothed; her lips
+were yet warm with their parting kiss, her eyes still moist--and so, the
+more bewitching--with the facile tears through which she had watched his
+train draw out of the station.
+
+He was not to be back within a month; more probably his return would not
+occur within five or six weeks....
+
+She was contrarily possessed by two opposed humours: one approximately
+saturated with an exquisite melancholy and a sense of heroic emotions
+adequately experienced; and the other, of freedom untrammelled by
+restrictions of any sort.
+
+Overruling her faint-hearted protests, Matthias had left her the sum of
+six weeks' wages (or allowance) in advance, by way of provision against
+emergencies and delays. Joan had this magnificent sum of one hundred and
+fifty dollars intact in her pocket-book: more money than she had
+ever--at least, seriously--dreamed of possessing at one time.
+Temporarily it represented to her imagination, level-headed as she
+ordinarily was in consideration of money matters, wealth almost
+incalculable. It thrilled her tremendously to contemplate this tangible
+proof of her lover's unquestioning trust and generosity--and at the same
+time it irked her with gnawing doubts of her worthiness. For continually
+the knowledge skulked in the dark backwards of her consciousness that
+only lack of opportunity restrained her from active disloyalty to his
+prejudices.
+
+Though she had disguised it from him, and even in some measure from
+herself, she knew that love had not quenched but had quickened her
+ambition for the stage. To be desired by one man only stimulated her
+longing to be desired inaccessibly--beyond the impregnable barrier of
+footlights--by all men.
+
+She wondered how far her strength and constancy would serve her to
+resist, were opportunity to come her way during the absence of Matthias,
+when distance should have sapped the strength of his influence and
+loneliness had lent an accent to her need for occupation and
+companionship.
+
+Furtively she closed her left hand, until she could feel the diamond in
+his ring, turned in toward the palm beneath her glove: as if it were a
+talisman....
+
+Turning north on Broadway, she breasted the full current of the late
+afternoon promenade. Where the subway kiosks encroach upon the sidewalk,
+in front of what had been Shanley's restaurant, there was a distinct
+congestion of footfarers: Joan was obliged to move more slowly, crowded
+from behind, close on the heels of those in front, elbowed by
+pedestrians bound the opposite way.
+
+Abruptly she caught sight of Wilbrow, approaching. Almost at the same
+instant he saw her. Momentarily his eyes clouded with an effort of
+memory; then he placed her, his lantern cheeks widened with an ironic
+grin, and he lifted his hat with elaborate ceremony. Joan flushed
+slightly, smiled brightly in response, and tossed her head with a
+spirited suggestion of good-humoured tolerance. In another moment,
+wondering why she had done this, she realized that it had been due
+simply to a subconscious valuation of the man's interest, in the event
+she should ever again decide to try her luck on the stage....
+
+Crossing at Forty-third Street, she turned again north on the sidewalk
+in front of a building given over almost entirely to the offices of
+theatrical businesses: a sidewalk darkened the year round with groups of
+actors sociably "resting."
+
+One of these groups, as Joan drew near, broke up on the urgent
+suggestion of a special policeman detailed for the purpose; and a member
+of it, swinging with a laugh to "move on," stopped short to escape
+collision with the girl. Then he laughed again in the friendliest
+fashion, and offered his hand. She looked up into the face of Charlie
+Quard.
+
+"Well!" he cried heartily, "I always was a lucky guy! I've been thinking
+about you all day--wondering what'd become of you."
+
+Joan smiled and shook hands. "I guess it wasn't worrying you much," she
+retorted. "If you'd wanted to, you knew where to find me."
+
+Quard needed no more encouragement. Promptly ranging alongside and
+falling into step: "That's just it," he argued; "I knew where to _start_
+looking for you, all right, but I was kinda afraid you might be in when
+I called, and didn't know whether you'd snap my head off or not."
+
+"That's likely," the girl countered amiably. There was a distinctly
+agreeable sensation to be derived from this association with one upon
+whom she could impose her private estimate of herself. "What made you
+want to see me all of a sudden?"
+
+"Then you ain't sore on me?"
+
+"What for?" she evaded transparently.
+
+"Oh, you know what for, all right. I'm sore enough on myself not to want
+to talk about it."
+
+"Well," said Joan indifferently, "I guess it's none of my business if
+you're such a rummy you can't hold onto a job. Only, of course, I don't
+have to stand for that sort of foolishness more than once."
+
+"You said something then, all right," Quard approved humbly. "I can't
+blame you for feeling that way about it. But le' me tell you an honest
+fact: I ain't touched a drop of anything stronger'n buttermilk since
+that night--so help me Klaw and Erlanger!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, I guess I must've took a tumble to myself. Anyhow, when I got
+over the katzenjammer thing, I thought it all out and made up my mind it
+was up to me to behave for the balance of my sentence."
+
+"Is that so?" Joan asked, pausing definitely on the corner at
+Forty-fifth Street.
+
+"I know I can," Quard asserted convincingly. "Believe me, Joan, I hate
+the stuff! I'd as lief stake myself to a slug of sulphuric. No, on the
+level: I'm booked for the water-tank route for the rest of my natural."
+
+"I'm awful glad," observed the girl maliciously. "It's so nice for your
+mother. Well ... g'dafternoon!"
+
+"Hold on!" Quard protested. "I'll walk down to the house with you."
+
+"No, you won't," she returned promptly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't want you to."
+
+"Oh, you don't!" he murmured blankly, pulling down the corners of his
+wide, expressive mouth.
+
+"_So_ sorry," she parroted. "G'dafternoon."
+
+She was several steps away before the man recovered from this rebuff.
+Then, with a face of set intent, he gave chase.
+
+"I say--Miss Thursday!"
+
+Joan accepted with a secret smile this sudden change from the off-hand
+manner of his first addresses. "Miss Thursday, eh?" she said to herself;
+but halted none the less.
+
+"Well?"--with self-evident surprise.
+
+"Look here--_lis'n_!" insisted Quard: "I got to have a talk with you."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Oh, this is no good place. When can I see you?"
+
+"Is it quite necessary, Mister Quard?"
+
+He wagged an earnest head at her: "That's right. What are you doing
+tonight?"
+
+"Oh, I got an engagement with some friends of mine," she said with
+spontaneous mendacity.
+
+"Well, then, when?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know; you might as well take your chances--call round
+sometime--in two or three days."
+
+"And I got to be satisfied with that?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Quard shook his head helplessly: "I'd like to know what's come over
+you...."
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" The temptation to lead him on was
+irresistible.
+
+"You've changed a lot since I seen you last. What you been doing to
+yourself?"
+
+She bridled.... "Maybe it's you that is changed. Maybe you're seeing
+things different, now you're sober."
+
+Quard hesitated an instant, his features drawn with anger. Then
+abruptly: "_Plenty!_" he ejaculated, and as if afraid to trust himself
+further, turned and marched back to Broadway.
+
+Smiling quietly, Joan made her way home. On the whole, the encounter had
+not been unenjoyable. She had not only held her own, she had
+condescended with striking success.
+
+Later, she repented a little of her harshness; she had been hardly kind,
+if Quard were sincere in his protestations of reform; and a little
+tolerance might have earned her an evening less lonely.
+
+It was spent, after a dinner which proved unexpectedly desolate, lacking
+the companionship to which of late she had grown accustomed, in the
+back-parlour (to which Matthias had left her the key) and in
+discontented efforts to fix her interest on a novel. Before ten o'clock
+she gave it up, and climbed to her room, to lie awake for hours in mute
+rebellion against her friendless estate. She might, it was true, have
+kept a promise made to her lover just before his departure, to look up
+and renew relations with her family. But the more she contemplated this
+step, the less it attracted her inclination. There'd be another row with
+the Old Man, most likely and ... anyway, there was plenty of time.
+Besides, they'd want money, if they found out she had any; and while a
+hundred and fifty was a lot, there was no telling when she'd get more.
+
+Eventually she fell asleep while reviewing her meeting with Quard and
+turning over her hazy impression that it wouldn't hurt her to be less
+stand-offish with him, next time.
+
+In the morning she settled herself at her typewriter in a fine spirit of
+determination to keep her mind occupied with the work in hand--and
+incidentally to rid her conscience of it--until the feeling of
+loneliness wore off or at least till its reality became a trifle less
+unpalatable through familiarity. But not two pages had been typed before
+the call of the sunlit September day proved seductive beyond her will to
+resist; a much-advertised "_Promenade des Toilettes_" at a department
+store claimed the rest of the morning; and after lunch she "took in" a
+moving-picture show.
+
+But again her evening was forlorn. Theatres allured, but she hardly
+liked to go alone. In desperation she cast back mentally to the friends
+of the old days, and after rejecting her erstwhile confidant and
+co-labourer at the stocking counter, Gussie Innes (who lived too near
+home, and would tell her father, who would pass it along to the Old Man)
+Joan settled upon one or two girls, resident in distant Harlem, to be
+hunted up, treated to a musical comedy, and regaled with a narrative of
+the rise and adventures of Joan Thursday until their lives were poisoned
+with corrosive envy.
+
+But the first mail of Wednesday furnished distractions so potent that
+this project was postponed indefinitely and passed out of Joan's mind,
+never to be revived. It brought her two letters: manufacturing an event
+of magnitude in the life of a young woman who had yet to write her first
+letter and who had thus far received only a few scrappy and incoherent
+notes from boyish admirers.
+
+There was one from Matthias, posted in Chicago the preceding morning.
+Her first love letter, it was scanned hurriedly, even impatiently, and
+put aside in favour of a fat manila envelope whose contents consisted of
+a type-written manuscript and a note in scrawling long-hand:
+
+     "Friend Joan--
+
+     "I hope you are not still mad with me and sorry I got hot under
+     the collar Monday only I thought you might of been a little
+     easy on me because, I am strictly on the Water Wagon and this
+     time mean it--
+
+     "What I wanted to talk to you about was a Sketch I got hold of
+     a while ago you know you picked the other one only that was
+     punk stuff compared with this I think--Please read this and
+     tell me what you think about it if you like it, I think I will
+     try it out soon, if it's any good it's a cinch to cop out
+     Orpheum time for a Classy Act like this--
+
+     "Your true friend--
+
+     "Chas. H. Quard.
+
+     "P.S. of course I mean I want you to act the Womans part if you
+     like the Sketch, what do you think!"
+
+It was afternoon before she realized the flight of time.
+
+She turned back to Quard's note, a trifle disappointed that he hadn't
+suggested an hour when he would call for her answer.
+
+Adjusting her hat before the mirror, preparatory to going out to lunch,
+she realized without a qualm that there was no longer any question of
+her intention as between Quard's offer and the wishes of Matthias.
+Whatever the consequences she meant to play that part--but on terms and
+conditions to be dictated by herself.
+
+But in the act of drawing on her gloves, she checked, and for a long
+time stood fascinated by the beauty and lustre of the diamond on her
+left hand. A stone of no impressive proportions, but one of the purest
+and most excellent water, of an exceptional brilliance, it meant a great
+deal to one whose ingrained passion for such adornments had, prior to
+her love affair, perforce been satisfied with the cheap, trashy, and
+perishable stuff designated in those days by the term "French novelty
+jewellery." Subconsciously she was sensitive to a feeling of kinship
+with the beautiful, unimpressionable, enigmatic stone: as though their
+natures were somehow complementary. Actively she knew that she would
+forfeit much rather than part with that perfect and entrancing jewel.
+With nothing else in nature, animate or inert, would it have been
+possible for her to spend long hours of silent, worshipful, sympathetic
+communion.
+
+If she were to persist in the pursuit of her romantic ambition, it might
+bring about a pass of cleavage between herself and her lover; it was
+more than likely, indeed; she knew the prejudices of Matthias to be as
+strong as his love, and this last no stronger than his sense of honour.
+Tacitly if not explicitly, she had given him to understand that she
+would respect his objections to a stage career. He would not forgive
+unfaith--least of all, such clandestine and stealthy disloyalty as she
+then contemplated.
+
+The breaking of their engagement would involve the return of the
+diamond.
+
+Intolerable thought!
+
+And yet....
+
+Staring wide-eyed into her mirror, she saw herself irresolute at
+crossroads: on the one hand Matthias, marriage, the diamond, a secure
+and honourable future; on the other, Quard, "The Lie," disloyalty, the
+loss of the diamond, uncertainty--a vista of grim, appalling hazards....
+
+And yet--she had four weeks, probably six, perhaps eight, in which to
+weigh the possibilities of this tremendous and seductive adventure. "The
+Lie" _might_ fail....
+
+In that case, Matthias need never know.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+As she drew near to Longacre Square, Joan saw Quard detach himself from
+an area-railing against which he had been lounging across the street,
+and move over to intercept her. Since she had anticipated that he might
+waylay her in some such manner, if he didn't call at the house, she was
+not surprised by this manoeuvre; but she was a little surprised and
+not a little amused (if quite privately) to see him throw away his cigar
+as they drew together, and lift his hat. Such attentions from him were
+distinctly novel--and gratifying.
+
+Complacent, and at the same time excited beneath a placid demeanour, she
+greeted him with a cool little nod.
+
+He grinned broadly but nervously.
+
+"I was wondering if you wouldn't happen along soon...."
+
+"Is that so?" Joan returned blandly.
+
+"Mind my walking with you?"
+
+"No-o," the girl drawled.
+
+"Of course, if I'm in the way--"
+
+"Oh, no--I'm just looking for some place to lunch."
+
+"Well, I'm hungry myself. Why not let me set up the eats?"
+
+"All right," she assented indifferently.
+
+"Fine! Where'll we go?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know...."
+
+"Anywheres you say."
+
+"Well, Rector's is right handy."
+
+"That suits me," Quard affirmed promptly.
+
+But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.
+
+"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to
+the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.
+
+"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.
+
+"Wha'd you think of the piece?"
+
+"Oh ... the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan
+added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time--just glanced
+through it, you know--"
+
+"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"
+
+"Oh, yes; I thought it _quite_ interesting," said the girl
+patronizingly.
+
+She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard
+withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.
+
+In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the
+restaurant.
+
+It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a
+table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of
+waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and
+bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl
+and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.
+
+"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but
+vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the
+menu--"please order something very simple. I hardly _ever_ have much
+appetite so soon after breakfast."
+
+"I--ah--how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his
+smoothened brow.
+
+"I thought you--"
+
+"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."
+
+"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."
+
+And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she
+removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the
+table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking
+about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means
+have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.
+
+Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in
+naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.
+
+The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into
+Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.
+
+"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded
+abruptly.
+
+"What_ever_ do you mean?" drawled Joan.
+
+"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."
+
+"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.
+
+"Meaning--mind my own business," he inferred morosely.
+
+"Well, now, what do you think?"
+
+"I--well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.
+
+Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I
+guess I can take care of myself."
+
+"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse _me_."
+
+"That's all right--and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have
+come into some money--not much." Her gaze was as clear and
+straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic
+well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."
+
+"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to
+brass tacks: how about that sketch?"
+
+"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"
+
+He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition
+strikes you. That's what I want to know."
+
+"You haven't made me any proposition."
+
+"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"
+
+"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."
+
+"Ain't that enough?"
+
+She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular
+business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better,
+and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"
+
+He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had
+had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars...."
+
+"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.
+
+"But look here: you're only a beginner--"
+
+"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"
+
+"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but--"
+
+"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"
+
+"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"
+
+"Fifty--and transportation on the road."
+
+He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner,
+bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do
+anything in the world for you--"
+
+"Fifty and transportation!"
+
+"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's
+option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five
+a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the
+cast, outsida you and me. _David_'ll want fifty at least, and the
+_Thief_ thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and
+thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all
+that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can
+hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission
+for booking us, leaving only seventy for _my_ bit--and I'm risking all I
+got salted away to try it out."
+
+He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.
+
+"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough
+actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good
+at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."
+
+This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily
+silenced.
+
+"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing
+mendacity--"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can
+get any figure I want to ask, in reason."
+
+Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.
+
+"He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess
+you heard about that."
+
+The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast....
+Look here: make it--"
+
+"Fifty or nothing."
+
+After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All
+right."
+
+At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than
+elegance the food before him.
+
+Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her
+tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect
+of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen
+rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to
+her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to
+her will....
+
+There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of
+gratulate reflection.
+
+From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had
+finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance.
+Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned,
+and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited
+suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy,
+ambitions achieved through adulation of men....
+
+"Why, Miss Thursday, how _do_ you do?"
+
+Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her
+chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr.
+Marbridge!"
+
+Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance
+measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's
+hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and
+hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday,
+and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome
+eyes ogled her effectively.
+
+"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist
+stopping to speak. How are you?"
+
+"I"--Joan stammered--"I'm very well, thanks."
+
+"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as
+happy--more charming than both! You are--eh--not lonesome?"
+
+His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard,
+exposed the innuendo.
+
+"Oh, no, I--"
+
+"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to
+call on you. Where do you put up in town?"
+
+Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address--knowing in her heart that
+the truth was not in this man.
+
+"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?"
+She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia.
+Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So
+glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...."
+
+Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her
+with odd intentness.
+
+"Friend of yours?" he demanded with a sneer and a backward jerk of his
+head.
+
+"Yes--the husband of a friend of mine," she replied quickly.
+
+The actor digested this information grimly. "Swell friends you've got,
+all right!" he commented, not without a touch of envy. "Now I begin to
+understand.... What's Marbridge going to do for you?"
+
+"Do for me? Mr. Marbridge? Why, nothing," she answered blankly, in a
+breath. "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"That's all right then. But take a friendly tip, and give him the office
+the minute he begins to talk about influencing managers to star you.
+I've heard about that guy, and he's a rotten proposition--grab it from
+me. He's Arlington's silent partner--and you know what kind of a rep.
+Arlington's got."
+
+"No, I don't," Joan challenged him sharply. "What's more, I don't care.
+Anyway, I don't see what Arlington's reputation's got to do with my
+being a friend of Marbridge's wife."
+
+"No more do I," grumbled Quard--"not if Marbridge believes you are."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Before leaving the restaurant Quard outlined in detail his plans for
+producing "The Lie" for vaudeville presentation. He named the other two
+actors, spoke of hiring a negro dresser who would double as the servant,
+and indicated his intention of engaging a producing director of the
+first calibre who, he said, thought highly of the play.
+
+Joan was a little overcome. Peter Gloucester was a producer quite worthy
+to be named in the same breath with Wilbrow.
+
+"Well, he believes in the piece," Quard explained--"the same as me--and
+he says he'll give us ten afternoon rehearsals for a hundred and fifty.
+It'll be worth it."
+
+"You must think so," said Joan, a little awed.
+
+"You bet I do. This means a lot to me, anyway; I gotta do something to
+keep my head above out-of-town stock--or the movies again." Mentioning
+his recent experience, he shuddered realistically. "But if this piece
+ain't actor-proof, I'm no judge. Gloucester says so, too. And to have
+him tune it up into a reg'lar classy act will be worth ... something, I
+tell you!"
+
+His hesitation was due to the fact that Quard was secretly counting on
+the representations of his agent, Boskerk, who insisted that, properly
+presented, the sketch would earn at least four hundred and fifty dollars
+a week, instead of the sum he had named to Joan.
+
+But Joan overlooked this lamely retrieved slip; she was all preoccupied
+with a glowing sense of gratification growing out of this endorsement of
+her first surmise, that Quard had only waited on her consent to go
+ahead. The thought was unctuous flattery to her conceit, inflating it
+tremendously even in the face of a shrewd suspicion that it was
+sentiment more than an exaggerated conception of her ability that made
+Quard reckon her cooperation indispensable. That the man was infatuated
+with her she was quite convinced; on the other hand, she didn't believe
+him sufficiently blinded by passion to imperil the success of his
+venture by giving her the chief part unless he believed she could play
+it--"actor-proof" or no.
+
+"Lis'n, girlie," Quard pursued after one meditative moment: "could you
+begin rehearsing tomorrow?"
+
+"Of course I could."
+
+"Because if we don't, we lose three days...."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well," Quard explained with a sheepish grin, "I guess I ain't any more
+nutty than the next actor you'll meet on Broadway; but I'd as lief slip
+my bank-roll to the waiter for a tip as start anything on a Friday. And
+Sat'day and Sunday's busy days for the Jinx, too. I got too much up to
+wish anything mean onto this piece!..."
+
+At his suggestion they left the dining-room by the hotel entrance on
+Forty-fourth Street, and Joan waited in the lobby while Quard telephoned
+Gloucester.
+
+"It's all right," he announced, beaming as he emerged from the
+booth--"Pete's ready to commence tomorrow aft'noon. Now I got to hustle
+and round up the rest of the bunch."
+
+"Where will it be?" asked Joan.
+
+"Don't know yet--I'll 'phone you where in the morning, at the
+latest...."
+
+Hastening home, Joan plunged at once into the study of her part, with
+the greater readiness since the occupation was anodynous to an uneasy
+conscience. Though she was always what is known as a "quick study," this
+new role was a difficult one; by far the longest, and unquestionably the
+most important, it comprised fully half the total number of "sides" in
+the manuscript--nearly half as many again as were contained in Quard's
+part, the next in order of significance. And her application, that
+first day, was hindered by a perplexing interruption in the early
+evening, when a box was delivered to her containing a dozen magnificent
+red roses and nothing else--neither a card nor a line of identification.
+At first inclining to credit Quard with this extravagance, on second
+thought she remembered Marbridge, whom she felt instinctively to be
+quite capable of such overtures. And her mind was largely distracted for
+the rest of the night by empty guesswork and futile attempts to decide
+whether or not she ought to run the risk of thanking Quard when next
+they met.
+
+Eventually she made up her mind to let the sender furnish the clue; and
+inasmuch as Quard never said anything which the most ready imagination
+could interpret as a reference to the offering, she came in time to feel
+tolerably satisfied that the anonymous donor must have been Marbridge.
+
+It was to be long, however, before this surmise could be confirmed;
+although, on getting home Saturday night, after a hard day's work and a
+late dinner with Quard, she was informed that a gentleman had called and
+asked for her during the afternoon, but had left neither word nor card.
+The same thing happened on Monday, under like circumstances; after which
+the attempts to see her were discontinued.
+
+And then, Joan noticed that Venetia didn't call....
+
+Interim, the task of whipping "The Lie" into shape went on so steadily
+that she had little leisure to waste wondering about Marbridge or
+feeling flattered by his interest; and she even ceased, except at odd
+moments, to regard Quard as a man and therefore a possible conquest:
+Gloucester drilled the actors without mercy and spared himself as
+little.
+
+A pursy body, with the childish, moon-like face of a born comedian, he
+applied himself to the work with the extravagant solemnity of a minor
+poet mouthing his own perfumed verses at a literary dinner. During
+rehearsals his manner was immitigably austere, aloof, inspired; but
+however precious his methods, he achieved brilliant effects in the
+despised medium of clap-trap melodrama; and under his tutelage even Joan
+achieved surprising feats of emotional portrayal--and this, singularly
+enough, without learning to despise him as she had despised Wilbrow.
+
+She learned what either Wilbrow had lacked the time to teach her or she
+had then been unable to learn: how to assume the requisite mood the
+moment she left the wings and drop it like a mask as soon as she came
+off-stage again. She was soon able to hate and fear Quard with every
+fibre of her being throughout their long scenes of dialogue, and to chat
+with him in unfeigned amiability both before and after. And her liking
+and admiration for the man deepened daily, as Gloucester deftly moulded
+Quard's plastic talents into a rude but powerful impersonation.
+
+Partly because of the brevity of the little play, which enabled them to
+run through it several times of an afternoon as soon as they were
+familiar with its lines, and partly because Gloucester was hard up and
+in a hurry to collect his fee, the company was prepared well within the
+designated ten days. And through the agent Boskerk's influence, they
+were favoured with an early opportunity to present it at a "professional
+try-out" matinee, a weekly feature of one of the better-class
+moving-picture and vaudeville houses.
+
+The audiences attracted by such trial performances are the most singular
+imaginable in composition, and of a temper the most difficult--with the
+possible exceptions of a London first-night house bent on booing
+whatever the merits of the offering, and a body of jaded New York
+dramatic critics and apathetic theatre loungers assembled for the fourth
+consecutive first-night of a week toward the end of a long, hard winter.
+
+On Tuesday afternoons and nights (as a rule) they foregather in the
+"combination houses" of New York, animated (save for a sprinkling of
+agents and bored managers) by a single motive, the desire to
+laugh--preferably at, but at a pinch with, those attempting to win their
+approbation. Their sense of humour has been nourished on the sidewalk
+banana-peel, the slap-stick and the patch on the southern exposure of
+the tramp's trousers; and while they will accept with the silence of
+curiosity, if not of respect, and at times even applaud, straight
+"legitimate" acting, the slightest slip or evidence of hesitation on the
+part of an actor, the faintest suggestion of bathos in a line, or even
+the tardy adjustment of one of the wings after the rise of the curtain,
+will be hailed with shrieks of delight and derision.
+
+Before an assemblage of this character, "The Distinguished Romantic
+Actor, Chas. H. Quard & Company," presented "The Lie" as the fifth
+number of a matinee bill.
+
+Waiting in the wings and watching the stage-hands shift and manoeuvre
+flats and ceiling, and arrange furniture and properties at the direction
+of the _David_ (who doubled that role with the duties of stage manager)
+Joan listened to the dreadful wails of a voiceless vocalist who, on the
+other side of the scene-drop, was rendering with sublime disregard for
+key and tempo a ballad of sickening sentimentality; heard the feet of
+the audience, stamping in time, drown out both song and accompaniment,
+the subsequent roar of laughter and hand-clapping that signalized the
+retirement of the singer, and experienced, for the first and only time,
+premonitory symptoms of stage-fright.
+
+Through what seemed a wait of several minutes after the disappearance of
+the despised singer--who, half-reeling, half-running, with tears
+furrowing her enameled cheeks, brushed past Joan on her way to her
+dressing-room--the applause continued, rising, falling, dying out and
+reviving in vain attempts to lure the object of its ridicule back to the
+footlights.
+
+At a word from _David_, the stage-hands vanished, and at his nod Joan
+moved on. _David_ seated himself and opened a newspaper while the girl,
+trembling, took up a position near a property fireplace, with an
+after-dinner coffee-cup and saucer in her hands. She was looking her
+best in the evening frock purchased for the week-end at Tanglewood, and
+was in full command of her lines and business; but there was a lump in
+her throat and a sickly sensation in the pit of her stomach as the cheap
+orchestra took up the refrain of a time-worn melody which had been
+pressed into service as curtain music.
+
+Peering over the edge of his newspaper, _David_ spoke final words of
+kindly counsel: "Don't you mind, whatever happens. Make believe they
+ain't no audience."
+
+The house was quiet, now, and the music very clear.
+
+Kneeling within the recess of the fireplace, almost near enough to touch
+her hand, Quard begged plaintively: "For the love of Gawd, don't let
+their kidding queer you, girlie. Remember, Boskerk promised he'd have
+Martin Beck out front!"
+
+Joan nodded--gulped.
+
+The curtain rose. Through the glare of footlights the auditorium was
+vaguely revealed, a vast and gloomy amphitheatre dotted with an
+infinite, orderly multitude of round pink spots, and still with the hush
+of expectancy. Joan thought of a dotted lavender foulard she had
+recently coveted in a department-store; and the ridiculous incongruity
+of this comparison in some measure restored her assurance. Turning her
+head slowly, she looked at _David_, who was properly intent on his
+newspaper, smiled, and parted her lips to speak the opening line.
+
+From the gallery floated a shrill, boyish squeal:
+
+"_Gee! pipe the pippin!_"
+
+The audience rocked and roared. Joan's heart sank; then, suddenly,
+resentment kindled her temper; she grew coldly, furiously angry, and
+forgot entirely to be afraid of that stupid, bawling beast, the public.
+But her faint, charming smile never varied a fraction. Turning, she
+spoke the first line, heedless of the uproar; and as if magically it was
+stilled. A feeling of contempt and superiority further encouraged her.
+She repeated the words, which were of no special value to the
+plot--merely a trick of construction to postpone the ringing of a
+telephone-bell long enough to let the audience grasp the relationship of
+those upon the stage.
+
+In a respectful silence, _David_ looked up from the newspaper and
+replied. The telephone-bell rang. Turning to the instrument on the table
+beside him, he lifted the receiver to his ear and--the plot began to
+unfold.
+
+_David_, the husband, in his suburban home, was being called to New York
+on unexpected business with a client booked to sail for Europe in the
+morning. It was night; reluctant to go, he none the less yielded to
+pressure, rang for the coachman and ordered a carriage, in the face of
+the protests of Joan, his wife. She was to be left alone in the house
+with their little son; for the maids were out and the coachman slept
+beyond call in the stable. Reassuring her with his promise to return at
+the earliest possible moment, _David_ departed....
+
+A brief and affectionate passage between the two was rendered inaudible
+by derisive laughter; but this was almost instantly silenced when Quard
+showed himself at a window in the back of the set, peering furtively in
+at the lonely woman in the unguarded house.
+
+An excellent actor when properly guided, and fresh from the hands of one
+of the most astute producers connected with the American stage, without
+uttering a word Quard contrived to infuse into this first brief
+appearance at the window a sense of criminal and sinister mystery which
+instantly enchained the imagination of the audience.
+
+In the tense silence of the house, the nervous gasp of a high-strung
+woman was distinctly audible. But it passed without eliciting a single
+hoot.
+
+Darting round to the door, Quard entered and addressed Joan. She cried
+out strongly in mingled terror and horror. A few crisp and rapid lines
+uncovered the argument: Quard was the woman's first husband, who had
+married and deserted her all in a week and whom she had been given every
+reason to believe dead. Ashamed of that mad union with a dissolute
+blackguard, she had concealed it from the husband of her second
+marriage. Now she was confronted with the knowledge that her innocently
+bigamous position would be made public unless she submitted to
+blackmail. Promising in her torment to give the man all he demanded, she
+induced him to leave before the return of the servant.... Alone she
+realized suddenly the illegitimacy of the child of her second marriage.
+
+At this, a scene-curtain fell, and a notice was flashed upon it
+informing the audience that the short moment it remained down indicated
+a lapse of five hours in the action.
+
+Already the interest of the audience had become so fixed that it
+applauded with sincerity.
+
+Hurrying to her dressing-room, Joan stepped out of her pretty frock and
+into a negligee. The removal of a few pins permitted her hair to fall
+down her back, a long, thick, plaited rope of bronze. Then grasping a
+revolver loaded with blanks, she ran back to the second left entrance.
+
+The scene-curtain was already up; on the stage, in semi-darkness, the
+_Thief_, having broken into the house by way of the back window, was
+attempting to force the combination of a small safe behind a screen....
+Quard, kneeling to peer through the fireplace, lifted a signalling hand
+to Joan. _David_ stamped loudly, off-stage. In alarm, the _Thief_ hid
+himself behind the screen; and Joan came on, with a line of soliloquy to
+indicate that she had been awakened by the noise of the burglar's
+entrance. As she turned up the lights by means of a wall-switch, Quard
+re-entered by way of the window, in a well-simulated state of
+semi-drunkenness which had ostensibly roused his distrust and brought
+him back to watch and threaten his wife anew....
+
+Here happened one of those terrible blunders which seem almost
+inseparable from first performances.
+
+As Joan wheeled round to recognize Quard, her hand nervously contracted
+on the revolver, and it exploded point-blank at Quard's chest. Had it
+been loaded he must inevitably have been killed then and there; and
+when, pulling himself together, Quard managed to go on with the
+business--springing upon Joan and wresting the weapon from her--the
+audience betrayed exquisite appreciation of the impossibility, and
+shrieked and whooped with joy unrestrained.
+
+It was some minutes before they were able audibly to take up the
+dialogue. And this was fortunate, in a way; for the shock of that
+unexpected explosion had caused Quard to "dry up"--as the slang of the
+stage terms nervous dryness of the throat whether or not accompanied by
+forgetfulness. He required that pandemoniac pause in which to recover;
+and even when able to make himself heard, he repeated hoarsely and with
+extreme difficulty the line called to him by _David_--who was holding
+the prompt-book, in the fireplace.
+
+But the instinct of one bred to the stage from childhood saved him. And
+with comparative quiet restored, he braced up and played out the scene
+with admirable verve and technique. Joan was well aware that, stronger
+though her role might be, the man was giving a performance that
+overshadowed it heavily.
+
+He was drunk and he was brutal: _David_ had telephoned that he was at
+the railroad station and would be home in a few minutes; Quard, not
+content with promises, insisted on money, of which the woman had none to
+give him, or her jewels, which were locked away in the safe. When she
+refused to disclose the combination or to open the safe, Quard in
+besotted rage attempted to force her to open it. Struggling, they
+overturned the screen, exposing the _Thief_. Through a breathless and
+silent instant the two men faced one another, Quard bewildered, the
+_Thief_ seeing his way of escape barred. Then simultaneously they
+fired--Quard using the woman's revolver. One shot only took effect--the
+_Thief's_--and that fatally. Quard fell. Joan seized the arm of the
+_Thief_ and urged him from the house; as he vanished through the window,
+she picked up the revolver which Quard had dropped, and turned to the
+door. Frantic with alarm, _David_ entered. Joan reeled into his arms,
+screaming: "I have killed a burglar!"
+
+On this tableau the curtain fell--and rose and fell again and again at
+the direction of the house-manager deferring to an enthusiastic
+audience. Crude and raw as was this composition, the surprise of its
+last line and the strength with which it was acted, had won the
+unstinted approval of a public ever hungry for melodrama.
+
+Quard, revivified, bowing and smiling with suave and deprecatory grace,
+Joan in tears of excitement and delight, and the subordinate members of
+the company in varying stages of gratification over the prospect of
+prompt booking and a long engagement, were obliged to hold the stage
+through nine curtain-calls....
+
+On her way back to her dressing-room Joan was halted by a touch on her
+shoulder. She paused, to recognize Gloucester, of whose presence in the
+house she had been ignorant.
+
+"Very well done, my dear," he said loftily; "very well done. You've got
+the makings of an actress in you, if you don't lose your head. Now run
+along and dry your eyes, like a good girl, and don't bother me with your
+silly gratitude."
+
+With this he brusquely turned his back to her.
+
+But Quard, overtaking her in the gangway, without hesitation or apology
+folded her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And Joan submitted
+without remonstrance, athrill and elate.
+
+"Girlie!" he cried exultantly--"you're a wonder!
+
+"I _knew_ you could do it!... But, O my Gawd! you nearly finished me
+when you let that gun off right in my face!..."
+
+Somehow she found her way home alone, and shut herself up in the
+hall-bedroom to calm down and try to review the triumph sensibly.
+
+Unquestionably she had done well.
+
+Quard had done much better--but no wonder! She wasn't jealous: she was
+glad for his sake as well as for her own.
+
+Of course, this meant a great change. There was to come the day of
+reckoning with Matthias.... She had four letters of his, not one of
+which she had answered.... If "The Lie" got booking, and she went on the
+road with it--as she knew in her soul she would: nothing now could keep
+her off the stage--she would almost certainly lose Matthias.
+
+Quard, however, would remain to her; and of Quard she was very sure.
+That he loved her with genuine and generous devotion was now the one
+clear and indisputable fact in her unstable existence. If only he would
+refrain from drinking....
+
+He was to telephone as soon as he received any encouraging news; and he
+had expected definite word from Boskerk before the afternoon was over.
+In anticipation of being called down-stairs at any minute, Joan remained
+in her street dress, aching for her bed though she was with reaction and
+simple fatigue. But it was nearly eight o'clock before she was summoned.
+
+"That you, girlie?" the answer came to her breathless "Hello?"
+
+"Yes--yes, Charlie. What is it?"
+
+"I've seen Boskerk--in fact, I'm eating with him now. It's all settled.
+We're to open next Monday somewhere in New England--Springfield,
+probably; and we get forty weeks solid on top of that."
+
+"I'm so glad!"
+
+"Sure you are. We're all glad, I guess."
+
+"And--Charlie--" she stammered.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+"Are you--are you all right?"
+
+"Sure I'm all right. Good night, girlie. Take care of yourself. See you
+tomorrow."
+
+"Good night," said Joan.
+
+Hooking up the receiver, she leaned momentarily against the wall,
+feeling a little faint and ill.
+
+Was it simply overtaxed imagination that had made her believe she
+detected a slight constraint in Quard's voice--a hesitation assumed to
+mask blurred enunciation?
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+But when Joan met Quard in the morning her anxious eyes detected in his
+assured bearing none of the nervous unrest, in his clear eyes and the
+even tone of his coarse, pasty-pale skin none of the feverish stains,
+that are symptomatic of alcoholic excesses.
+
+Surprised and grateful, she treated the man with a tenderness and
+sweetness she had otherwise been too wary to betray....
+
+By Thursday it was settled that they were to open on Monday at Poli's
+Theatre in Springfield, for an engagement of a week. If the audiences
+there endorsed the verdict of the first, Boskerk promised Quard a full
+season's booking.
+
+From the Springfield house he was to receive three hundred and fifty
+dollars. He permitted Joan to understand, however, that his fee would be
+no more than the sum he had first mentioned--three hundred dollars.
+
+It was decided to leave New York by a Sunday train which would put them
+down in Springfield in the middle of the afternoon, enabling the company
+to find suitable lodgings before meeting to run through their lines in
+the evening. They would have an opportunity for a sketchy, scrambly
+rehearsal on the stage Monday morning, but dared not depend on that; for
+the greater part of their allotted period would necessarily be consumed
+in the selection of a practicable "set" from the stock of the theatre,
+in making arrangements for suitable furniture properties, and in
+drilling the house electrician in the uncommonly heavy schedule of light
+cues--any one of which, if bungled, was calculated seriously to impair
+the illusion of the sketch.
+
+Joan thoughtfully stipulated for twenty-five dollars advance, against
+expenses. Quard protested, alleging financial straits due to his already
+heavy outlay, but the girl was firm. True, she still had (unknown to
+him) one hundred and twenty-five dollars; but not until near the end of
+their week at Springfield would they know whether or not they were to
+get further booking.
+
+In the end the actor ungraciously surrendered.
+
+She made her preparations for leaving her hall-bedroom with a craft and
+stealth worthy of a burglar preparing to break prison.
+
+If her break with Matthias was to become absolute, she was determined
+not to leave any clue whereby she might be traced.
+
+An enquiry as to the best place to take a dress to be dry-cleaned
+furnished sufficient excuse for lugging away one well-filled suit-case,
+which Joan left at a cheap theatrical hotel a few blocks farther uptown
+and east of Broadway, where she simultaneously engaged a room for
+Saturday night. And on Saturday afternoon she carried away a second
+suit-case containing the remainder of her wardrobe, informing Madame
+Duprat that she was going to visit her folks for a day or two.
+
+But first she had to undergo a bad quarter-hour in the back-parlour.
+
+The sense of her treachery would not lift from her mood. Perhaps she
+felt its oppression the more heavily because of her uncertainty: she
+couldn't yet be sure she wasn't committing herself to a step of
+irrevocable error; she was only sure that she was doing what she wanted
+to do with all her heart, whatever evil might come of it. And there
+would be more ease in companionship with Quard; with him she could have
+her own way in everything, could always be her natural self and still
+retain his respect--and her own. On the other hand, she could not look
+up to him, and was by no means as fond of him as of Matthias. Her
+fiancee was without reproach: he loved her; but his respect she could
+never own. Dimly she recognized this fact; though he thought he
+respected her, and did truly honour her as his promised wife, he was his
+own dupe, passion-blinded. Actually, they were people of different
+races, their emotional natures differently organized, their mental
+processes working from widely divergent views of life.
+
+Even in this instance, Joan's perception of the gulf between them was
+more emotional than thoughtful....
+
+She moved slowly about the room, resentfully distressed, touching with
+reluctant fingers objects indelibly associated in her memory with the
+man of her first love.
+
+Sitting at his desk, she enclosed in a large envelope his letters. Two
+had arrived since Thursday; but these she had not opened. She hardly
+understood why she desired not to open them; she still took a real and
+deep interest in his fortunes; but she was desperately loath to read the
+mute reproach legible, if to her eyes alone, between his lines.
+
+She meant to leave him a note of her own, tenderly contrite and at the
+same time firmly final; but in spite of a mood saturate with an
+appropriately gentle and generous melancholy, she could not, apparently,
+fix it down with ink on paper. Eventually she gave it up: destroyed what
+she had attempted, and sealed the packet, leaving Matthias no written
+word of hers save his name on the face of the envelope.
+
+There remained the most difficult duty of all.
+
+With painful reluctance, Joan removed the ring from her finger (where it
+had been ever since she had last parted with Quard) and replacing it in
+its leather-covered case, sat for a long time looking her farewell upon
+that brilliant and more than intrinsically precious jewel.
+
+At length, closing the case, she placed it on top of the envelope, rose
+and moved to the door. There she hesitated, looking back in pain and
+longing.
+
+There was no telling what might happen to it before Matthias returned. A
+prying chambermaid....
+
+And then it was quite possible that "The Lie" would not last out the
+week in Springfield.
+
+Quard had more than once pointed out: "There's nothing sure in this game
+but the fact that you're bound to close sooner 'n you looked for."
+
+"Maybe I'll be back inside a week," Joan doubted.
+
+There was always that chance; and she had already left one door open
+against her return.
+
+"Anyway, it isn't safe, there. And I can mail it to him, registered,
+when I'm sure he's home."
+
+Turning back, she snatched up the leather case and darted guiltily from
+the study and out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+The stage-wise have long since learned to discount a "slump" in the next
+performance to follow a brilliantly successful premiere: the phenomenon
+is as inevitable as poor food on a route of one-night stands.
+
+At Springfield, on Monday afternoon, "The Lie" was presented in a manner
+of unpardonable crudity. Quard forgot his lines and extemporized and
+"gagged" desperately to cover the consequent breaks in the dialogue;
+leaving poor Joan hopelessly at sea, floundering for cues that were
+never uttered.
+
+At the last moment it was discovered that nothing had been provided to
+simulate, at the beginning of the second scene, the sound of a clock
+striking twelve, off-stage. The property man could offer nothing better
+than an iron crowbar and a hammer; the twelve strokes, consequently,
+resembled nothing in the world other than a wholly untemperamental
+crowbar banged by a dispassionate hammer. Fortunately, the effect was so
+thin and dead that it convulsed only the first few rows of the
+orchestra.
+
+The light cues went wrong when they were not altogether ignored; and
+once, when Joan having indicated in a brief soliloquy her depression on
+being left alone in the gloomy house, gave the cue "_I must have more
+light_," at the same time touching a property switch on the wall, every
+light in the house other than the red "exit" lamps was "blacked out."
+And at all other times the required changes either anticipated or
+dragged far behind their cues.
+
+The _Thief_ forgot to load his revolver, with the result that Quard
+fired the only shot in their duel--and then fell dead. This so rattled
+_David_ that he anticipated his first entrance and rushed on the stage
+only to back off precipitately while Joan was urging the _Thief_ to go
+and leave her to shoulder his crime.
+
+The only misadventure that failed to attend upon the performance was a
+traditional one of the stage: the theatre cat by some accident did _not_
+walk upon the scene at a climax and seat itself before the footlights to
+wash its face.
+
+Nevertheless the sketch "got over" at the matinee, receiving three
+curtain calls; and at night--when the little company, conscious of its
+crimes, pulled itself together and acted with an intensity of effort
+only equalled by that of its first performance in New York--the house
+gave the piece a rousing reception.
+
+Thereafter they played it well and consistently, with increasing
+assurance as days passed and use bred the habit in them all.
+
+On Thursday Quard heard from Boskerk, and announced that the company
+would return to New York the following Monday to play a six weeks'
+engagement in the Percy Williams houses, beginning with a fortnight in
+Manhattan and winding up in Greenpoint, Long Island. He added that
+Boskerk was busy arranging a subsequent tour which would take them to
+the Pacific Coast and back. He did not add that the agent had
+successfully demanded as much as four hundred and fifty dollars a week
+for the offering from many of the more prosperous houses on their list;
+from which figure the price ranged down to as little as three hundred in
+some of the smaller inland towns. But even at this minimum, Quard had so
+scaled his salary list, contrary to his representations to Joan, that
+his gross weekly profit (excluding personal living expenses) would
+seldom be less than one hundred dollars a week.
+
+Back in New York, Joan established herself temporarily at a small
+and very poor hotel on the west side of Harlem. Since their
+engagement took her no farther south than Sixty-third Street and
+Broadway during its first week, and the second week was played at
+One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, she felt
+tolerably insured against meeting either Matthias or any member of her
+own family.
+
+She really meant to go home some time and see how her mother and Edna
+were doing, but from day to day put it off, if with no better excuse on
+the ground that she was too tired and too busy.
+
+As a matter of fact she was in the habit of waking up at about ten, but
+never rose until noon; spent the hours between three and four and nine
+and ten in the theatre; and was ordinarily abed by half-past twelve or
+one o'clock. Up to the matinee hour, and between that and the night, she
+managed without great difficulty to kill time, spending a deal of it,
+and a fair proportion of her earnings, in the uptown department stores.
+She dined with Quard quite frequently, and almost invariably after the
+last performance they supped together, often in company with friends of
+his--for the most part vaudeville people whom he had previously known or
+with whom he struck up fervent, facile friendships of a week's duration.
+
+They were a quaint, scandalous crew, feather-brained, irresponsible and,
+most of them, destitute of any sort of originality; but their spirits
+were high as long as they had a pay-day ahead, their tongues were quick
+with the patter of the circuits, and their humour was of an order new
+and vastly diverting to Joan. She had with them what she called a good
+time, and soon learned to look leniently upon the irregular lives of
+some who entertained her. Once or twice she was invited to "parties",
+sociable gatherings in flats rented furnished, at which she learned to
+regard the consumption of large quantities of bottled beer as a polite
+and even humorous accomplishment, and to permit a degree of freedom in
+song and joke and innuendo that would have seemed impossible in another
+environment.
+
+Probably she would have felt less tolerant of these matters had Quard
+betrayed the least tendency to "fall off the wagon." But in her
+company, at least, he refrained sedulously from drink; and since his was
+one of those constitutions whose normal vitality is so high and constant
+that alcohol benumbs rather than stimulates its functions, he shone the
+more by contrast with their occasionally befuddled companions.
+
+Joan admired him intensely for the steadfastness of his stand, and still
+more when she saw how established was the habit of regular if not always
+heavy drinking in the world of their peers. No one but herself pretended
+for a moment to regard the reformation of Quard as anything but a
+fugitive whim; and now and again she was made aware that his abstinence
+was resented. She once heard him contemptuously advised to "chuck the
+halo and kick in and get human again." At another time he explained a
+false excuse given in her presence for refusing an invitation: "It's no
+use trying to travel with that gang unless you're boozing. They got no
+use for me unless I'm willing to get an edge on. What's the use?"
+
+There was a surliness, a resentment underlying his tone. Intuitively
+Joan bristled.
+
+"No use," she said sharply. "You know what you're up against better than
+they do. You've got to stick to the soft stuff if you want to keep
+going."
+
+"Oh, I know," he grumbled. "But it ain't as easy as you'd think."
+
+"All right," she retorted calmly; "but I give you fair warning, I'll
+quit you the very first time you come around with so much as a whiff of
+the stuff on you."
+
+"You don't have to worry," he responded. "I'm on all right.... But," he
+added abruptly, "you needn't run away with any notion this piece would
+head for the storehouse if you _was_ to quit it. The woods are full of
+girls who'd jump at your chance."
+
+Joan answered only with an enigmatic smile. It is doubtful if Quard
+himself realized, just then, as keenly as the girl did, the depth and
+strength of his infatuation.
+
+But Joan did not doubt her power. Neither did she overestimate it.
+
+It was toward the end of their "time" in New York that she learned of
+the failure of "The Jade God," the information coming to her through the
+medium of one of those coincidences which would be singular anywhere but
+on the stage. An actress in a farcical sketch, which followed the
+intermission preceded by "The Lie," was assigned to use Joan's
+dressing-room when the latter was through with it. Naturally, the two
+struck up a chatting acquaintance. Joan one time replied to a question
+with the information that "The Lie" was booked for the Pacific Coast,
+and (Matthias in mind) confessed to some curiosity regarding Los
+Angeles. The other actress admitted ignorance of the West, but had only
+that morning received a letter from a sister who was playing with the
+Algerson stock company in Los Angeles. The letter contained a clipping
+describing the immediate and disastrous collapse of "The Jade God,"
+which had been withdrawn after its third repetition. Reading the review,
+Joan was puzzled to recognize some of its references; she was fairly
+familiar with the play, but here and there she encountered strictures
+which seemed to involve scenes she couldn't remember. But of the fact of
+the failure there could be no doubt.
+
+She was genuinely sorry. Her first impulse was to seek Matthias, if he
+were in town, and tell him of her sympathy; her second (discarded with
+even less ceremony than the first) to write to him. Two things held her
+back: sheer moral cowardice, that would not let her face the man whom
+she had failed even as had his play; and the impossibility of explaining
+that she loved the stage more than him or anything else in the
+world--except his ring. And while she never faltered from meaning to
+return this last "before long," she could not yet bring herself to part
+with it. Always it was with her, on her finger when at home and alone,
+in her pocket-book when abroad or with Quard; still in her imagination
+retaining something of its vaguely talismanic virtue; standing to her
+for something fanciful and magic, which she could not name, a visible
+token of the mystical powers that worked for her good fortune....
+
+It was mid-October: sweetest of all seasons in New York; a time of early
+evenings and long, clear gloamings beneath skies of exquisite suavity
+and depth; of crisp and heady days whose air is wine in a crystal
+chalice; when thoughts are long and sweet, gentle with the beauty and
+the sadness of aging autumn.
+
+At the first hint of winter Joan's heart turned in longing to the
+thought of furs. She wasted hours studying advertisements, and many more
+going from place to place, examining, rejecting, coveting. Her fancy was
+not modest: a year ago she would have been delighted with the meanest
+strip of squirrel for a neckpiece; today she felt a little ashamed even
+to price the less expensive furs, and would make no attempt to purchase
+until she had saved up enough money to meet her desires.
+
+And then, one morning--they were playing at the Orpheum Theatre in
+Brooklyn--a messenger brought her a package from one of the Fulton
+Street stores and required a signed receipt. It contained a handsome
+coat of imitation seal with a collar of rich black fur and lined with
+golden brocade. Fitting her perfectly, it enclosed her in generous
+warmth from throat to ankle. Accompanying it was the card of "_Mr.
+Charles Harborough Quard, Presenting 'The Lie,' the Sketch Sensation of
+the Year, Address c/o Jas. K. Boskerk, St. James Building, N.Y._"
+
+Not since that day when she had received his ring from Matthias had she
+been so happy.
+
+Meeting Quard in the gangway outside her dressing-room, before the
+matinee performance, she showed her gratitude by lifting her face for
+his kiss.
+
+In the world in which they existed, kisses were commonplaces, quite
+perfunctory, of little more significance than a slap on the shoulder
+between acquaintances. Not so Joan's: she had set a value upon her
+caresses, a standard peculiarly inflexible with respect to Quard. None
+the less, this was not the second time he had known her lips. But the
+occasion was one rare enough to render him appreciative.
+
+He wound an arm round her, and held her tight.
+
+"Like it, eh, girlie?"
+
+"I love it!"
+
+"Then I'm satisfied."
+
+"But how did you guess what I wanted most?"
+
+"Maybe I did a little head-work to find out."
+
+"It's dear of you!"
+
+"So long's you think so, I've got no kick coming."
+
+She disengaged, drew a pace or two away.
+
+"But what made you do it, Charlie?"
+
+"Well, I can't afford to have my leading lady out of the cast with a
+cold."
+
+Joan shook her head at him in gay reproof.
+
+"Or do you want me to tell you what you know already--that I'm crazy
+about you?"
+
+"Foolish! It's time we were dressing!"
+
+But her laugh was fond, and so was the look she threw over her shoulder
+as she evaded his arms and vanished into her dressing-room.
+
+Quard lingered a moment, with a fatuous smile for the panels of the
+closed door, and wagged his head doggishly. He felt that he was winning
+ground at a famous rate--the difficulties, the coolness and craft of his
+antagonist, considered. And in a way he was right, though perhaps not
+precisely the way he had in mind.
+
+Even before his princely gift, Joan had been thinking a great deal about
+him, and very seriously. Instinctively she foresaw that their
+relationship could not long continue on its present basis of simple
+good-fellowship. Quard wasn't the sort to be content at arm's-length:
+he must either come closer or go farther away, and might be depended
+upon not to adopt the latter course until the former had proved
+impracticable.
+
+And Joan didn't want him to go farther away. She was positive about
+this. But she was also very sure that the arm's-length relationship must
+be abridged only under certain indispensable conditions--decorously--and
+soon, if at all: else she must be the one to withdraw, lest a worse
+thing befall her. It was a problem of two factors: Quard's nature and
+her own; she had herself to reckon with no less than with him; and
+herself she distrusted, who was no stronger than her greatest weakness.
+He attracted her. She often caught herself thinking of him as she had
+thought of no other man--not Matthias, not the Quard of "The Convict's
+Return," not even Marbridge except, perhaps, for one shameful instant.
+
+Something in the lawless, ranging, wanton grain of this man called to
+her with a call of infinite allure: something latent in her thrilled to
+the call and answered.... That way lurked danger, disguised, but deadly.
+
+They moved on to Greenpoint, thence to Trenton for a week.
+
+Daily Quard's attentions became more constant, intimate and tender. They
+were much together, and now far more exclusively together than had been
+possible in New York, where acquaintances commandeered so much of their
+time. In Trenton they lodged at the same hotel, the other members of the
+company finding cheaper accommodations at greater distance from the
+theatre. This increased their close and confidential association. They
+fell into the habit of breakfasting together. Quard, always first to
+rise, would telephone to Joan's room, ascertain how soon she would be
+dressed, and order for both of them accordingly. In return for this
+privilege he had that of paying for both meals.
+
+A negro waiter spoke of Joan one morning, in her presence, as "the
+Missus." When he had retired out of earshot, their eyes sought one
+another's; constraint was swept away in laughter.
+
+"We might's well be married, the way we're together all the time," Quard
+presently ventured.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that," Joan retorted pertly.
+
+"I mean, the way other people see us. I shouldn't be surprised if
+everybody in the hotel thought we was married, girlie."
+
+Joan coloured faintly....
+
+"Well, the room-clerk knows better," she said definitely. "I'd like
+another cup of coffee, please."
+
+Quard snapped his fingers loudly to attract the attention of the waiter.
+
+He grew aware of an awkward silence: that the thoughts of both were
+converging to a common point.
+
+"Folks are fools that get married in the profession," he observed
+consciously. "It's all right if you've got a husband or I've got a wife
+at home--"
+
+"I don't see it," Joan interrupted smartly. "Anyway, _I_ haven't. Have
+you?"
+
+The actor stared, confused. "Have I--what?"
+
+"Got a wife at home?" Joan repeated, laughing.
+
+"No--nothing like _that_!" he asserted with intense earnestness. "I
+mean, it's all right if you've got somebody keeping a flat warm for you,
+some place not too far off Broadway; but if you marry into the
+business--good _night_! You got all the trouble of being tied up for
+life, and that's all."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Managers don't want husband and wife in the same company. They're
+always fighting each other's battles when they ain't fighting between
+themselves. So you're always playing different routes, and the chances
+are they never cross except it's inconvenient and you get caught and
+nominated for the Alimony Club."
+
+"Do you belong?"
+
+"Didn't I just tell you nothing like that?" Quard protested with
+unnecessary heat.
+
+"Well," Joan murmured mischievously, "you seem to know so much about it.
+I only wondered...."
+
+Their place on the bill was near the end, that week: a trick bicyclist
+followed them, and moving-pictures wound up the performance.
+Consequently, by the time they were able to leave the theatre in the
+afternoon the sun was already below the horizon. They emerged the same
+evening from the stage-door to view a cloudless sky of pulsing amber,
+shading into purple at the zenith, melting into rose along the western
+rim of the world. A wash of old rose flooded the streets, lifting the
+meanest structures out of their ugliness, lending an added dignity to
+rows of square-set, old-fashioned residences of red-brick with white
+marble trimmings.
+
+"Which way are you going?" Quard enquired as they approached the corner
+of a main thoroughfare. "Back to the hotel?"
+
+"No; I'm sick of that hole," Joan replied with a vivid shudder. "I'm
+going to take a walk. Want to come?"
+
+"I was just going to ask you."
+
+They turned off toward the Delaware.
+
+It was the twenty-first of November--winter still a month away; yet the
+breath of winter was in the air. It came up cool and brisk from the
+river, enriching the colour in Joan's cheeks that were bright and
+glowing from the scrubbing she always gave them after removing
+grease-paint with cold cream. The blood coursed tingling through her
+veins. Her eyes shone with deepened lustre. They walked with spirit, in
+step, in a pensive silence infrequently disturbed.
+
+"Of course," Quard presently offered without preface, "it's different in
+vodeveal, if you stick to it."
+
+"What's different?"
+
+"Being married."
+
+Joan's eyes widened momentarily. Then she laughed outright. "Gee! You
+don't mean to say you've been chewing _that_ rag ever since breakfast?"
+
+"Ah, I just happened to think of it again," said Quard with the air of
+one whose motives are wantonly misconstrued.
+
+Nevertheless, he wouldn't let the subject languish.
+
+"There's plenty of family acts been playing the circuits Gawd knows how
+long," he pursued, with a vast display of interest in the sunset glow.
+"Look't the Cohans, before George planted the American flag in Longacre
+Square and annexed it to the United States. And they ain't the only ones
+by a long shot. I could name a plenty that'll stick in the big time
+until their toes curl. It's all right to trot in double-harness so
+long's you manage your own company."
+
+"Well?" Joan asked with a sober mouth and mischievous eyes.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"If you're getting ready to slip me my two-weeks' notice, why not be a
+man and say so?"
+
+"What would I do that for?" Quard demanded indignantly.
+
+"Because you're thinking about getting married; and there's only room
+for one leading lady in any company I play in."
+
+"Quit your kidding," the man advised sulkily; "you know I couldn't get
+along without you."
+
+"Yes," Joan admitted calmly, "_I_ know it, but I didn't know you did."
+
+Quard shot a suspicious glance askance, but her face was immobile in its
+flawless loveliness.
+
+He started to say something, choked up and reconsidered with a painful
+frown. A mature man's perfect freedom is not lightly to be thrown away.
+And yet ... he doubted darkly the perfection of his freedom....
+
+They held on in silence until they came to Riverside Park.
+
+Over the dark profile of the Pennsylvania hills the sky was jade and
+amethyst, a pool of light that dwindled swiftly in the thickening shades
+of violet. Below them, as they paused on a lonely walk, the river stole
+swiftly, like a great black serpent writhing through the shadows. A
+frosty wind swept steadily into their faces, making cool and firm the
+flesh flushed with exercise. There was no one near them. A train of
+jewelled lights swept over the railroad bridge and vanished into the
+night with a purring rumble that lent an accent to their isolation. Joan
+hugged about her voluptuously her wonderful coat, stole a glance warm
+with gratitude at the face of Quard. He intercepted it, and edged
+nearer. Aglow and eager, she murmured something vapid about the
+prettiness of the sky.
+
+He answered only with the arm he passed about her. She suffered him,
+lashes veiling her eyes, her head at rest in the hollow of his shoulder.
+The man stared down at her exquisite, suffused face, luminous in the
+last light of gloaming.
+
+"Joan," he said throatily--"girlie, don't you love me--a little?"
+
+Her mouth grew tremulous.
+
+"I ... don't ... know," she whispered.
+
+"I love you!" he cried suddenly in an exultant voice--"I love you!"
+
+He folded her, unresisting, in both his arms, covering her face with
+kisses, ardent, violent kisses that bruised and hurt her tender flesh
+but which she still sought and hungered for, insatiable. She sobbed a
+little in her happiness, feeling her body yield and yearn to his,
+transported by that sweet, exquisite, nameless longing....
+
+Then suddenly she was like a steel spring in his embrace, writhing to
+free herself. Wondering, he tried to hold her closer, but she twisted
+and fended him off with all the power of her strong young arms. And
+still wondering, he humoured her. She drew away, but yet not wholly out
+of his clasp.
+
+"Charlie!" she panted.
+
+"Darling!"
+
+"How do you get married in New Jersey?"
+
+He pulled up, dashed and a little disappointed, and laughed nervously.
+
+"Why, you get a license and then--well, almost anybody'll do to tie the
+knot."
+
+She nodded tensely: "I guess a regular minister will be good enough for
+us."
+
+"I guess so," he demurred; and with another laugh: "I wasn't thinking
+serious' about it, but I guess I might's well be married as the way I
+am."
+
+"Well," she said quietly, "we've _got_ to. It's the only way...."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+And then, suddenly, the face of life was indescribably changed: Joan
+Thursday seemed but a memory, a slight and somehow wistful shadow in the
+shadowed depths of that darkling mirror, yesterday; in her place another
+creature altogether reigned, the Joan Quard of today, woman, actress,
+wife; with a gold band round her finger; mature, initiate of mysteries,
+ripe in wisdom; strong, poised serenely, clear of eye; with added
+graciousness in her beauty, conscious of added powers over Man, but
+discreet in their employment.
+
+She thought a great deal about herself in those days: not, perhaps, more
+than had been common with her in that so-dead yesterday, but much, and
+more profoundly; reading a new meaning into the riddle of existence, so
+changed had all things become since her marriage.
+
+Before her pensive vision Life unfolded rare, golden-vista'd promises.
+
+With another man, or in another stratum of society, she might have
+fulfilled herself wonderfully, even unto her salvation....
+
+To begin with, she was very happy. Fond to distraction of her husband,
+she never doubted that he worshipped her; he gave her quick wits no
+cause to entertain a doubt. They were together always, inseparable. She
+felt that nature must truly have fashioned them solely for one another,
+and could not forget her wonder that their passion should be so mutual,
+so complete. She loved him to distraction: all his traits, his robust
+swagger, his sonorous and flexible tones, the flowery eloquence of his
+gesture, his broad, easy-going, tolerant good-humour, the way he wore
+his clothes and the very cut and texture of them. And she ruled him like
+a despot.
+
+Quard submitted without complaint. She was all his fancy had painted
+her, and something more; recognizing dimly that she excelled him
+variously (although he was quite incapable of analyzing these
+distinctions) he served her humbly, with unconscious deference to her
+many excellences. She was by way of making him a better wife than he
+deserved. If at times conscious of some little irk from her amiable but
+inflexible autocracy, he reminded himself that she was a finer woman
+than any he had ever known, well worth humouring: it wasn't on every
+corner a fellow'd pick up one like Joan.
+
+He liked to follow her into hotel lobbies and restaurants and watch
+people turn to eye her, the men with sudden interest, the women with
+instinctive hostility. It even amused him to quell a too-ambitious stare
+with a fixed, grim, and truculent regard backed by the menace of his
+powerful physique. It gave a man standing, license to swagger, to own a
+woman like Joan.
+
+He came to pander oddly to this vanity--would leave Joan to go to their
+room alone, while he strolled off to a bar to meet some crony or
+acquaintance of the day, tell his best story, and then suddenly excuse
+himself:
+
+"Well, s'long. The wife's waiting for me."
+
+The response rarely failed: "Ah, let her wait; have another drink. Did
+_I_ ever tell you--"
+
+A lifted, deprecatory palm, a knowing look: "No--guess I'll kick along;
+y'see, _she_'s some wife...."
+
+Conscious only of his adoration, Joan was enchanted by their mode of
+life, with its constant shifts of scene, its spice of vagabondage. She
+believed she could never tire of travelling.
+
+Railroad journeys, with their inevitable concomitants of dirt, noise,
+and discomfort, never discouraged her: she really liked them; they were
+taking her somewhere--it didn't much matter where. She even derived a
+sort of pleasure from such nauseating experiences as rising to catch a
+train at four-thirty in the morning, against their "long jumps." And
+there was keen delight in napping in a parlour-car chair or with a head
+upon her husband's shoulder in a day-coach, to wake all drowsy, breathe
+air foul with coal-smoke, and peer through a black window-pane (shadowed
+by her hand) to catch a glimpse of some darkly fulgent breadth of
+strange water, or the marching defile of great alien hills, or a sweep
+of semi-wooded countryside bleached with moonlight--remembering that,
+only a few short months ago, the world of her travels had been bounded
+by Fort George on the north, Coney Island on the south, knowing neither
+east nor west.
+
+She was discovering America: even as she was discovering Life....
+
+Their route from Trenton took them south through Philadelphia,
+Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Norfolk; whence they
+doubled back by steamer to New York, took a Sound boat to Fall River,
+played Boston, and drifted through New England in bitter cold weather,
+eventually striking westward again, via Albany, Buffalo, and the middle
+country.
+
+Quard drew her attention to the fact that it was "a liberal
+education...."
+
+Sometimes she thought pityingly of Matthias, and wondered if he knew she
+was married and what she was doing; and whether he were angry, or
+heart-broken, or eaten up with morbid jealousy; and how he would act
+should chance ever throw them together again. She was sorry for him: he
+had lost her. If only he had been a little more enterprising.... She
+wondered what would have happened if Matthias _had_ been more
+enterprising; he could have possessed her at any time during the brief
+period of their infatuation. If he had married her then, would she be as
+contented as she was now, with Charlie? She doubted it; Quard was so
+completely his opposite....
+
+She ceased to worry about the ring. She meant to return it some day,
+perhaps. Though she did not wear it and had never so much as mentioned
+Matthias to Quard, it remained a possession whose charms tugged at her
+heart-strings. At times she amused herself formulating idle little
+intrigues, with the object (if ever set in motion) of excusing the
+appearance of the jewel upon her hand. But all her schemes seemed to
+possess some fatal flaw, and she was desperately afraid of the truth.
+Meanwhile, the ring lay perdue at the bottom of a work-basket of woven
+sweet-grass which she had purchased shortly after her marriage; twisted
+in an old, empty needle-paper and mixed in with a worthless confusion of
+trash, such as women accumulate in such receptacles, its hiding place
+was well calculated to escape detection by even an informed purloiner.
+
+Quard's tardy engagement ring was set with an inferior diamond flanked
+by artificial pearls. Joan despised it secretly. For a long time it was
+the sole blemish on the bright shield of her happiness....
+
+And then, the night of their opening day in Cincinnati, Quard escorted
+her from the theatre to the hotel, left her at the door, and turned back
+to "see a friend" who happened to be playing on the same bill.
+
+This was quite the usual thing, and Joan went contentedly off to her
+room and in due course to bed, confident that Quard would return within
+an hour.
+
+Five hours later she awoke to startled apprehension of the facts, first
+that she must have dropped off to sleep without meaning to, next that
+Quard had not returned, finally that it was past four o'clock in the
+morning.
+
+With a little shiver of sickening premonition she rose, slipped into a
+dressing-gown, called a bell-boy, and instructed him to look for her
+husband. Some time later the boy reported that the bar was closed and
+the gentleman not to be found.
+
+It was broad daylight when Quard staggered in with the assistance of
+the same bell-boy and his negro dresser. His eyes were glazed, his face
+ghastly, his mind wandered: he was as helpless as a child. With the aid
+of the boys, Joan managed to undress the man and put him to bed. At once
+he fell asleep, with the cold stump of a half-burned cigar obstinately
+clenched between his teeth. It was an hour before the muscles of his jaw
+relaxed enough to release it.
+
+Dressing, Joan left the hotel, swallowed some coffee and rolls,
+tasteless to her, in a nearby restaurant, and wandered about until eight
+o'clock, when she found a drug-store open, and consulted the clerk. He
+advised bromo seltzer and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Armed with these,
+she returned to her husband, and shortly after noon, daring to delay no
+longer, roused him by sprinkling cold water in his face--all other
+methods having failed even to interrupt his stertorous breathing. Even
+then it was some time before she could induce him to swallow the
+medicine, and it required no less than three powerful doses, together
+with much black coffee and followed by a cold bath, to restore him to
+presentable condition. In the end, however, she succeeded in getting him
+to the theatre in time for the matinee.
+
+Through it all she uttered no single word of reproach, but waited on the
+man with at least every outward sign of sympathy and devotion.
+
+His remorse (when another nap at the hotel after the matinee had brought
+him to more complete realization of what had happened) was touching and,
+as long as it lasted, unquestionably sincere. Joan accepted without
+comment his lame explanation as to the manner of his temptation and fall
+during an all-night session at poker "with the boys," and gave genuine
+credulity to his protestations that it would never, never happen again.
+
+But three weeks later in Chicago he repeated the performance, though
+under somewhat less distressing circumstances. As before, he left her in
+the lobby, "to finish his cigar and chin with Soandso." Within an hour
+he was half-led, half-carried to their room, in a hopelessly sodden
+condition. The actor with whom he had been drinking accompanied him,
+apparently quite sober, but puzzled; and after Quard had been helped to
+bed, explained to the girl that her husband's collapse had been
+incomprehensibly due to no more than three drinks.
+
+"I never seen nothin' like it!" the man expostulated, with an air of
+grievance. "There he was, standin' up against the bar, with his foot on
+the rail, laughin' and kiddin', same's the rest of us; and he'd only had
+three whiskeys--though I will say they was man-size drinks; and then,
+all of a sudden, he turns white as a sheet and starts mumblin' to
+himself, and we all thinks he's joshin' until he keels over, limp's a
+rag. If the stuff gets to him like that, he's got no business touchin'
+it, ever!"
+
+These experiences continued at varying intervals; and presently Joan
+began to understand that Quard had not only primarily a weakness to
+tempt him, but a constitutional inability to assert his will-power after
+he had surrendered to the extent of a single drink. One modest dose of
+alcohol seemed to exercise upon him a sort of hypnotic power, driving
+him on whether he would or not to the next, the next, and the
+next--until the nadir of unconsciousness was reached. It was not that he
+invariably succumbed to moderate indulgence, but that once started he
+rarely stopped until his identity was completely submerged. Indeed, the
+way of alcohol with him seemed never twice to follow the same route; but
+its end was invariably the same.
+
+Hoping against hope, fighting with him, pleading, reasoning, threatening
+with him, even praying, Joan endured for a long time--much longer than,
+in retrospective days, seemed possible even to her; for she was honestly
+fond of her husband, far more so than she was ever of any other living
+being save herself.
+
+They reached San Francisco the third week in April. For some time Quard
+had been drinking rather methodically but stealthily. A threat made by
+Joan, while he was sobering up from his last debauch, to the effect that
+on repetition of the offence she would leave him without an hour's
+notice, had frightened the man to the extent of making him hesitate to
+add one drink to another except at intervals long enough to retard the
+cumulative effect; but never a day passed on which, in spite of her
+watchfulness, he did not contrive to throw several sops to the devil in
+possession, if without ever quite losing his wits.
+
+Detected with reeking breath, he would adopt one of three attitudes: he
+was a man, subject to the domination of no woman and of no appetite, had
+learned his lesson and now knew when to stop; or he was sorry--hadn't
+stopped to think--and wouldn't let it go any further; or nothing of the
+sort had happened, he had drunk nothing except a glass of soda-fountain
+nerve-tonic, or possibly it was his cigar that she smelled. With the
+first, Joan had no patience; and since she had a temper, it was the last
+resort in Quard's more sober stages, seldom employed save when potations
+had made him either indifferent or vicious. In his contrition, whether
+real or assumed, she tried hard to believe. But his lies never deceived
+her: to these she listened in the silence of contempt and despair.
+
+On the Wednesday afternoon of their week in San Francisco, the girl did
+a bit of shopping after the matinee; it was half after five before she
+returned to the hotel, and walked into their room to find Quard, with
+his coat off, seated in a chair that faced the door. His back was to the
+windows, through which the declining sun threw a flood of blinding
+golden light, so that Joan's dazzled vision comprehended only the dark
+silhouette of his body.
+
+She said "Hello, dearie!" lightly enough in the abstraction of reviewing
+some especially pleasing purchases, closed the door, walked over to the
+bureau, put down her handbag and a small parcel, and removed her hat.
+Then the fact that Quard had not answered penetrated her reverie.
+Disposing of her hat, she looked half casually over her shoulder, to
+discover that he hadn't moved. Two surmises struck through her wonder:
+that he had fallen asleep waiting for her; with poignant apprehension,
+that he had been drinking again. But this seemed hardly likely: he had
+been entirely rational and unintoxicated during the matinee.
+
+She said sharply: "What's the matter?"
+
+Quard made no answer.
+
+With a troubled sigh she moved to his chair and bent over him. His eyes,
+wide and blazing, met hers with a look of inflexible hostility and rage;
+his mouth was set like a trap, his lips, like his face, were almost
+colourless. The air was pungent with his breath, but intuitively she
+divined that it was not drunkenness alone which had aroused this temper,
+the more dismaying since it was for the time being under control.
+
+From the look in his eyes she started back as from a blow.
+
+"Charlie! What's the matter?"
+
+Quard opened his lips, gulped spasmodically, closed them without
+speaking. The muscles on the left side of his face twitched nervously.
+
+Abruptly he shot up out of his chair, strode to the door, locked it and
+pocketed the key. His face as he turned was terrible to see.
+
+She shrank away, but his eyes held hers in the fascination of fright.
+
+"Why--Charlie!--what--"
+
+He interrupted with an imperative gesture, took a step toward her, and
+shook his hand in her face. Between his thumb and forefinger glittered
+something exquisitely coruscant in the sunlight.
+
+"What's that?" he demanded in a quivering voice.
+
+She moved her head in assumed bewilderment, staggered to recognize the
+symbol of her broken troth with Matthias.
+
+"I don't know. What is it? You keep moving it around so, I can't
+see...."
+
+"There, then!" he cried, steadying the hand under her nose.
+
+Instinctively her gaze veered to her trunk. Its lid was up. On the floor
+lay her work-basket in the litter of its former contents. Her
+indignation mounted.
+
+"What were you doing in my trunk?" she demanded hotly.
+
+Quard's eyes clouded under the impact of this counter attack.
+Momentarily his dazed expression made it very plain that he had taken
+advantage of her absence to drink heavily. And this was even more plain
+in the blurred accents, robbed of the sharpness rage had lent them, in
+which he endeavoured to justify himself.
+
+"I wanted--shew on s'pender button--wanted work-basket...."
+
+Anger returned; his voice mounted: "And I found this! What is it?"
+
+Joan snatched at the ring, but he drew back his hand too quickly for
+her.
+
+"It's mine. Give it to me!"
+
+"Where'd you get it? Tha'sh what I wanna know!"
+
+"None of your business. Give it--"
+
+"T' hell it ain't my business. I'm your husband--gotta right to know
+where you get diamonds"--he sneered--"diamonds like this! I never bought
+it."
+
+"No," she flamed back; "you're too stingy!"
+
+"Stingy, am I?" He faltered swaying. "Tha'snough. I'm tightwad, so
+s'nother guy gets chansh to buy you diamonds. Tha's way of it, hey?"
+
+"You give me that ring, Charlie," Joan demanded ominously.
+
+"You got anotha good guess coming. What I'll give you is jush two
+minutes to tell me name of the fellow't give it to you."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Charlie!"
+
+"I don't intend to be fool--any longer. You tell me or--"
+
+He checked, searching his befuddled mind for a compelling threat.
+
+With a shift of manner, Joan extended her hand in pleading.
+
+"Give me the ring, Charlie, and be sensible. I haven't done anything
+wrong. I can explain."
+
+"Well...." Grudgingly he dropped the ring into her palm. But immediately
+her fingers had closed upon it, mistrust again possessed him. "Now, you
+tell me--"
+
+"Very well," she interrupted patiently. "You needn't shout. I don't mind
+telling you now. It's my engagement ring."
+
+"Your _what_?" sharply.
+
+"My engagement ring. I was engaged last summer to Mr. Matthias, before
+we began to rehearse the sketch."
+
+"Engaged?" he iterated stupidly. "Engaged for what?"
+
+"Engaged to be married. He was in love with me. I meant to marry him
+until you and I met the second time--"
+
+"Meant to marry who?"
+
+"Mr. Matthias. We--"
+
+"Matthias? What Matthias?"
+
+"John Matthias, the author--the playwright. He wrote 'The Jade God.'"
+
+Quard wagged his head cunningly. "Y'mean to tell me you was engaged to
+that guy, and--didn't marry him?"
+
+"Certainly. I married you, didn't I, dear?"
+
+"And if that's true, how't happen you didn't give'm back his ring?
+_Eh?_"
+
+"I meant to, Charlie, but he was out of town and I didn't know his
+address."
+
+"That's likely!" The actor laughed harshly. "Tha'sh _good_ one, that is!
+You going to marry him, and didn't know his address. Expect me to
+believe that?"
+
+"It's true, Charlie--it's God's truth."
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"Charlie--!"
+
+"I say, you're a liar! Wha'sh more, I mean it."
+
+Quard waved his hand, palm down, to indicate his scornful disposition of
+her yarn. Then he staggered, steadied himself by clutching the back of a
+chair, and conscious how this betrayed his condition, worked himself
+into a towering rage to cover it.
+
+"I know better. 'F you'd ever got a chance to marry that feller, you'd
+'ve jumped at it. He'd never've got away. You wouldn't 've given him no
+more chance'n you did me--you'd 've pulled wool over his eyes same way.
+_I_ know what'm talking about. You're a _liar_, a dam' dirty little
+liar, tha's what you are."
+
+Joan's colour deserted her face entirely.
+
+"Charlie! don't you say that to me again."
+
+"And what'll you do? Think I care? I know what you'll do, all right,
+because I'm going make you do it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Wha's more, I know now who gave you that ring. I was fool not to guess
+it before. I didn't give it to you--no! Mist' Matthias didn't give it to
+you--no! But somebody _did_ give it to you--_eh?_ Tha's right, isn't it?
+And his name--'s name was _Vincent Marbridge_! Wasn't it?"
+
+He thrust his inflamed face close to hers, leering wickedly.
+
+"Marbridge!" Joan echoed blankly.
+
+"Vincent Marbridge--tha's the feller't give you the ring. He's the
+feller't could do it, too--got all the money in the world--enough to buy
+dozens'r rings--enough to buy you all them good clothes you got hold of
+after you threw me down and before I was ass enough to take up with you
+again! A' that, you were a fool not to get more outa him."
+
+The insult ate like an acid into the pride of the girl. She flushed
+crimson, then in an instant paled again. Her eyes grew cold and hard.
+
+"That will do," she said bitterly. "You've said enough--too much. After
+all I've endured from you--your drunkenness, your--"
+
+There was a maniac glare in the eyes of the man as he thrust his face
+still closer.
+
+"And what'll you do, eh?" he shouted violently. "What'll _you_ do?"
+
+She turned her face aside, in disgust of his reeking breath.
+
+"And what'll _you_ do? Tell me that!"
+
+"I'll leave you--"
+
+"You betcha life you'll leave me. I knew _that_ before you come into
+this room!"
+
+"And I'm sorry I didn't go long ago--"
+
+"The hell you are!" In a gust of uncontrollable frenzy, Quard struck her
+sharply over the mouth. "You go--d'you hear?--you damn'----"
+
+In blind fury Joan flung herself upon him, sobbing, biting, scratching,
+kicking. He reeled back before that unexpected assault, then, sobered a
+trifle by its viciousness, caught her wrists, held her helpless for an
+instant, and threw her violently from him. She fell to her knees,
+lurched over on her side....
+
+The door slammed: he was gone.
+
+[Illustration: The door slammed. He was gone.]
+
+She knew the man too well not to know he would make instantly for the
+nearest bar; the only question was what guise intoxication would assume
+in him, this time. It was possible that he would drink himself raving
+mad and return fit for murder.
+
+She must make her escape with all possible expedition....
+
+Instantly Joan sat up, dried her eyes, convulsively swallowed her sobs,
+and felt of her bruised mouth.
+
+Before her on the carpet the diamond ring winked sardonically in the
+sunset light.
+
+She pondered savagely the wide and deep damnation it had wrought in her
+life.
+
+It seemed impossible that only a few minutes had elapsed since she had
+entered this room, an affectionate, patient, and not unhappy wife. Now
+she sifted her heart and found in it not one grain of the love it had
+once held for Quard. This alone would have rendered irrevocable her
+decision to leave him.
+
+The thing was over--settled--finished.
+
+She gave a gesture of finality.
+
+With all her heart she hoped that the sketch would go to the devil
+without her....
+
+Rising, she went to the mirror, to stare incredulously at the face it
+presented for her inspection, a cruel caricature, lined, distorted,
+blowsy, stained with tears. At this vision, hysteria threatened again.
+
+With a great effort she fought it down, and controlled and smoothed out
+the muscles of her face. Now she was more recognizable. Even her mouth
+was not seriously disfigured; he had struck with the flat of his hand
+only; her lips were sore and slightly but not markedly swollen. A veil
+would disguise them completely.
+
+At the wash-stand she devoted some very valuable moments to sopping her
+face with cold water, and particularly her mouth and eyes. The treatment
+toned down the inflammation of weeping, rendered her flesh firm and cool
+once more, and left her with a feeling of spiritual refreshment, with
+nerves again under control and her will even more inalterably fixed than
+before.
+
+Rouge and powder completed her rejuvenescence.
+
+Turning to her trunk, she took out the tray--and paused with a low cry
+of consternation. From the tumbled and disordered state of its contents,
+it was plain that, having discovered the ring, Quard had searched
+diligently for further confirmation of his suspicions.
+
+With quickening breath, the girl dropped to her knees and hastily but
+thoroughly ransacked and turned out upon the floor all her belongings.
+Within a brief period she satisfied herself of one appalling fact: Quard
+had not only insulted and struck her and cast her off--he had stooped to
+rob her. Her hands were tied: she had not money enough to leave him.
+
+Probably, with the low cunning and fallacious reasoning of dipsomania,
+he had pouched her savings with that very thought in mind. Meaning to
+break with her, to have his scene and satisfy his lust for brutality, he
+had also planned to prevent Joan's leaving the cast of "The Lie" until a
+successor could be found and broken in. Penniless (he had argued) she
+would be obliged to play on, at least until Saturday, to earn her fare
+back East.
+
+It was Quard's practice to carry his money in large bills folded in a
+belt of oiled silk which he wore buckled round his waist, beneath his
+underclothing--with a smaller fund for running expenses in a leather
+bill-fold more accessibly disposed. But Joan (finding a money-belt
+uncomfortable because of her corsets) had adopted the shiftless plan of
+secreting her savings in a pocket contrived for that purpose in an old
+underskirt. And since she had always held her husband rigidly to account
+for her individual fifty dollars per week, she had managed thus to set
+aside about three hundred dollars. Unfortunately, it had been their
+habit to carry duplicate keys to one another's luggage by way of
+provision against loss.
+
+So that now she was left with less than twenty dollars in her
+pocket-book.
+
+She paced the floor in wrathful meditation, pondering means and
+expedients. Once or twice she noticed the ring, but passed it several
+times before she paused, picked it up, and abstractedly placed it on her
+finger.
+
+It did not once occur to her that she could raise money by hypothecating
+the jewel at a pawn-shop: by hook or crook she was determined to regain
+her own money. She was wondering what good it would do her to threaten
+Quard with arrest. Had a wife any right to her earnings, under the law?
+
+After a time, she opened her handbag, found her personal bunch of keys,
+and unlocked her husband's trunk. Her pains, however, went for nothing;
+she investigated diligently every pocket of his clothing without
+discovering a piece of money of any description. But one thing she did
+find to make her thoughtful--Quard's revolver....
+
+Removing this last, she relocked the trunk and rang for a bell-boy. Then
+she put the weapon on the bureau and covered it with her hat.
+
+The youth who answered had an intelligent look. Joan appraised him
+narrowly before trusting him. She opened negotiations with a dollar tip.
+
+"I want you to find my husband for me," she said. "If he's anywhere
+around the hotel, he'll probably be in the bar. But look everywhere, and
+then come and tell me. You needn't say anything to him. I just want to
+know where he is. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+"You'd know him if you saw him--Mr. Quard, the actor?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+"That's all. Hurry."
+
+As soon as the boy was gone she turned again to her luggage, selecting
+indispensable garments and toilet articles and packing them in a
+suit-case. By the time a knock sounded again upon the door, she had the
+case strapped and locked.
+
+"He ain't nowhere about the house, ma'm," the bell-boy reported. "He was
+in the bar a while, but he's went out."
+
+Joan nodded, was dumb in thought.
+
+"Do you want as I should go look for him, ma'am?"
+
+"Can you leave the hotel?" Joan asked quickly.
+
+"I'm just going off-duty now, ma'm; the night shift came on about ten
+minutes ago, at six o'clock."
+
+"And you think you could possibly find him?"
+
+"He took a cab, ma'm. The driver's stand is in front of the hotel. If I
+can find him, I can find where your husband went. Anyhow, it ain't hard
+to follow up a gentleman as--"
+
+"As drunk!" Joan put in when the boy hesitated.
+
+"Yes, ma'm."
+
+Joan weighed the chance distrustfully; but it was at least a chance, and
+this was no time to be careful. Taking a five-dollar gold-piece from her
+scanty store, she gave it to the boy.
+
+"Go find him," she said. "And if he seems to know what he's doing--just
+hang around until he doesn't: he won't keep you waiting long. Then bring
+him to me. But first take this suit-case down to the Union Ferry house,
+check it in the baggage-room, and give me the check when you bring him
+back. And--don't say anything to anybody."
+
+"Yes, ma'm--no, ma'm."
+
+Supperless, she sat down to wait, Quard's revolver ready to her hand.
+
+Twilight waned; night fell; hours passed. Motionless and imperturbable,
+Joan waited on, the tensity of her mood betrayed only by the burning of
+her baleful, dangerous eyes.
+
+At half-past nine a noise of scuffling feet, gruff voices and heavy
+breathing in the hallway, following the clash of an elevator gate,
+brought her to her feet. Going to the bureau, she opened a drawer and
+put the revolver away.
+
+There would be no need of that, now.
+
+Answering a knock, she threw the door wide. Two porters staggered in,
+one with the shoulders, one with the feet of Quard. The bell-boy
+followed. When they had lugged to the bed that inert and insensate thing
+she had once loved, Joan tipped the men and they departed. The boy
+lingered.
+
+"Is there anything more I can do, ma'm?"
+
+"Where did you find him?"
+
+"Down on the Coast. I don't know what wouldn't've happened to him if you
+hadn't sent me after him. He was up an alley--had been stuck up by a
+couple of strong-arms. I seen 'em making their get-away just as I come
+in sight."
+
+She uttered a cry of despair: "Robbed--you mean?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm. He ain't got as much's a nickel on him."
+
+Overwhelmed, Joan sank into a chair. The boy avoided her desolate eyes;
+he was a little afraid she might want part of the five dollars back.
+
+"Hadn't I better send the hotel doctor up, ma'm?"
+
+"Perhaps," she muttered dully.
+
+"Yes, ma'm. And here's the check for your suit-case. Nothing else? Good
+night, ma'm."
+
+The door closed.
+
+Of a sudden, Joan jumped up and ran to the bed in the alcove.
+
+Quard's condition was pitiable, but in her excited no compassion. His
+face was pallid as a death-mask save on one cheek-bone, where there was
+an angry and livid contusion. His hands were scratched, bleeding, and
+filthy, his clothing begrimed and torn, his pockets turned inside out.
+He seemed scarcely to breathe, and a thin froth flecked his slack and
+swollen lips.
+
+With feverish haste she unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and tugged at
+his undershirt. Then she sobbed aloud, a short, dry sob of relief. She
+had discovered the money-belt. In another minute she had unbuckled and
+withdrawn it from his body. She took it to the other room, to the light,
+and hastily undid its fastenings.
+
+There were perhaps two dozen fresh, new bills, for the most part of
+large denominations, folded once lengthwise to fit into the narrow
+silken tube; but someone knocked before she found time to reckon up
+their sum.
+
+Hastily cramming the money, together with the tell-tale belt, into her
+handbag, Joan took a deep breath and said "Come in!"
+
+There entered a grave man of middle-age, carrying a physician's satchel.
+
+He said, with a slight inclination of his head: "Mrs. Quard, I believe?"
+
+"Yes," Joan gasped. She nodded toward the alcove: "Your patient's in
+there."
+
+He murmured some acknowledgment, turning away to the bedside. For
+several minutes he worked steadily over the drunkard. While she waited,
+her wits awhirl, Joan mechanically pinned on her hat.
+
+Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat,
+turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing
+eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street.
+
+"Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear.
+
+"He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right.
+But I need your help. You were going out?"
+
+She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've
+got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the
+performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held
+up--all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday."
+
+"I see. And you can do without him?"
+
+"His understudy'll take his part--we'll manage somehow."
+
+"Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance--a trained nurse."
+
+"Do, please, doctor."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He moved toward the telephone.
+
+"I'll be back in about an hour."
+
+"Very well, Mrs. Quard."
+
+He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it....
+
+Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through
+a side door to the street.
+
+In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry.
+
+Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her
+transcontinental flight.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his
+feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window,
+began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration.
+
+But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not
+come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer
+mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned,
+discovered only an empty impasse.
+
+Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair,
+and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air
+fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like
+that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And
+truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for
+all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson
+border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed
+them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up.
+Curious whim of hers! Curious weather!
+
+Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to
+investigate these unseasonable phenomena.
+
+In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones,
+conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid
+opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow
+sunlight.
+
+In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim
+overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the
+earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an
+improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.
+
+At an open window across the way a public-spirited and extremely pretty
+young woman appeared with a towel pinned round her shoulders and let
+down her hair, a shimmering cascade of gold for the sun's rays to wanton
+with and, incidentally, to dry.
+
+Somewhere at a distance a cracked old piano-organ was romping and
+giggling rapturously through the syncopated measures of Tin Pan Alley's
+latest "rag."
+
+A vision drifted before Matthias' eyes, of the green slopes of
+Tanglewood, the white chateau on its windy headland, the ineffable blue
+of the Sound beyond....
+
+Incredulous, he turned to consult his calendar: the day was Wednesday,
+the seventeenth of April.
+
+It was true, then: almost without his knowledge the bleak and barren
+Winter had worn away and Spring had stolen upon Town, flaunting,
+extravagant, shy and seductive, irresistible Spring....
+
+For a little Matthias held back in doubt, with reluctant thoughts of his
+work. Then--all in a breath--he caught up hat and stick, slammed the
+door behind him, and blundered forth to fulfill his destiny....
+
+She was seated on a bench, in a retired spot sheltered from the breeze,
+open to the sun, when Matthias, having swung round the upper reservoir,
+came at full stride down the West Drive, his blood romping, his eyes
+aglow, warm colour in his face: for the first time in half a year
+feeling himself again, Matthias the lover of the open skies divorced
+from Matthias of the midnight lamp and the scored and intricate
+manuscripts--that Matthias whom the world rejected.
+
+At a word, her companion rose and moved to intercept him; and at the
+sound of his name, Matthias paused, wondering who she could be, this
+strange, sweet-faced woman, plainly dressed.
+
+"Yes?" he said, lifting his hat. "I am Mr. Matthias--yes--"
+
+"Mrs. Marbridge would like to speak to you."
+
+His gaze veered quickly in the direction indicated by her brief nod. He
+saw Venetia waiting, and immediately went to her, in his surprise
+forgetful of the woman who had accosted him. This last moved slowly in
+the other direction and sat down out of earshot.
+
+"This is awfully good of you, Venetia," he said, bending over her hand.
+"I didn't see you, of course--was thinking of something else--"
+
+"But I was thinking of you," she said. "I've been wanting to see you for
+a long time, Jack."
+
+"Surely Helena could have told you where to find me...."
+
+"I knew we'd run across one another, somehow, somewhere, sometime--today
+or tomorrow, without fail. So I was content to do without the offices of
+Helena. Do sit down. I want so much to talk to you."
+
+"Most completely yours to command," he said lightly, and took the place
+beside her.
+
+But his heart was on his lips and in his eyes, and Venetia was far from
+blind.
+
+"Then tell me about yourself," she asked. "It's been so long since I've
+had any news!"
+
+"Is it possible? I should have imagined my doting aunt--"
+
+She interrupted with a slight, negative smile and shake of her head:
+"Helena doesn't approve of me, you know, and of late there has been a
+decided coolness between the families. I'm afraid George fell out with
+Vincent for some reason--not too hard to guess, perhaps."
+
+He looked away, colouring with embarrassment.
+
+"So," she pursued evenly--"about yourself: are you married yet?"
+
+Matthias started, laughed frankly. "You didn't know about that,
+either?... Well, it's true even Helena couldn't have told you much, for
+I told her nothing.... No, I'm neither married, nor like to be."
+
+"She was so very sweet and pretty--"
+
+"Joan was wholly charming," he agreed gravely, "but--well, I fancy it
+was inevitable. We were lucky enough to be obliged to endure a
+separation of some weeks before, instead of after, marriage; and so we
+had time to think. At least, she must have foreseen the mistake we were
+on the point of making, for the break was her own doing--not mine."
+
+"You think it would have been a mistake?"
+
+"Oh, unquestionably. I confess I'd not have known it, probably, until
+too late, if she hadn't made me think when she threw me over. I hope it
+doesn't sound caddish--but I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief
+when I got back from California and found she'd cleared out without
+leaving me a line."
+
+"I think I understand. And did you never hear from her?"
+
+"Not from--by accident, _of_ her. She was predestined for the stage--I
+can see that clearly now, though I objected then. She was offered a
+chance during my absence, jumped at it, and made a sort of a half-way
+hit in a very successful sketch which, oddly enough, I happened to have
+written--under a pseudonym. It had been kicking round my agent's office
+for a year; he didn't believe in it any more than I did; and I
+disbelieved in it hard enough to be ashamed to put my own name to it.
+That's often the way with a fellow's work; one always believes in the
+cripples, you know.... Well, some actor chanced to get hold of the
+'script one day, fell in love with it and put it on with Joan as his
+leading woman. If it had been anybody else's sketch, I'd never have
+known what became of her, probably. As it was, I knew nothing until I
+got back from the Coast.... I believe they got married very shortly
+after it was produced; and now they're playing it all over the country.
+Odd, isn't it?"
+
+"Very," Venetia smiled. "And so your heart wasn't broken?"
+
+He shook his head and laughed: "No!"
+
+But a spasm of pain shot through his eyes and deceived the woman a
+little longer.
+
+"And what have you been doing?" she pursued, meaning to distract him. "I
+mean, your work?"
+
+He shrugged. "Oh, I've had an average luckless year. To begin with,
+Rideout fell down on his production of 'The Jade God'--the only time it
+ever had a chance to get over--and a man named Algerson bought his
+contract and put it on at his stock theatre in Los Angeles. That's why I
+went out there--to see it butchered."
+
+"It failed?"
+
+"Extravagantly!"
+
+"But didn't you once have a great deal of confidence in it?"
+
+"Every play is a valuable property until it's produced," he answered,
+smiling. "This one was killed by its production. Nothing was right: it
+needed scenery, and what they gave it had served a decade in stock; it
+needed actors, and what actors were accidentally permitted to get into
+the cast got the wrong roles; finally, it needed intelligent stage
+direction, and that was supplied by the star, whose idea of a good play
+is one in which he speaks everybody's lines _and_ his own. Then they
+rewrote most of the best scenes and botched them horribly."
+
+"You couldn't stop them?"
+
+"When I attempted to interfere, I was told civilly to go to the devil.
+Under my contract, I could have stopped them: but that meant suing out
+an injunction, which in turn meant putting up a bond, and--I didn't have
+the money."
+
+"I'm so sorry, Jack!"
+
+"Oh, it's all in the game. I learned something, at least. But the
+greatest harm it did me was to sap the faith of managers here. One
+man--Wylie--who was under contract to produce my 'Tomorrow's People,'
+paid me on January first a forfeit of five hundred dollars rather than
+run the risk after 'The Jade God.'"
+
+"And so you lost both plays?"
+
+"Oh, no; I still have 'Tomorrow's People,' and only a short time ago
+signed up with a manager who isn't afraid of his shadow. We'll put it on
+next Autumn."
+
+"And you believe in that, too?"
+
+"I know it will go," Matthias asserted with level confidence. "It's only
+a question of intelligence at the producing end--and I've arranged to
+get that."
+
+"And meanwhile--you've been working?"
+
+"Oh"--he spread out his hands--"one doesn't stop, you know. It's too
+interesting!"
+
+And then he laughed again. "But, you see, you flatter a fellow into
+talking his head off about himself! Forgive me, and let me do a little
+cross-examining. How are you? And what have you been doing? You--you
+know, Venetia--you're looking more exquisitely pretty than ever!"
+
+And so she was--more strangely lovely than ever in all the long span of
+their friendship: with a deeper radiance in her face, a clearer, more
+translucent pallor, in her eyes a splendour that lent new dignity to
+their violet-shadowed mystery.
+
+"I'm glad of that," she said quietly. She folded listless hands in her
+lap, her eyes seeking distances. "I'm going to be very happy ... I
+think...."
+
+He looked up sharply.
+
+That she wasn't happy now, he could well understand: that Marbridge was
+behaving badly was something rather too broadly published by the very
+publicity of his methods. Marriage had not been permitted to
+interfere--at least, not after his return from Europe--with the ordinary
+tenor of his bachelor ways. Matthias himself had seen him not
+infrequently in theatres and restaurants, but only once in company with
+Venetia--most often he had been dancing attendance upon a Mrs. Cardrow:
+she who had given her lips to Matthias, thinking him Marbridge, that
+long-ago night at Tanglewood. She was said to be stage-struck; and
+Marbridge was rumoured to be deeply, though quietly, involved in the
+financing of certain theatrical enterprises.
+
+Surely, then, Venetia must know what everybody knew, and be unhappy in
+that knowledge.
+
+But now she was so calmly confident that she was "going to be happy"!
+
+He wondered if she were contemplating divorce....
+
+And then in a flash he understood. That woman who had stopped him was
+not of Venetia's caste; if he guessed not wildly, she was a nurse. And
+Venetia afoot instead of in her limousine....
+
+She turned her eyes to his, smiling with a certain diffident, sweet
+sedateness. "You didn't know, Jack?"
+
+He shook his head, looking quickly away.
+
+"But you've guessed?"
+
+"Yes," he replied in a low voice.
+
+Her hand fell lightly over his for a single instant. "Then be glad for
+me, Jack," she begged gently. "It's--it's compensation."
+
+"I understand," he said, "and I'm truly very glad. It's kind of you
+to--to tell me, Venetia."
+
+"It changes everything," she said pensively: "all my world is changed,
+and I am a new strange woman, seeing it with new eyes. I have learned so
+much--and in so short a time--I can hardly believe it. To think, it's
+not a year since that time at Tanglewood--!"
+
+"Please!" he begged.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, Jack. But it's that I wanted to talk to
+you about. You won't mind, when you understand, as I have learned to
+understand.... I tell you, I'm altogether another woman. Marriage is
+like learning to live in a foreign land, but motherhood is another
+world. I find it difficult to realize Venetia of a year ago: she's like
+some strange creature I once knew but never quite understood. And yet,
+little as I understood her, I can make excuses for her: I know her
+impulses were not bad. I know, better than she knew ... she loved you,
+Jack."
+
+"You must not say that, Venetia!"
+
+"But it's true, my dear, most true," she insisted in her voice of gentle
+magic. "The rest ... was just madness, the sort of madness that some men
+have the power to--to kindle in women. It's a deadly power, very
+terrible, and they--who have it--use it as carelessly as children
+playing with matches and gunpowder--"
+
+"Oh, I understand, Venetia, I understand! Don't--"
+
+"No--let me tell you. I've got to, Jack. I've had this so long in my
+heart to tell you!... You must be patient with me, this once, and
+listen.... You must know that I loved you then when I--ran to you--threw
+myself into your arms--made you ask me to marry you and promised I would
+and--and thought that I was safe from _him_ because of my promise. But I
+didn't know myself--nor him. He seemed able to make his will my law so
+easily--so strangely!... Even when I ran away with him, I knew that
+happiness could never come of it.... It was just the madness ... I
+couldn't help myself ... I just could not _help_ myself.... And
+then--ah, but I have paid for my madness--many times over!..."
+
+For the moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. The woman bent
+forward to gain a glimpse of his half-averted face, and searched it
+anxiously with her haunted eyes.
+
+"You do understand, Jack?... You forgive?..."
+
+"There isn't any question of forgiveness," he said. "And I always
+understood--half-way. You know that--you must have known it, or you
+couldn't have said--what you have--to me."
+
+The woman laughed a little, tender, broken laugh.
+
+"I am so glad!" she said softly. "Perhaps it's wrong.... But you've made
+me a little happier. I have needed so desperately someone to confess
+to--someone on whose sympathy I could count. And--Jack--the only one in
+the world was you.... You--you've helped."
+
+She rose, holding out both hands to him, and as he took them and held
+them tight he saw that her lovely eyes were wide and dim with tears.
+
+"You've proved my faith in you," she said--"my gentle man--my knight
+sans peur et sans reproche!"
+
+He bent his head to her hands, but before his lips could touch them,
+very gently she drew them away, and turned and left him.
+
+Bareheaded and wondering, for a long time he stood staring at the spot
+where, in company with the nurse, she had disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan
+had reserved for her sole accommodation--in spite of the strain of
+thrift ingrained in her nature--she retired to it, buttoned securely the
+heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that
+state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then,
+by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out
+the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from
+Quard.
+
+The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She
+hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash.
+
+Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat
+packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of
+her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The
+remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to
+New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in
+one of her stockings.
+
+Then extinguishing the light, she lay back, but not to sleep. The
+pressure of her emotions was too strong to let her lose touch with
+consciousness. As a general rule, sleeping-cars had no terrors for Joan;
+never a nervous woman, her thoroughly sound and healthy organization
+permitted her to sleep almost at will, even under such discouraging
+circumstances as those provided by modern railway accommodations. But
+that night she lay awake till dawn flushed the windows with its wash of
+grey, awake and staring wide of eye into the gloom of her section,
+listening to the snores of conscienceless neighbours, and thinking,
+thinking--thinking endlessly and acutely.
+
+But they were thoughts singularly uncoloured by remorse for what she had
+done or fear of its consequences.
+
+She was not in the least sorry she had taken Quard's money; she was
+glad. The mere amount of it was proof enough for Joan that her husband
+had lied to her about the earnings of the sketch, had lied from the very
+beginning; otherwise he could by no means have laid by so much in the
+term of their booking to date. And for that, he deserved to suffer. She
+was only sorry he might not be made to understand how heavily he was
+paying for those months of deception. But that was something Quard would
+never know: with the story of the bell-boy he must be content; he must
+go through life placing the blame of his misfortune upon the heads of
+those nameless "stick-up men" of the Barbary Coast.
+
+Nor was he likely to suffer otherwise. Joan was confident the man would
+manage somehow to find his feet financially, almost as soon as
+physically. A telegram to his agent, Boskerk, would bring him aid if all
+else failed; the play was too constant an earner of heavy commissions
+for Boskerk to let it fall by the wayside for lack of a few hundred
+dollars. So was it too strong a "draw" on the vaudeville circuits to be
+blacklisted and barred by managers because of the temporary break-down:
+something which Quard would readily explain and excuse (and Joan could
+imagine how persuasively) with his moving yarn of foot-pads and
+knock-out drops. Nor would it be more than a temporary break-down; with
+Quard restored to his senses, the absence of the leading woman would
+prove merely a negligible check. Joan entertained no illusions as to her
+indispensability: once, in Denver, when she had been out of the cast for
+two consecutive performances, suffering with an ulcerated tooth, another
+actress had gone on and actually read the part from manuscript without
+materially lessening the dramatic effect of the playlet as a whole.
+Other women by the score could be found to fill her place acceptably
+enough, if few as handsomely (Joan soothed her pride with this
+reservation). "The Lie" would go on its conquering way without
+her--never fear!
+
+And Quard? Joan curled a lip: _he_ wouldn't pine away for her. She had
+come to know too well his shallow bag of tricks; and life to him was not
+life if he lacked one before whose dazzled vision he could air his
+graces and accomplishments--strut and crow and trail a handsome wing in
+the dust. Looking back she could see very clearly, now, how love had
+waned as soon as lust was sated in the man. That night in Cincinnati had
+been the turning point: he had refrained from drink only as long as his
+wife continued to intoxicate his senses.
+
+And Joan?... In the stifling gloom of her curtained section the girl
+stretched luxuriously, breathed deep, and smiled a secret, enigmatic
+smile. No more than he, would she waste herself away with grief and
+longing. She was no longer another's but now her own mistress: a free
+adventurer, by the gold band upon her finger licensed to cruise with
+letters of marque.
+
+Shortly before sunrise she fell asleep, still smiling, and slept on
+sweetly well into mid-morning. Then, rising, she refreshed herself in
+the wash-room, and went to a late breakfast with countenance as clear
+and firm and bright as if she had never known a wakeful hour.
+
+The eyes of men followed her wherever she moved, and when she was seated
+alone in her section, dreaming over a magazine or gazing pensively out
+of the window, men discovered errands that took them to and fro in her
+vicinity more often than was warranted by any encouragement she gave
+them. For she gave them none, she ignored them every one. She was
+through with Man for good and all!
+
+It was a brand new role, and to play it diverted her immensely for the
+time being....
+
+She spent the greater part of her waking hours, during the next few
+days, planning what she would do with all that money. Clothes, of
+course, figured ever first in these projections, and then a suite of
+rooms at some ostentatious hotel, and taxicabs when she went out to call
+on managers. How many times hadn't she heard Maizie Dean solemnly affirm
+that "a swell front does more to put you in _right_ than anything else,
+with them lowlifers"?
+
+And again she was pleasurably diverted by a vision of herself,
+extravagantly gowned, returning to recount her Odyssey to an admiring
+audience composed of Ma, Edna, and, perhaps, Butch; at the close of
+which she would distribute largesse, not forgetting to return Butch's
+loan with open-handed interest, and go on her way rejoicing, pursued by
+envious benedictions....
+
+New York received her like a bridegroom, clothed in April sunshine as in
+a suit of golden mail, amazingly splendid and joyous. After that weary
+grind of inland towns and cities, differing one from another only in
+degrees of griminess, greyness, and dullness, New York seemed Paradise
+Regained to Joan. She had not believed it could seem so beautiful, so
+magnificent, so sensuously seductive.
+
+In the exaltation of that delirious hour she plunged madly into a
+department store near the Pennsylvania Station, even before securing
+lodgings, and bought herself a pair of cheap white kid gloves, simply
+for the sheer voluptuousness of possessing once again something newly
+purchased in New York.
+
+It was the beginning of an orgy. Joan hadn't thought how shabby and
+travel-worn she must seem until she donned those fresh and staring
+gloves and saw them in relief against the wrinkled and dusty garments
+she had worn across the continent.
+
+Thoughtful, she sought a nearby mirror and looked herself over, then
+shook her head and turned away to check her suit-case at the parcels
+desk and surrender herself body and mind to the sweet dissipation of
+clothing herself afresh from top to toe....
+
+But first of all she visited the hairdressing and manicuring department:
+she meant to be altogether spick-and-span before venturing forth to woo
+and win anew this old and misprized lover, her New York.
+
+It was the head saleswoman of the suit department whose remote disdain
+led Joan deeper into extravagance.
+
+The girl had selected a taffeta costume which, while by no means the
+most expensive or the handsomest in stock, possessed the advantage of
+fitting well her average figure, requiring no alterations. On paying for
+it she announced her desire to put it on at once and have her old suit
+sent home.
+
+"Reully?" drawled the saleswoman, disappointed in her efforts to induce
+the girl to buy a higher-priced suit which did require alterations.
+Conjuring a pencil from the fastnesses of her back-hair, she produced an
+order pad. "Miss--what did you say? Ah, Thursday! Thanks. What numba,
+please? _Is_ it in the city?"
+
+Joan flushed, but controlled her impulse to wither and blast this
+insolent animal.
+
+"The Waldorf-Astoria," she said quietly--though never once had she
+ventured within the doors of that establishment--and withdrew in triumph
+to make her change of clothing.
+
+And having committed herself to this extent, she enjoyed ordering
+everything sent to that hotel, which in her as yet somewhat naive
+understanding was synonymous with the last word in the sybaritism of
+metropolitan life.
+
+Her long experience on the road had served thoroughly to break her in to
+the ways of hotels, however, and she betrayed no diffidence in the
+matter of approaching the room-clerk for accommodations. Nor did she,
+apparently, find anything dismaying in the price she was asked to pay
+for a bedroom with private bath. It was only when, at length relieved
+of the attentions of the bell-boy whose unconcealed admiration alone was
+worth the quarter Joan gave him as a tip, she had inspected first her
+new quarters and then herself in a pier-glass, that the girl gave
+herself over to alternate tremors of self-approval and trepidation.
+These last were only increased when she reckoned up the money she had
+left, and appreciated how much she had spent in that one wild afternoon
+of shopping.
+
+On the other hand, she reminded herself, a complete new wardrobe was a
+necessity to one whose former outfit was lost beyond recall. Quard would
+never have forwarded the clothing she had left behind in San Francisco,
+even if she could have found the effrontery to write and demand it. And
+if she had expended upwards of five hundred dollars since reaching New
+York, there was less extravagance in that than might have been
+suspected; she had purchased cannily in almost every instance and, at
+worst, but few things that she could well have done without in that
+sphere of life to which she felt herself called.
+
+The excitement of unwrapping those parcels which began presently to
+arrive in shoals, and of reviewing such purchases as she had not worn to
+the hotel on her back, in time completely reassured her. It was with the
+composure of restored self-confidence and esteem that she presently went
+down to dinner.
+
+Conscious that she was looking her handsome best in a modish afternoon
+gown, she was able to receive the attentions of the head-waiter with
+just the proper degree of indifference, to order a simple meal and
+consume it appreciatively without seeming aware that she dined in
+strange surroundings.
+
+But all the while she was consumed with admiration of herself for her
+audacity, as well as with not a little awe-stricken wonder at the child
+of fortune, who in the space of one brief year--of less, indeed, than
+that full period--had risen from the stocking-counter of a department
+store and the squalor and poverty of East Seventy-sixth Street to the
+dignity of a leading woman and the affluence of lodging at the Waldorf!
+
+True, she now lacked an engagement; but she had to support her demands
+for new employment the prestige of a successful season with "The
+Lie"--"the vaudeville sensation of the year," as Quard had truthfully
+described it.
+
+Need she fret herself with vain questionings of an inscrutable future,
+who had made such amazing progress in so short a time?
+
+Surely she was justified in assuming that the end for her was not yet,
+that she was dedicated to some far richer and more gorgeous destiny than
+any she had ever conceived in her most wild imaginings.
+
+She had only to watch herself: she was her own sole enemy, with her
+fondness for the admiration of men and their society. Let them realize
+that weakness, and she was lost, doomed to the way too many capable
+girls had gone, to the end of infamy and despair. But if only she had
+the wit and art to make men think her weakness theirs....
+
+And that much Joan was sure she possessed: she believed she had learned
+to know Man better than herself.
+
+She meant to go far, now, a great deal farther than she had ever thought
+to go in those quaint, far-off days when the crown of her ambition had
+been to paint her pretty face, wear silken tights upon her pretty legs,
+and beat a drum in the chorus of Ziegfield's Follies.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+After dinner Joan treated herself to the experience of lounging in one
+of the corridors of the hotel, the one (she fancied: she wasn't sure)
+known through the Town as "Peacock Alley."
+
+She pretended to be waiting for somebody, made her gaze seem more
+abstracted than demure. Inwardly she quivered with the excitement, the
+exaltation of forming a part of that rich and sensuous scene.
+
+There were women all about her, many women of all ages and from every
+grade of society, alike in one respect alone, that they were radiantly
+dressed and, like Joan, found pleasure in sunning themselves in the
+soft, diffused glow of the many shaded electric lamps as well as in the
+regard, as a rule less shaded, of that endless parade of men who moved,
+sometimes alone, again with other men, more commonly with women,
+continually from one part to another of the hotel.
+
+Muted strains from an excellent orchestra, not too near, added the final
+touch of enchantment to this ensemble.
+
+Entranced though, indeed, seeming little more conscious of her
+surroundings than one in a day-dream, Joan was acutely sensitive to all
+that passed in her vicinity. Not a woman came within the range of her
+vision without being critically inspected, dissected, analyzed,
+catalogued, both as to her apparel and as to the foundations for her
+pretensions to social position or beauty. Not a man strolled by, were he
+splendid in evening dress or merely "smart" in the ubiquitous "sack
+suit" of the period, without being scrutinized and appraised with a
+minute attention to detail that would have flattered him had it been
+less covert.
+
+Joan felt the lust for this life burning like a fire through all her
+being: there was nothing she could imagine more desirable than to live
+always as lived, apparently, these hundreds of well-groomed,
+high-spirited, carefree people....
+
+She had been steeping her soul in the blandishments of this atmosphere
+for fully half an hour, and was beginning to think it time to return to
+her room, when she was momentarily startled out of her assumed
+preoccupation by sight of one who hadn't been far from her thoughts at
+any time since her break with Quard.
+
+He came walking her way from the general direction of the bar, with
+another man--both attired as richly as masculine conventions permit in
+America, and not altogether unconscious of the fact, each in his way
+guilty of a mild degree of swagger. Of the two, the one betraying the
+most ease and freedom from ostentation was one known to Joan, chiefly
+through the medium of his portraits published in _The Morning Telegraph_
+and other theatrical organs, as "Arlie" Arlington, a producing manager
+locally famous both for his wit and the shrewdness and success with
+which he contrived to gauge, year in, year out, public taste in musical
+comedies. Broadway had tagged him "the only trustworthy friend of the
+Tired Business Man." Infrequently Arlington adventured in plays without
+music or dancing, but as a rule with far less success.
+
+His companion, the man whom, Joan felt, she had been subconsciously
+waiting for ever since entering the hotel, was Vincent Marbridge.
+
+She was impressed with the appositeness of his appearance there to her
+unexpressed desire, this man who had been so plainly struck by her
+charms at first sight and who was credited with silent partnership in
+many of Arlington's enterprises. And comprehending for the first time
+fully how much she had been subjectively counting on meeting him again
+and enlisting his sympathies--his sympathies at least--she steeled
+herself against the shock of recognition, lest she betray her fast
+mounting anxiety. He must not for a moment be permitted to suspect she
+considered him anything but the most distant of acquaintances or
+believed him to have been the anonymous author of that magnificent gift
+of roses....
+
+But Marbridge passed without seeing her, at all events without knowing
+that he saw her. Rolling a little as he walked, with that individual
+sway of his body from the hips, he leaned slightly toward Arlington and
+gesticulated with immense animation while recounting some inaudible
+anecdote which seemed to amuse both men mightily. And in the swing of
+his narrative his glance, wandering, flickered across Joan's face and on
+without in the least comprehending her as anything more than a lay
+figure in a familiar setting.
+
+But Arlington, less distracted, looked once keenly, and after he had
+passed turned to look again.
+
+In spite of this balm to her vanity, Joan flushed with chagrin. She knew
+in her heart that Marbridge had not other than inadvertently slighted
+her; yet she felt the cut as keenly as though it had been grossly
+intentional.
+
+Nevertheless she waited there for many minutes more, in the hope that he
+would return and this time know her.
+
+At length, however, she saw the two men again, at some distance,
+standing by the revolving doors at the Thirty-third Street entrance.
+Both now wore top-coats and hats. Marbridge was still talking, and
+Arlington listening with the same expression of faintly constrained but
+on the whole genuine amusement. And almost as soon as Joan discovered
+them, they were joined by two women in brilliant evening gowns and
+wraps. An instant later the party was feeding itself into the
+inappeasable hopper of the revolving door, and so disappeared.
+
+A prey to a sudden sensation of intense loneliness and
+disappointment--and with this a trace of jealousy; for in spite of the
+distance she had been able to see that both women were very
+lovely--Joan got up and returned to her room....
+
+An hour later she rose from a restless attempt to go to sleep, went to
+the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to find out whether or
+not Mr. Vincent Marbridge was a guest of the hotel.
+
+The answer was in the affirmative, if modified by the information that
+the party wasn't in just then.
+
+Intensely gratified, the girl went back to bed and promptly fell asleep
+formulating ingenious schemes to meet Marbridge by ostensible accident.
+
+On the following day she lunched at the hotel, spent two fruitless hours
+in its public corridors between tea time and time to dress for dinner,
+and another in Peacock Alley after dinner, seeing nothing whatever of
+Marbridge.
+
+And the day after provided her with a fatiguing repetition of this
+experience.
+
+She began to be tremendously bored by this mode of existence, to sense
+the emptiness, the vapidity of hotel life for a friendless woman.
+
+Once or twice she revived and let her fancy play about her project to
+revisit her family in the guise of Lady Bountiful, but only to defer its
+execution against the time when she could go to them with another
+engagement to drive home the stupendous proportions of her success.
+
+Besides (she told herself) they seemed to be worrying along without her,
+all right. If they cared anything about her, they could have written, at
+least; Edna had the West Forty-sixth Street address....
+
+Not once or twice but many a time and oft she found herself yearning
+back to the homely society of the Sisters Dean's salon in the
+establishment of Madame Duprat. And though she held back from revisiting
+the house through fear of meeting Matthias, she wasted many an hour
+promenading Broadway from Thirty-eighth Street north to Forty-eighth,
+in the hope of encountering Maizie or May or one of their friends.
+
+But it was singularly her fate to espy not one familiar face among the
+multitude her wistful eyes reviewed during those dreary mid-afternoon
+patrols.
+
+Everybody she knew, it would seem, was either busy or resting out of
+town.
+
+On her fourth morning at the Waldorf, reading _The Morning Telegraph_
+over the breakfast tray in her room, Joan ran across an illuminating
+news item that carried a Buffalo date line. It chronicled the first
+performance of Arlington's most recent venture, "Mrs. Mixer," announced
+as a satirical comedy of manners by an author unknown either to Joan or
+to fame, and projected by Arlington as a vehicle to exploit the putative
+talents of Nella Cardrow, "the stage's latest recruit from the Four
+Hundred." The Buffalo performance was, it appeared, the first of a
+fortnight's trial on the road, following which the production was to be
+withdrawn pending a metropolitan debut in the Autumn.
+
+The story of the first night was infused with a thinly sarcastic humour.
+
+"After the final curtain," it pursued, "the audience filed reverently
+from the house, omitting flowers, and Arlie Arlington broke a track
+record reaching the nearest Western Union office to summon several
+well-known ante-mortem specialists of New York to the bedside of the
+patient. Meanwhile, Vincent Marbridge was hastily organized into a posse
+of one to prevent Undertaker Cain from laying hands upon the sufferer
+and carting it off to what might prove premature interment in the
+mausoleum of his celebrated storage warehouses...."
+
+Dropping the paper, Joan went directly to the telephone and asked the
+office to have her bill ready within an hour's time.
+
+From this she turned to pack her new possessions in a trunk as new.
+
+It had never occurred to her that Marbridge might have left the hotel.
+
+Now she said that it was "just her luck!..."
+
+By one o'clock that afternoon she had shifted bag and baggage to a
+stuffy and poorly furnished bedchamber in a crowded, noisy, and not
+overclean theatrical hotel situated on a corner of Longacre Square.
+
+This establishment consisted of an old and rambling structure of four
+storeys, of which the street floor was given over to tradesmen. An
+all-night drug-store held the corner shop, while other subdivisions were
+occupied by a "tonsorial parlor," a dairy-lunch room in the favour of
+many taxicab chauffeurs, a boot-blacking business, and a theatrical
+hair-dresser's. Next door, off Broadway, stood one of those reticent
+brown-stone residences with perennially shuttered windows and a
+front-door to all appearances hermetically sealed, but negotiable, none
+the less, to those whom fortune had favoured with the password and
+sufficient money and witlessness to make them welcome with proprietors
+of crooked gambling layouts. Across the street rose the side wall of a
+theatre, decorated with an angular iron fire-escape.
+
+The day was almost unseasonably warm, but the hour appointed when the
+city should blossom out in awnings had not arrived. Joan's room was hot
+with sunlight that mercilessly enhanced the shabbiness of all its
+appointments, from the stained and threadbare carpet to the cheap bureau
+with its mottled, dark mirror, and the scorched and blistered edges of
+its top where cigarettes had been suffered to burn out, forgotten.
+
+But when Joan had unpacked and disposed of her belongings, she went to
+the window as she was, in a loose kimono generously open at the throat,
+and stood there for a long time, contentedly looking out.
+
+Taxicabs darted or stood with motors sonorously rumbling in the street
+below. Round the corner, Longacre Square roared with the traffic of its
+several lines of surface-cars and its unending procession of
+motor-driven vehicles. The windows of the theatre across the way were
+open, and through them drifted the clatter of a piano with the surge of
+half a hundred feminine voices repeating over and over the burden of a
+chorus--betraying the fact that a rehearsal was in progress. At one of
+the open fire-escape exits lounged a youth in his shirt-sleeves, smoking
+a cigarette, and conversing amiably with a young woman in a
+stiffly-starched white shirtwaist, ankle-length skirt, and brazen hair:
+principals, Joan surmised, waiting for their turn, when the chorus had
+learned its business acceptably.
+
+Nearer at hand, in the room to the right of Joan's, a woman with a good
+voice was humming absently an aria from "La Tosca," while to the left
+another woman was audible, her strained and nervous accents stuttering
+on in an endless monologue of abuse, evidently aimed at the head of a
+husband who, if he had been "drinking again," retained at least wit
+enough to attempt no sort of interruption or rejoinder.
+
+Joan smiled in comprehension.
+
+Breathing long and deep of tepid air flavoured strongly with dust and
+the effluvia of dead cigars and cigarettes, she turned away from the
+window, lifted her arms and spread them wide, luxuriously.
+
+"Thank God!" she murmured with profound sincerity--"for a place you can
+stretch in!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+With scant delay Joan began to pick up acquaintances: nothing is easier
+in that milieu to which the girl dedicated herself.
+
+The process of widening her circle began with meeting the girl whom Joan
+had heard singing in the adjoining bedchamber. They passed twice in the
+corridors of the Astoria Inn before Joan had been resident there
+twenty-four hours, and on the second occasion the girl with the voice
+nodded in a friendly way and enquired if Joan didn't think the weather
+was simply awf'ly lovely today. Joan replied in the affirmative, and
+their acquaintanceship languished for as long as twelve hours. Then,
+toward six in the evening, the girl presented herself at Joan's door in
+a condition of candid deshabille, wishing to borrow a pair of
+curling-irons. Being accommodated, she came on into the room, perched
+herself on the edge of the bed, and made herself known.
+
+Her name was Minnie Hession and she had been singing in the chorus for
+seven years. Originally a prettyish, plump-bodied brunette, she was at
+present what she herself termed "black-and-tan": in the middle of the
+process of "letting her hair go back." Her father was Chief of Police of
+some Western city (name purposely withheld: Joan was, however, assured
+that she would be surprised if she knew _what_ city) and her folks had
+heaps of money and had been wild with her when she insisted on going on
+the stage.
+
+"But, goodness, dearie, when you've got tempryment, whatcha goin' to do?
+Nobody outsida the business ever understands."
+
+All the same, much as the folks disapproved of her carving out a career
+for herself, whenever she got hard up all she had to do was telegraph
+straight back home....
+
+She was, of course, at present without employment; but Joan was advised
+to wait until Arlie Arlington got back into Town; Arlie never forgot a
+girl who had not only a good voice but _some_ figure, if Miss Hession
+did say it herself.
+
+They went shopping together the following afternoon, and in the evening
+dined together at a cheap Italian restaurant, counterpart of that to
+which Quard had first introduced Joan and the Sisters Dean. Joan paid
+the bill, by no means a heavy one, and before they went home stood treat
+for "the movies."
+
+After that their friendship ripened at a famous rate, if exclusively at
+Joan's expense.
+
+Before it had endured a week Joan had loaned Minnie ten dollars. Toward
+the end of its first fortnight she mortally offended the girl by
+refusing her an additional twenty, and the next day Minnie moved from
+the Astoria Inn without the formality of paying her bill or even of
+giving notice. The management philosophically confiscated an empty
+suit-case which she had been too timorous to attempt to smuggle out of
+the house--everything else in her room had mysteriously vanished--and
+considered the incident closed. In this the management demonstrated its
+wisdom in its day and generation: it never saw Miss Hession again.
+
+Nor did Joan.
+
+But through the chorus girl, as well as independently, Joan had
+contracted many other fugitive friendships. She never lacked society,
+after that, whether masculine or feminine. Men liked her for her good
+looks and unaffected high spirits; women tolerated her for two reasons,
+because she was always willing to pay not only her own way but
+another's, and because she was what they considered a "swell dresser":
+her presence was an asset to whatever party she lent her countenance.
+
+Frankly revelling in freedom regained, and intoxicated by possession of
+a considerable amount of money, she let herself go for a time, quite
+heedless of expense or consequence. Within a month she had become a
+familiar figure in such restaurants as Burns', Churchill's, and
+Shanley's; and her laughter was not infrequently heard in Jack's when
+all other places of its class boasted closed doors and drawn blinds.
+
+Inevitably she acquired a somewhat extensive knowledge of drink. Most of
+all she learned to love that champagne which Matthias had been too
+judicious to supply her and from which she had abstained out of
+consideration for Quard's weakness. But now there was no reason why she
+should not enjoy it in such moderation as was practised by her chosen
+associates. She preferred certain sweetish and heady brands whose
+correspondingly low cost rendered them more easy to obtain....
+
+But with all this she never failed to practise a certain amount of
+circumspection. In one respect, she refrained from growing too
+confidential about herself. That she had been the leading woman with
+"The Lie" was something to brag about: the very cards which she had been
+quick to have printed proclaimed the fact loudly in imitation Old
+English engraving. But that she had been wife to its star was something
+which she was not long in discovering wasn't generally known. The
+success of the sketch was a by-word of envy among actors facing the
+prospect of an idle summer; and the route columns of _Variety_ told her
+that, in line with her prediction, Quard had somehow surmounted his San
+Francisco predicament and was continuing to guide the little play upon
+its triumphal course. But Quard himself had always been too closely
+identified with stock companies of the second class to have many friends
+among those with whom his wife was now thrown: actors for the most part
+of the so-called legitimate stage, with scant knowledge or experience
+(little, at least, that they would own to) of theatrical conditions away
+from Broadway and the leading theatres of a few principal cities. So
+Joan kept her own counsel about her matrimonial adventure: its
+publication could do her no good, if possibly no harm; and she preferred
+the freedom of ostensible spinsterhood. Her wedding-ring had long since
+disappeared from her hand, giving place to the handsome diamond with
+which Matthias had pledged her his faith.
+
+Furthermore, such dissipation as she indulged in was never permitted to
+carry her beyond the border-line which, in her understanding, limited
+discretion in her relations with men. She enjoyed leading them on, but
+marriage had made her too completely cognizant of herself to permit of
+any affair going beyond a certain clearly defined point: she couldn't
+afford to throw herself away. And more than once she checked sharply and
+left an undrained glass, warned by her throbbing pulses that she was
+responding a trace too ardently to the admiration in the eyes of some
+male companion of the evening.
+
+But there were only two whom she held dangerous to her peace of mind,
+one because she was afraid of him, the other because she admired him
+against her will.
+
+The first was an eccentric dancer and comedian calling himself Billy
+Salute. A man of middle-age and old beyond his years in viciousness, the
+gymnastic violence of his calling in great measure counteracted the
+effects of his excesses and kept him young in body. He was a constant
+and heavy but what was known to Joan's circle as a safe drinker;
+drunkenness never obliterated his consciousness or disturbed his
+physical equilibrium; in spite of its web of wrinkles, his skin remained
+fair and clear as a boy's, and retained much of the fresh colouring of
+youth. But his eyes were cold and hard and profoundly informed with
+knowledge of womankind. His regard affected Joan as had Marbridge's,
+that day at Tanglewood; under its analysis she felt herself denuded;
+pretence were futile to combat it: the man _knew_ her.
+
+He made no advances; but he watched her closely whenever they were
+together; and she knew that he was only waiting, patient in the
+conviction that he had only to wait.
+
+And thus he affected her with such fear and fascination that she avoided
+him as much as possible; but he was never far out of her thoughts; he
+lingered always on the horizon of her consciousness like the seemingly
+immobile yet portentous bank of cloud that masks the fury of a summer
+storm....
+
+The other man pursued her without ceasing. He was young, not over
+twenty-five or six--an age to which Joan felt herself immeasurably
+superior in the knowledge and practice of life--and happened to be the
+one man of her acquaintance who was neither an actor nor connected with
+the business side of the stage. By some accident he had blundered from
+newspaper reporting to writing for cheaply sensational magazines, and
+from this to writing for the stage. It is true that his achievements in
+this last quarter had thus far been confined to collaboration with a
+successful playwright on the dramatization of one of his stories; but
+that didn't lessen his self-esteem and assertiveness. He claimed
+extraordinary ability for himself in a quite matter-of-fact tone, and on
+his own word was on terms of intimacy with every leading manager and
+star in the country. Nobody Joan knew troubled to contradict his
+pretensions, and despite that wide and seasoned view of life she
+believed herself to possess she was still inexperienced enough to credit
+more than half that he told her, never appreciating that, had the man
+been what he claimed, he would have had no time to waste toadying to
+actors.
+
+He might, if not discouraged, prove very useful to her.
+
+In fact, he promised to--repeatedly.
+
+More than this, his attentions flattered her more than she would have
+cared to confess even to herself. He didn't lack wit, wasn't without
+intelligence, and the power of his imagination couldn't be denied; thus
+he figured to her as the only man of mental attainments she had known
+since Matthias. It was something to be desired by such as this one, even
+though his abnormally developed egotism sometimes seemed appalling.
+
+It manifested itself in more ways than one: in his strut, in the
+foppishness of his dress, in his elaborate affectation of an English
+accent. He was a small person by the average standard, and slender, but
+well-formed, and wore clothing admirably tailored if always of an
+extreme cut. His cheeks were too fleshy, almost plump: something which
+had the effect of making his rather delicate features seem pinched.
+Near-sighted, he wore customarily a horn-rimmed pince-nez from which a
+wide black ribbon dangled like a mourning-band.
+
+His name was Hubert Fowey.
+
+So Joan tolerated him, encouraged him moderately through motives of
+self-interest, checked him with laughter when he tried to make love to
+her, secretly admired him even when his conceit was most fatiguing, and
+wondered what manner of women he had known to make him think that she
+would ever yield to his insistence....
+
+She had been nearly six weeks in New York when she awoke one morning to
+rest in languorous regret of a late supper the preceding night, and to
+wonder whither she was tending, spurred to self-examination by that
+singularly clear introspective vision which not infrequently follows
+intemperance--at least, when one is young.
+
+She was reminded sharply that, since returning to Town, she had made
+hardly a single attempt to find work, beyond having her professional
+cards printed.
+
+And this was the edge of Summer....
+
+Where would the Autumn find her?
+
+Slipping quickly out of bed, she collected her store of money, and
+counted it for the first time in several weeks.
+
+The sum total showed a shocking discrepancy between cold fact and the
+small fortune she had all along been permitting herself to believe she
+possessed. Even allowing for these heavy initial purchases on returning
+to New York, her capital had shrunk alarmingly.
+
+She began anew, that day, the rounds of managers' offices.
+
+Also, she laid down for her guidance a rigid schedule of economies. Only
+by strict observance thereof would she be able to scrape through the
+Summer without work or financial assistance from some quarter.
+
+Characteristically, she mourned now, but transiently, that she had so
+long deferred going to see her mother and Edna--something now obviously
+out of the question; they would want money, to a certainty, and Joan had
+none to spare them.
+
+A few days later she moved to share, half-and-half, the expenses of a
+three-room apartment on Fiftieth Street, near Eighth Avenue, with a
+minor actress whom she had recently met and taken a fancy to. Life was
+rather less expensive under this regime; the young women got their own
+breakfasts and, as a rule, lunches that were quite as meagre: repasts
+chiefly composed of crackers, cold meats from a convenient delicatessen
+shop, with sometimes a bottle of beer shared between two. If no one
+offered a dinner in exchange for their society, they would dine frugally
+at the cheaper restaurants of the neighbourhood. But their admirers they
+shared loyally: if one were invited to dine, the other accompanied her
+as a matter of course.
+
+An arrangement apparently conducive to the most complete intimacy;
+neither party thereto doubted that she was in the full confidence of the
+other. There were, none the less, reservations on both sides.
+
+Harriet Morrison, Joan's latest companion, was a girl whose very
+considerable personal attractions and innate love of pleasure were
+balanced by greenish eyes, a firm jaw, and the sincere conviction that
+straight-going and hard work would lead her to success upon the
+legitimate stage. She knew Joan for an incurable opportunist with few
+convictions of any sort other than that she could act if given a chance,
+and that men, if properly managed, would give her that chance. For one
+so temperamentally her opposite, Hattie couldn't help entertaining some
+unspoken contempt. On the other hand, she believed Joan to be decent, as
+yet; and halving the cost of living permitted her to indulge in the
+luxury of a week-end at the seaside once or twice a month.
+
+One day near the first of July the two, happening to meet on Broadway
+after a morning of fruitless search for engagements, turned for luncheon
+into Shanley's new restaurant--by way of an unusual treat.
+
+They had barely given their order when Matthias came in accompanied by a
+manager who had offices in the Bryant Building, and sat down at a table
+not altogether out of speaking-distance.
+
+To cover her discomfiture, which betrayed itself in flushed cheeks, Joan
+complained of the heat: an explanation accepted by Hattie without
+question, since Matthias had not yet looked their way.
+
+Joan prayed that he might not; but the thing was inevitable, and it was
+no less inevitable that he should look at the precise instant when Joan,
+unable longer to curb her curiosity, raised her eyes to his.
+
+For a moment she fancied that he didn't recognize her. But then his face
+brightened, and he nodded and smiled, coolly, perhaps, but civilly,
+without the least evidence of confusion. They might have been the most
+casual acquaintances.
+
+And, indeed, the incident would probably have passed unremarked but for
+the promptings of Joan's conscience. She was sure the glance of Matthias
+had shifted from her face to the hand on which his diamond shone, and
+had rested there for a significant moment.
+
+As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had happened. Matthias was
+absorbed in negotiations concerning an old play which had caught the
+fancy of the manager. Joan, though he knew her at sight, was now too
+inconsiderable a figure in his world for him to recall, off-hand, that
+he had ever made her a present.
+
+Nevertheless the girl coloured furiously, and blushed again under the
+inquisitive stare of her companion.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Who?" Joan muttered sullenly.
+
+"The fellow who bowed to you just now."
+
+"Oh, that?" Joan made an unconvincing effort at speaking casually: "A
+man named Matthias--a playwright, I believe."
+
+"Oh," said the other girl quietly. "Never done anything much, has he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You don't know him very well?"
+
+There was a touch of irony in the question that struck sparks from
+Joan's temper.
+
+"That's my business!"
+
+"I'm sure I _beg_ your pardon," Hattie drawled exasperatingly.
+
+And the incident was considered closed, though it didn't pass without
+leaving its indelible effect upon their association.
+
+With Joan it had another result: it made her think. Retrospectively
+examining the contretemps, after she had gone to bed that night, she
+arrived at the comforting conclusion that she had been a little fool to
+think that Matthias "held that old ring against her." He hadn't been her
+lover for several weeks without furnishing the girl with a fairly clear
+revelation of his character. He was simple-hearted and sincere; she
+could not remember his uttering one ungenerous word or being guilty of
+one ungenerous action, and she didn't believe he could make room in his
+mind for an ungenerous thought.
+
+Now if she were to return it, he would think that fine of her....
+
+Of course, she must take it back in person. If she returned it by
+registered mail, he would have reason to believe her afraid to meet
+him--that she had been frightened by his mere glance into sending it
+back.
+
+Not that she hadn't every right in the world to keep it, if she liked:
+there was no law compelling a girl to return her engagement ring when
+she broke with a man.
+
+But Matthias would admire her for it.
+
+Moreover, it was just possible that he hadn't as yet arrived at the
+stage of complete indifference toward her. And he had "the ear of the
+managers."
+
+Nerving herself to the ordeal, two days later, she dressed with
+elaborate care in the suit she had worn on her flight from Quard. Newly
+sponged and pressed, it was quite presentable, if a little heavy for the
+season; moreover, it lacked the lustre and style of her later
+acquisitions. It wouldn't do to seem too prosperous....
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, and Hattie had taken herself off to a
+nearby ocean beach for the week-end; something for which Joan was
+grateful, inasmuch as it enabled her to dress her part without exciting
+comment.
+
+To her relief, a servant new to the house since her time, answered her
+ring at the bell of Number 289, and with an indifferent nod indicated
+the door to the back-parlour.
+
+Behind that portal Matthias was working furiously against time,
+carpentering against the grain that play to discuss which he had lunched
+at Shanley's; the managerial personage having offered to consider it
+seriously if certain changes were made. And the playwright was in haste
+to be quit of the job, not only because he disapproved heartily of the
+stipulated alterations, but further because he was booked for some weeks
+in Maine as soon as the revision was finished.
+
+Humanly, then, he was little pleased to be warned, through the medium of
+a knock, that his work was to suffer interruption.
+
+He swore mildly beneath his breath, glanced suspiciously at the
+non-committal door, growled brusque permission to enter, and bent again
+over the manuscript, refusing to look up until he had pursued a thread
+of thought to its conclusion, and knotted that same all ship-shape.
+
+And when at length he consented to be aware of the young woman on his
+threshold, waiting in a pose of patience, her eyes wide with doubt and
+apprehensions, his mind was so completely detached from any thought of
+Joan that he failed, at first, to recognize her.
+
+But the alien presence brought him to his feet quickly enough.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said with an uncertain nod. "You wished to see
+me about something?"
+
+Closing the door, Joan came slowly forward into stronger light.
+
+"You don't remember me?" she asked, half perplexed, half wistful of
+aspect. "But I thought--the other day--at Shanley's--"
+
+"But of course I remember you," Matthias interrupted with a constrained
+smile. "But I wasn't--ah--expecting you--not exactly--you understand."
+
+"Oh, yes," Joan replied in subdued and dubious accents--"I understand."
+
+She waited a moment, watching narrowly under cover of assumed
+embarrassment, the signs of genuine astonishment which Matthias felt too
+keenly to think of concealing. Then she added an uneasy:
+
+"Of course...."
+
+"Of course!" Matthias echoed witlessly. "You wanted to see me about
+something," he iterated, wandering. With an effort he pulled himself
+together. "Won't you sit down--ah--Joan?"
+
+"Thank you," said the girl. "But I'm afraid I'm in the way," she
+amended, dropping back into the old, worn, easy-chair.
+
+"Oh, no--I--"
+
+The insincerity of his disclaimer was manifest in an apologetic glance
+toward the manuscript and a hasty thrust of fingers up through his hair.
+Joan caught him up quickly.
+
+"Oh, but I know I am, so I shan't stay," she said, settling herself
+comfortably. "I only ask a minute or two of your time. You don't mind?"
+
+"Mind? Why, I--certainly not."
+
+She looked down as if disconcerted by his honest, perplexed, questioning
+eyes.
+
+"I was afraid you might, after--after what's happened--"
+
+He fumbled for a cigarette, beginning to feel more calm, less nervous
+than annoyed. The fact of her unruffled self-possession had at length
+penetrated his understanding.
+
+"No," he said slowly, rolling the cigarette between his palms, "I don't
+mind in the least, if I can be of service to you."
+
+"But I was very foolish," Joan persisted, "and--and unkind. I've been
+sorry ever since...."
+
+"Don't be," Matthias begged, his tone so odd that she looked up swiftly
+and coloured.
+
+Thus far everything had gone famously, quite as rehearsed in the theatre
+of her optimistic fancy; but the new accent in his voice made her
+suddenly fear lest, after all, the little scene might not play itself
+out as smoothly as it had promised to.
+
+"Don't be," Matthias repeated coolly. "It's quite all right. Take my
+word for it: as far as I'm concerned you've nothing at all to reproach
+yourself with."
+
+Her flush deepened. "You mean you didn't care--!"
+
+Matthias smiled, but not unkindly. "I mean," he said slowly--"neither of
+us really cared."
+
+"Speak for yourself--" Joan cut in with a flash of temper; but he
+obtained her silence with a gentle gesture.
+
+"Please ... I mean, we both lost our heads for a time. That was all
+there was to it, I think. Naturally it couldn't last. You were wise
+enough to see that first and--ah--did the only thing you decently could,
+when you threw me over. I understood that, at once."
+
+"But I," she began in a desperate effort to regain lost ground--"I was
+afraid you'd hate and despise me--"
+
+"Not a bit, Joan--believe me, not for an instant. When I had had time to
+think it all out, I was simply grateful. I could never have learned to
+hate or despise you--as you put it--whatever happened; but if you hadn't
+been so sensible and far-sighted, the affair might have run on too far
+to be remedied. In which case we'd both have been horribly unhappy."
+
+This was so far from the attitude she had believed he would adopt, that
+Joan understood her cause to be worse than forlorn: it was lost; lost,
+that is, unless it could be saved by her premeditated heroic measure.
+
+Fumbling in her bag, she found his ring.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," she said with a little sigh. "Anyhow, it's like
+you to put it that way.... But what I really came for, was to return
+this."
+
+She offered the ring. He looked, startled, from it to her face,
+hesitated, and took it. "O--thanks!" he said, adding quite truthfully:
+"I'd forgotten about that"; and tossed it carelessly to his work-table
+where, rolling across the face of a manuscript, it oscillated
+momentarily and settling to rest, seemed to wink cynically at its late
+possessor.
+
+Joan blinked hastily in response: there was a transient little mist
+before her eyes; and momentarily her lips trembled with true emotion.
+The scene was working out more painfully than she had ever in her
+direst misgivings dreamed it might.
+
+Deep in her heart she had all along nursed the hope that he would insist
+on her retaining the ring. That would have been like the Matthias of her
+memories!
+
+But now he seemed to think that she ought to be glad thus to disburden
+her conscience and by just so much to modify her indebtedness to him!
+
+Struck by this thought, Joan gasped inwardly, and examined with startled
+eyes the face of Matthias. It was her first reminder of the fact that he
+had left her one hundred and fifty unearned dollars. She had forgotten
+all about that till this instant. Otherwise, she would have hesitated
+longer about calling. She wondered if he were thinking of the same
+thing; but his face afforded no index to his thoughts. He wasn't looking
+at her at all, in fact, but down, in abstraction, studying the faded
+pattern of the carpet at his feet.
+
+She wondered if perhaps it would advance her interests to offer to
+return the money, to pay it back bit by bit--when she found work. But
+wisely she refrained from acting on this suggestion.
+
+"I'm sorry I was so long about bringing it back," she resumed with an
+artificial manner. "I was always meaning to, you know, and always kept
+putting it off. You know how it is when you're on the road: one never
+seems to have any time to one's self."
+
+"I quite understand," Matthias assured her gravely.
+
+She grew sensitive to the fact that he was being patient with her.
+
+"But I really mustn't keep you from your work," she said, rising.
+"You--you knew I was working, didn't you?"
+
+"I heard," Matthias evaded--"in a roundabout way--that you were playing
+in vaudeville."
+
+The girl nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes; I was all over, playing the lead
+in a sketch called 'The Lie.' It was a regular knock-out. You ought to
+have seen how it got over. It's still playing, somewhere out West, I
+guess."
+
+"You left it, then?" Matthias asked, bored, heartily wishing her out of
+the house.
+
+She was aching to know if he had learned of her marriage. But then she
+felt sure he couldn't possibly have heard about it. Still, she wondered,
+if he did know, would it modify his attitude toward her in any way?
+
+"Yes," she resumed briskly, to cover her momentary hesitation, "I left
+it the week we played 'Frisco. I had to. The star and I couldn't seem to
+hit it off, somehow. You know how that is."
+
+"And yet you must have managed to agree with him pretty well, from all I
+hear."
+
+"What did you hear?"
+
+(Did he really know, then?)
+
+"Why," Matthias explained ingeniously, "you must have been with the
+sketch for several months, by your own account. You couldn't have been
+bickering all that time."
+
+Confidence returned.... "Oh, that! Yes, of course. But I could see it
+coming a long ways ahead. So I quit, and came back to look for another
+engagement. You--"
+
+She broke off, stammering.
+
+"Beg pardon?" Matthias queried curiously.
+
+Joan flushed again. "You don't know of anything I could do, just now, I
+suppose?"
+
+He shook his head. "Not at present, I'm afraid."
+
+"If you should hear of anything, it would be awful' good of you to let
+me know."
+
+"Depend upon me, I shall."
+
+"Care of The Dramatic Mirror will always get me."
+
+"I shan't forget."
+
+"Well...." She offered him her hand with a splendidly timid smile. "I
+suppose it's good-bye for good this time."
+
+Matthias accepted her hand, shook it without a tremor, and released it
+easily.
+
+"I've a notion it is, Joan," he admitted.
+
+She turned toward the door, advanced a pace or two, and paused.
+
+"They say Arlington's going to make a lot of new productions next
+Fall...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind putting in a good word for
+me."
+
+"I would be glad to, but unfortunately I don't know Mr. Arlington."
+
+"But you know Mr. Marbridge, and everybody says he's Arlington's silent
+partner."
+
+Matthias looked as uncomfortable as he felt.
+
+"I am not sure that is true," he said slowly, "and--well, to tell the
+truth, Marbridge and I aren't on the best of terms. I'm afraid I
+couldn't influence him in any way--except, perhaps, to prejudice him."
+
+"Oh!" Joan said blankly....
+
+It came to her, in a flash, that the two men might have quarrelled about
+her, thanks to the obvious fascination she had exerted over Marbridge,
+that age-old day at Tanglewood.
+
+"I suppose," she ventured pensively, "I might go to see him--Mr.
+Marbridge--myself--?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't advise you."
+
+This time the accent of finality was unmistakable. Joan bridled with
+resentment. After all, he'd no real call to be so uppish, simply because
+she hadn't let him stand between her and her career....
+
+"You don't really think I ought to go and see him, do you?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't ask me, Joan."
+
+"But I've got no one to advise me.... If you don't think it wise, I wish
+you'd say so. I thought perhaps it was a chance...."
+
+Matthias shrugged, excessively irritated by her persistence. "I can only
+say that I wouldn't advise any woman to look to Marbridge for anything
+honourable," he said reluctantly.
+
+"Oh!" the girl said in a startled tone.
+
+"But--I'm sorry you made me say that. It's none of my affair. Please
+forget I said it."
+
+"But you make it so hard for me."
+
+"I?" he cried indignantly--"_I_ make it hard for you!"
+
+"Well, I come to you for advice--friendly advice--and you close in my
+very face the only door I can see to any sort of work. It's--it's pretty
+hard. I can act, I know I can act! I guess I proved that when I was with
+Charlie--Mr. Quard--the star of 'The Lie,' you know. I couldn't've stuck
+as long as I did if I hadn't had talent.... But back here in New York,
+all that doesn't seem to count. Here I've been going around for two
+months, and all they offer me is a chorus job with some road company.
+But Arlington ... he employs more girls than anybody in the business. I
+know he'd give me a chance to show what I can do, if I could only get to
+him. And then you tell me not to try to get to him the only way I know."
+
+Abruptly Joan ceased, breathing heavily after that long and, even to
+her, unexpected speech. But it had been well delivered: she could feel
+that. She clenched her hands at her sides in a gesture plagiarized from
+a soubrette star in one of her infrequent scenes of stage excitement;
+and stood regarding Matthias with wide, accusing eyes.
+
+His own were blank....
+
+He was trying to account to himself for the fact that this girl seemed
+to have the knack of making him feel a heartless scoundrel, even when
+his stand was morally impregnable, even though it were unassailable.
+
+Here was this girl, evidently convinced that he had not dealt squarely
+with her, believing that he deliberately withheld--out of pique,
+perhaps--aid in his power to offer her....
+
+He passed a hand wearily across his eyes, and turned back toward his
+work-chair.
+
+"You'd better sit down," he said quietly, "while I think this out."
+
+Without a word the girl returned to the arm-chair and perched herself
+gingerly upon the edge of it, ready to rise and flee (she seemed)
+whenever it should pardonably suggest itself to Matthias that the only
+right and reasonable thing for him to do was to rise up and murder
+her....
+
+On his part, sitting, he rested elbows upon the litter of manuscript,
+and held his head in his hands.
+
+He was sorry now that he had yielded to the temptation to be
+plain-spoken about Arlington and Marbridge. But she had driven him to
+it; and she was an empty-headed little thing and ought really to be kept
+out of _that_ galley. On the other hand, he was afraid that if he
+allowed himself to be persuaded to help her find a new engagement, she
+would misunderstand his motives one way or another--most probably the
+one. He couldn't afford to have her run away with the notion that his
+affection for her had been merely hibernating. He had not only himself,
+he had Venetia to think of, now. To her he had dedicated his life, to a
+dumb, quixotic passion. Some day she might need him; some day, it seemed
+certain, she would need him. She was presently to have a child; and
+Marbridge was going on from bad to worse; things could not forever
+endure as they were between those two. And then she would be friendless,
+a woman with a child fighting for the right to live in solitary
+decency....
+
+But Joan!... If she were headed that way, toward the Arlington wheel
+within the wheel of the stage, even at risk of blame and
+misunderstanding Matthias felt that he ought to do what could be done to
+set her back upon the right road. It was too bad, really. And it was
+none of his business. The girl had given herself to the theatre of her
+own volition, after all. Or had she? Had the right of choice been
+accorded her? Or was it simply that she had been designed by Nature
+especially for that business, to which women of her calibre seemed so
+essential? Was she, after all, simply life-stuff manufactured hastily
+and carelessly in an old, worn mould, because destined solely to be fed
+wholesale into the insatiable maw of the stage?
+
+He shook his head in weary doubt, and sighed.
+
+"Probably," he said, fumbling with a pen and avoiding her eyes--"I
+presume--you'd better come back in a day or two--say Tuesday. That will
+give me time to look round and see what I can scare up for you. Or
+perhaps Wednesday would be even better...."
+
+He dropped the pen and rose, his manner inviting her to leave.
+
+"Wednesday?" she repeated, reluctantly getting up again.
+
+"At four, if that's convenient."
+
+"Yes, indeed, it is. And ... thank you so much ... Jack."
+
+"No, no," Matthias expostulated wearily.
+
+"No, I mean it," she insisted. "You're awf'ly sweet not to be--unkind to
+me."
+
+"Believe me, I could never be that."
+
+"Then--g'dafternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon, Joan."
+
+But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from
+a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence
+there assorted ill with his latest assurance to the girl. Catching it
+up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go.
+
+"And this," he said, smiling--"don't forget it, please."
+
+Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes
+widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly.
+
+"You--you don't mean it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I've really no use for it, Joan,
+and--well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned
+awry. "It might be of service to you some day."
+
+With a cry of gratitude that was half a sob, but with no other
+acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in
+a daze, and so from the house.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the
+man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had
+no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as
+a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of
+prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone
+of an ichthyosaurus....
+
+They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you
+knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference
+in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their
+sentiments, or their appetites, and if these failed you appealed to
+their pride in their self-assumed role of the protectors.
+
+It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it.
+
+By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and
+that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world destitute of a
+single human soul that commanded her respect.
+
+She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate
+chivalry....
+
+As if she didn't know what Arlington's companies were like! The facts
+were notorious; nobody troubled to blink them; Arlington's employees
+least of all. It wasn't their business to blink the facts; a girl
+without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his
+choruses as a girl without a pretty figure.
+
+But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure....
+
+Joan glanced in a shop window, en passant; but she saw nothing of the
+display of wares. The plate glass made a darkling mirror for the
+passers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted
+her becomingly, even though it was a trifle passe.
+
+She hurried home and changed it, and hurried forth again to keep an
+appointment with Hubert Fowey.
+
+They dined at a pretentious hotel, in an "Orange Garden" whose false
+moonlight and tinkling, artificial fountain manufactured an alluring
+simulacrum of romantic night, despite the incessant activities of a
+ragtime-bitten orchestra and the inability of the ventilating system to
+infuse a hint of coolness into the heavy, superheated air.
+
+Joan had little appetite--the day had been too over-poweringly hot--but
+she was very thirsty; and Fowey provided a brand of champagne less sweet
+and heady than she would have chosen, and consequently more insinuative.
+
+During the meal Billy Salute appeared at a table across the room and
+invisible to Fowey, whose back was toward it, but still not far enough
+removed to prevent Joan from recognizing that look in the dancer's eyes
+which she resented so angrily. She didn't once look at the man; but she
+never quite lost sight of him, and was well aware that he was ridiculing
+Fowey to his companion--an actor, by many an indication, but a stranger
+to Joan.
+
+Provoked, she demonstrated her contempt of Salute by flirting
+outrageously with Fowey. Unconscious of her motive, that aspiring little
+dramatic author lost his head to some extent. Now and again his voice
+trembled when he spoke to her, and once he mumbled something about
+marriage, but checked at discretion, and let his words trail off
+inarticulately.
+
+Joan was not to be denied.
+
+"What did you say?" she demanded, with her most distracting smile.
+
+"Oh, nothing of any importance," muttered Fowey, his face reddening.
+
+"But you did say something. I only caught part of it. Hubert, I want to
+know!"
+
+It was the first time she had used his given name.
+
+"I--I only wondered if you were married," he stammered. "You talk so
+cursed little about yourself!"
+
+"Does it matter?" she parried, surrender in her eyes.
+
+He choked and gulped on his champagne.
+
+"But you're not, are you?" he persisted.
+
+"What's that to you?"
+
+He hesitated and changed the subject, fearful lest his tongue compromise
+him.
+
+"What shall we do now? Don't say a roof garden. Let's get out of this
+infernal smother. I vote for a taxi ride to Manhattan Beach."
+
+Joan assented.
+
+Leaving, they passed Salute's table. Joan gave the dancer a distant and
+chilling greeting, and swept haughtily past, ignoring his offer to rise.
+The insolent irony of his eyes was incredibly offensive to her. They
+said: "I am waiting, I am patient, I make no effort, I am inevitable."
+
+She swore in her soul that she would prove them wrong.
+
+In the taxicab Fowey made some slighting reference to the dancer.
+
+"He's the devil!" Joan declared with profound conviction.
+
+But she wouldn't explain her reasons for so naming him.
+
+When occasion offered, in the more shadowed stretches of their course to
+the sea, Fowey attempted to kiss her. But she would have none of him
+then, fending him off by main strength and raillery; and she was pleased
+with the discovery that she was stronger than he. Yet another evidence
+of the inferiority of man!
+
+At the beach, Fowey ordered a claret cup. Joan demanded an ice and drank
+sparingly; but when again in the motor-car, homeward-bound, she was
+abruptly smitten with amazement to find herself in Fowey's arms,
+submitting to his kisses if not returning them.
+
+For a time she remained so and let him talk love to her.
+
+It was pleasant, to be--wanted....
+
+Arrived at the little flat, she had to prevent Fowey's following her in,
+again by main strength, slamming the door in his face.
+
+Bolting the door, she turned to a mirror "to see what a fright she must
+have looked." But it seemed a radiant vision that smiled back at her.
+
+She thought hazily of Hubert Fowey.
+
+"That kid!" she murmured, not altogether in contempt, but almost
+compassionately.
+
+It was a shame to tease him so....
+
+Not until the next day, that dawned upon her consciousness amid the
+thunders of a splitting headache, did she appreciate how far the affair
+had gone.
+
+Penitent, she vowed reformation. She wasn't going to let any man think
+he could make a fool of her, much less that conceited little
+whippersnapper.
+
+As it happened, she didn't see the amateur dramatist again for some
+days. He, too, had vowed reformation, and on much the same moral
+grounds.
+
+Her appointment with Matthias, for Wednesday at four, Joan failed to
+keep. And since that was her own affair, and since she had not left him
+her address, Matthias kept to himself the word that he had for her and,
+in accordance with his original intention, boarded the Bar Harbor
+Express that same evening, and forgot New York for upwards of ten weeks.
+
+It had rained all day Tuesday, and Wednesday was overcast but dry and,
+by contrast with what had been, cool. Dressing for her interview with
+Matthias, Joan donned a summery gown of lawn, liberally inset with
+lacework over her shoulders and bosom: a frock for the country-house or
+the seashore, never for the Broadway pavements. None the less it was
+quite too pretty to be wasted on Matthias alone. She set out to keep her
+appointment with an hour to spare, purposing to employ the interval by
+running, at leisure, the gauntlet of masculine admiration on Broadway as
+far south as Thirty-eighth Street. For this expedition she would have
+preferred company; but Hattie, having looked her over, announced that
+she couldn't dress up to Joan's style, didn't mean to try, and didn't
+care to be used as a foil; furthermore, it was much more sensible to
+loaf round the flat in little or no clothing at all, and read up on
+Pinero.
+
+From the Astor Theatre corner Joan struck across Broadway to the eastern
+sidewalk, chiefly to avoid the throng of loungers in front of the Bryant
+Building: it is good to be admired, but Joan had little taste for the
+form of admiration that becomes vocal at once intimately and publicly.
+
+Half-way down the New York Theatre Building block, she turned abruptly
+and scuttled like a frightened quail into the lobby, from the back of
+which, turning, she was able to see, without being seen by, Quard.
+
+Brief as the term of their dissociation was, in mere point of elapsed
+time, Joan had so completely divorced herself from her husband that she
+was actually beginning to forget him; physically no less than mentally
+she was beginning to forget him. An outcast from her life, he no longer
+had any real existence in her world. By some curious freak of sophistry
+she had even managed to persuade herself she was never to see him again.
+Thus it seemed the most staggering shock she had ever experienced, to
+recognize the man's head and shoulders looming above the throng before
+the entrance to the moving-picture show, just south of the lobby to the
+New York Theatre proper.
+
+But Quard hadn't seen her. He was with companions, a brace of vaudeville
+actors whom Joan knew through him. But while she waited for them to
+pass, two other friends accosted the three, directly before the lobby
+entrance, and they paused to exchange greetings. Quard slapped both
+newcomers on their shoulders, and kept his hand on the last he slapped,
+bending forward and engaging their interest with some intimate bit of
+ribaldry. He had been drinking--Joan saw that much at a glance--not
+heavily, but enough to render his good-fellowship boisterous.
+
+Otherwise he looked well. He was hardly to be identified with that
+sodden wreck which had been brought from the Barbary Coast back to the
+woman he had insulted and abused. His colour was good, his poise
+assured. He was wearing new clothing--a loud shepherd's-plaid effect
+which Joan couldn't possibly have forgotten. No one could possibly have
+forgotten it. And he had acquired a dashing Panama hat which at least
+looked genuine at that slight distance. Useless to have wasted pity on
+the man: he had fallen, but not far, and he had fallen on his feet.
+
+Joan eyed him with fear, despair, and loathing.
+
+Had he come to render New York too small to contain them both?
+
+She skulked in the farthest corner of the lobby, in shadows, not quite
+round the corner of the elevator shaft--where she could just see and ran
+least risk of being seen--and waited. But the group on the sidewalk
+seemed to have settled down to a protracted session. When Quard had
+finished talking, and the laughter had quieted down, another fixed the
+attention of the group with a second anecdote, of what nature Joan could
+well surmise.
+
+Of course, it was only a question of time before Quard would propose a
+drink.
+
+Then she would be free to proceed to her appointment.
+
+But through some oversight the suggestion remained temporarily in
+abeyance; and Joan was unlucky in that none of the policemen appeared,
+who are assigned to the business of keeping actors moving in that
+neighbourhood.
+
+After a minute or two Quard shifted his position so that he could, by
+simply lifting his eyes, have looked directly into the lobby.
+
+At this Joan turned in desperation and entered the cage of an elevator,
+which happened just then to be waiting with an open gate.
+
+There were several theatrical enterprises with offices on one of the
+upper floors: no reason why Joan shouldn't wait in one of these until it
+would be safe to venture forth again. There was Arlington's, for
+instance.
+
+Joan's was no strange figure there. She had long since made several
+attempts to see Arlington or one of his lieutenants; but her
+professional cards, borne in to them by a disillusioned office-boy, had
+educed no other response than "Mist' Arlington says they's nothin' doin'
+just' present."
+
+But it was as good a place as any for Joan's purpose, and there could be
+no harm trying again.
+
+The same world-weary boy received her card when she entered the suite of
+offices. He considered it, and Joan as well, dispassionately.
+
+"Whoja wanna see?" he mumbled with patent effort.
+
+Joan's prettiest smile was apparently wasted upon the temperament of an
+anchorite.
+
+"Mr. Arlington, please."
+
+The boy offered to return the card: "He ain't in."
+
+"That's what you always tell me."
+
+"He ain't never in."
+
+"Very well," said Joan sweetly: "I'll wait."
+
+The boy started to say something pointed, hesitated, regarded her with
+dull suspicion, and suddenly enquired:
+
+"Whaja wanna see 'm 'bout?"
+
+"A matter of private business."
+
+"Ah," drawled the boy with infinite disgust, "tha's what they all say!"
+An embittered grimace shaped upon his soiled face. "Lis'n!" he said,
+almost affably--"if yuh'll think up a good one, I'll fetch this inta his
+sec't'ry. Now cud anythin' be fairer 'n that?"
+
+"I'll go you," Joan retorted, falling in with his spirit. "Tell him a
+friend of Mr. Marbridge's wants to see him."
+
+She esteemed this a rather brilliant bit of diplomacy, and at the same
+time considered herself stupid not to have thought of it before. But it
+failed to move the office-boy. His head signalled a negative.
+
+"Havta do better'n that," he announced. "If I fell for ev'ry wren what
+claims she's a nintimate frien' of Mista Marbridge--"
+
+"But I am a friend of his--truly I am!" Joan insisted warmly.
+
+The boy rammed a hand into a trouser's-pocket. "Betcha--" he began; but
+reconsidered. "Yuh never can tell 'bout a skirt," he reminded himself
+audibly. "But, jus' to prove I'm a sport, I'll go yuh."
+
+Motioning Joan through the door of the reception room, he shambled off
+with an air of questioning his own sanity.
+
+The reception room was perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen wide: an
+interior room, lighted, and none too well, by electricity, ventilated,
+when at all, through the doorways of adjoining offices. A row of
+cane-seated chairs was aligned against the inner wall. In the middle of
+the floor stood a broad and substantial table of oak; it was absolutely
+bare. Here and there a few unhappy lithographs, yellowing "life-size"
+photographs of dead or otherwise extinguished stars, and a framed
+play-bill or two of Arlington's earlier ventures, decorated the dingy
+drab wall. There was no floor-covering of any description.
+
+In this room herded some two-score people of the stage, waiting
+hopefully for interviews that were, as a rule, granted to not more than
+one applicant in ten: a heterogeneous assemblage, owning a single
+characteristic in common: whenever, at the far end of the room, the
+door opened leading to the offices of the management, every head turned
+that way, and every voice was hushed in reverence.
+
+Yet it was seldom that the door disclosed anything more unique than a
+second office-boy, even more dejected than the first, who, peering
+through, would, after examining the card in his hand for the name of the
+applicant, painfully recite some stereotyped phrase worn smooth--"Mista
+Brown? Y'ur party says t' come back next week!" "Miss Holman? Y'ur
+party's went out 'n' won't be back th'safternoon!" "Miss Em'rson? Mista
+Arlington says ever'thin's full up just'present. Call 'n ag'in!" or more
+infrequently: "Mista Grayson's t' step in, please...."
+
+Joan found a vacant chair.
+
+She had no hope whatever of being admitted to the Presence, despite the
+unexpected condescension of the office-boy. Marbridge's name might prove
+the Open Sesame; but she doubted that vaguely: "it wouldn't be her if
+_that_ happened!"
+
+The atmosphere was stifling with heat complicated by stale human breath
+and the reek of perfumery, all stratified with layers of tobacco smoke
+which entered over the transoms of the communicating offices. Above the
+muted murmurings of the unemployed's apprehensive voices could be heard
+the brisk chattering of two or three type-writing machines; and
+telephone bells rang incessantly, near and far, one taking up the tune
+as soon as another ended. The throng of applicants shuffled their feet
+uneasily, expectantly, morosely.
+
+Joan was so uncomfortable and oppressed that she was tempted to rise and
+go without waiting for the discounted answer. Only dread of encountering
+Quard restrained her. The longer she delayed, the slighter the chance of
+finding him still in front of the theatre....
+
+Her thoughts drifted into reverie dully coloured with misgivings. She
+thought of Charlie Quard as a bird of ill-omen whose appearance could
+presage nothing but suffering and disaster; ignoring altogether the
+truth, that through his good offices alone, however tainted with
+self-interest, she had been suffered to enter into the profession whose
+ranks she had elected to adorn; with that other truth, that she owed him
+for the clothing she wore, the food she ate, the very roof that
+sheltered her--and meant never to repay....
+
+The voice of the second office-boy chanted her name twice before she
+heard it.
+
+"Miss Thursd'y?... Miss Joan Thursd'y?"
+
+Joan started to her feet.
+
+"Yes--?"
+
+"Th' party you ast for says please t' step this way!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Between gratification and misgivings, Joan followed her guide in a
+flutter of emotion. When intending nothing more than to provide an
+excuse for using the anteroom as a temporary refuge, she hadn't for an
+instant questioned her right to use Marbridge's name. But now that it
+appeared she was to gain thereby the boon of an audience with Arlington,
+she was torn by doubts.
+
+After all, her acquaintance with Marbridge had been one of the most
+tenuous description. True, the man had seemed attracted by her at the
+time; but that was many months ago; and only recently he had looked her
+fair in the face without knowing her. She had really gained her
+advantage through false pretences. And when Marbridge learned of this,
+would he not resent it? Had she not, through her presumption, put
+herself in the way of defeating her own ends?
+
+She brought up before a closed door in a state of nervousness not
+natural with her.
+
+"You're to wait a minute," her guide advised.
+
+She was thankful he wasn't the guardian of the outer defences: just at
+present she was in no fit mood to bandy persiflage successfully.
+
+But she was uncomfortably conscious that this present boy eyed her
+curiously as he threw open the office door.
+
+She entered, and he closed it after her.
+
+The room was untenanted, but a haze of cigar smoke in the air indicated
+that it had been only recently vacated. It was handsomely furnished,
+carpeted and decorated. The broad, flat-topped desk in one corner
+boasted an elaborate display of ornate desk hardware. In the middle of
+the blotting-pad a sheaf of letters lay beneath a bronze paperweight of
+unique design. All in all, an office owning little in common with the
+generality of those to which Joan had theretofore penetrated....
+
+She sat herself down uneasily.
+
+A door communicating with the adjoining office, though a solid door of
+oak, was an inch or so ajar. Through it penetrated sounds of masculine
+voices in conversation--but nothing distinguishable.
+
+Five minutes passed. Then the conference in the next room broke up amid
+laughter; the doorknob rattled; and Joan rose automatically.
+
+Marbridge entered.
+
+For a moment, in her surprise and consternation, Joan could only stare
+and stammer. But obvious though her agitation was, Marbridge ignored it
+gracefully. Shutting the door tight, he advanced with an outstretched
+hand and a smile there was no resisting--with, in short, every normal
+evidence of friendly pleasure in their meeting.
+
+"Well, Miss Thursday!" he said, gratification in his carefully modulated
+voice. "This is public-spirited of you!"
+
+Joan shook hands limply, her face crimson beneath his pardonably
+admiring stare.
+
+"I--thank you--but--"
+
+"Really," he went on smoothly, "I consider it mighty nice of you to look
+me up. Fancy your remembering me! Do sit down. We must have a chat.
+Fortunately, you've caught me in an off-hour."
+
+Retaining her hand coolly enough, he introduced the girl to a capacious
+lounge-chair beside the desk, then settled himself behind it.
+
+Joan shook her wits together.
+
+"You're awf'ly kind--"
+
+"I--kind?" Marbridge denied the implication with an indulgent smile. "My
+dear Miss Thursday, if you get to know me well--and I sincerely hope you
+will some day--you'll find there's not a spark of human generosity in
+my system. I think only of my own pleasure. How can there be kindness to
+you in my seizing this chance to improve our acquaintance? I declare, I
+thought you'd forgotten me!"
+
+"Oh, no!" Joan protested.
+
+"Really? That's charming of you. But tell me about yourself. How long
+have you been back?"
+
+"Not long," Joan replied instinctively to the first stock question that
+marks every other similar meeting in the theatrical district of New
+York. "That is--I mean--a couple of months."
+
+"Oh, then you didn't stay with 'The Lie'?"
+
+"You knew about that?"
+
+Marbridge nodded briskly. "Indeed, I did! Pete Gloucester told me all
+about you--how splendidly you were doing at rehearsals--and then, one
+afternoon in Chicago, I saw the sketch billed and dropped in at the
+theatre for the sole purpose of seeing you. And if I hadn't had a train
+to catch, I'd have come right round back to congratulate you. Fact! You
+were wonderful. You were more than wonderful: you were downright
+adorable, and no mistake!"
+
+Under the tonic stimulus of his flattery, Joan recovered her
+self-possession with surprising readiness--so swiftly that she almost
+forgot to cover the phenomenon with prolonged evidences of pretty
+confusion.
+
+She looked down, her colour high, and smiling traced with a gloved
+forefinger an invisible seam in her skirt; and then, looking up shyly,
+she appraised Marbridge with one quick, shrewd, masked glance.
+
+Her instinct had not misled her: this man esteemed her at a high value.
+
+"It's awf'ly kind of you to say so," she murmured demurely.
+
+Marbridge bent forward, leaning on the desk, his gaze ardent.
+
+"I only say what I think, Miss Thursday. I watched you act that
+afternoon--and so far as I was concerned, you were the whole
+sketch!--and made up my mind then and there you were a girl with a great
+big future."
+
+"Oh, but really, Mr. Marbridge--"
+
+"Give you my word! I said to myself then and there: 'Here's a little
+woman worth watching, and if ever I get a chance to lend her a helping
+hand and don't do it, I'd better quit fussing with this theatrical
+game.' And that was the effect of seeing you play just once, mind you!"
+
+"I'm afraid you're a dreadful kidder, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+His injured look was eloquent of the injustice that she did him.
+
+"You don't believe me? Very well, Miss Thursday--wait! Some day I'll
+surprise you." He swung back in his chair, smiling genially. "Some one
+of these days you'll set your heart on something I have the say in--and
+then you'll be able to judge of my sincerity."
+
+"If I dared believe you," Joan told him boldly, "I might put you to the
+test sooner than you think."
+
+"Well, and why not? I'm ready."
+
+But as Joan would have gone on, the desk-telephone rang sharply, and
+Marbridge, excusing himself with a mumbled apology, turned to the
+instrument and lifted the receiver to his ear.
+
+"Hello.... Who?... Oh, send her in to see Mr. Arlington.... Oh, he did,
+eh?... Well, say I'm not in either.... Yes, gone for the day."
+
+Replacing the instrument, he swung round again. "There's proof already,"
+he informed her cheerfully. "That was Nella Cardrow--one of the biggest
+propositions on our list--star of 'Mrs. Mixer.' And I'm putting her off
+solely to show you how sincerely I'm interested in what you have to say
+to me." He bent forward again, confidentially. "Now tell me: what can I
+do for you?"
+
+"Give me a job," Joan informed him honestly. "That's all I want just
+now--work--a part in anything you have influence with."
+
+"Then you _have_ left 'The Lie'?" Marbridge persisted incredulously.
+
+Joan nodded. "I had to. I couldn't stand it any longer."
+
+"But--without you--why, I don't know what they were thinking of, to let
+you go!"
+
+"I just couldn't get along with the star, and that's all there was to
+it," Joan declared. "He was a boozer and--well, I had to quit."
+
+"And the sketch--"
+
+"Oh, it went on, all right, I guess."
+
+"Without you! Well, that's hard to credit. However...." Marbridge leaned
+back and for a moment stared thoughtfully out of the window. "I really
+can't think of anything we've got open just now that's good enough to
+offer you."
+
+"Please don't think of me that way, Mr. Marbridge," Joan pleaded
+earnestly, more than half deceived. "I'm ready for anything, to get a
+chance to show these people what I can do. Anything--however small--just
+so it gives me a show--I don't care what!"
+
+Marbridge preserved admirably his look of intent gravity. "Let me think
+a moment," he requested, pursing his full lips.
+
+Joan watched him closely through that brief silence, her mood one of
+curious texture, compounded in almost equal parts of hope and doubt, of
+wonder and misgivings, of appreciation of her own courage and
+shrewdness, and of admiration for Marbridge.
+
+He was by no means what she would have termed handsome, but he was
+uncommonly individual, a personality that left an ineffaceable
+impression of strength and masculinity; and with this he had an air of
+being finished and complete, as though he not only knew better than most
+how to take care of himself in all ways, but slighted himself in none.
+She thought his mode of dress striking, combining distinction and taste
+to an extraordinary degree.... And when in his abstraction he pinched
+his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, she was impressed with the
+discovery that a man's hand could be at once well-manicured and
+muscular....
+
+He turned back abruptly with a sparkle of enthusiasm in his bold and
+prominent eyes.
+
+"By George, I think I have it!..."
+
+"Yes--?" she breathed excitedly.
+
+He considered an instant longer, shook his head, and jumped up. "I must
+consult Arlington first," he declared. "I wouldn't care to commit him
+without his consent. No--don't get up. Just excuse me one minute. I'll
+be right back."
+
+And before she could protest--had she entertained the faintest idea of
+doing anything of the sort--he left the room by the same door which had
+admitted him.
+
+Immediately she was again aware of a rumble of voices in the next
+office, but now it was even more indefinite.
+
+And again she waited a full five minutes alone....
+
+When Marbridge rejoined her, it was with an air apologetic and
+disappointed.
+
+"It's too bad," he announced, aggrieved, "but it seems Arlington has
+really gone for the day. I shan't see him before evening, likely,
+possibly not until tomorrow. So I must ask you to trouble yourself to
+come back, if you don't mind."
+
+"Mind!" Joan laughed, rising. "Oh, I guess not."
+
+"Well," Marbridge assured her, "I don't think you'll have any wasted
+time to regret. But I can't promise anything until I'm sure Arlington
+hasn't made other arrangements, or until I've managed to put a crimp
+into 'em if he has."
+
+"But you mustn't do that--"
+
+"Hush!" Marbridge paused to chuckle infectuously. "There's one trouble,"
+he amended, more gravely, "and that is, I haven't got any too much time.
+I'm booked to sail for Europe Saturday, and have got so many little
+things to attend to, I'm running round in circles. But don't you fret:
+I've got this matter right next to my heart, Miss Thursday, and I'm
+going to put it through if it humanly can be done. Now let me think when
+I can ask you to call again."
+
+"Any time that suits your convenience, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"Well, it's a question. I'd like mighty well to have you lunch with me
+before I go, but.... The truth is, I haven't got hardly a minute
+unengaged. You just happened to catch me right, today.... I wonder if
+you could call in Friday, say, about half-past three?"
+
+"Of course I can, but I don't want you to--"
+
+"Didn't I tell you, _hush_!" Marbridge interrupted, mock-impatient. "Not
+another word. Remember what I told you about how I felt that day I saw
+you act, out in Chicago. The time's coming when I'm going to be
+powerful' glad you gave me this chance to give you a lift, Miss
+Thursday. And then"--he paused in the act of opening the door, and took
+Joan's hand, subjecting it to a firm, friendly pressure before
+continuing--"and then, perhaps, I'll be coming round and begging favours
+of you."
+
+For an instant Joan's eyes endured, without a tremor, the quick
+searching probe of the man's.
+
+She nodded quietly, saying in a grave voice: "I guess you won't have to
+beg very hard--not for anything I could ever do for you, Mr. Marbridge."
+
+His smile was as spontaneous and bright as a child's. "It's a bargain!"
+he declared spiritedly. "And you can bet your life I won't forget my end
+of it!... Good afternoon, Miss Thursday. Remember--Friday at
+three-thirty...."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+As one result of her interview with Marbridge, Joan returned to her
+quarters in a state of thoughtfulness which was responsible not only for
+her forgetting the appointment with Matthias and the risk she ran of
+encountering Quard at every corner, but also for her unquestioning
+acceptance of Hattie's absence from the flat in the face of her
+expressed determination not to go out that afternoon.
+
+Hattie, however, was nothing loath to explain her change of mind when
+she blew in cheerfully shortly before dinner-time.
+
+"Hello!" she exclaimed, tossing her hat one way and her parasol another.
+"Did you miss me?"
+
+Joan looked up blankly from the depths of her musing. "No," she said
+dully. "Why?"
+
+"Well, you went off half-peeved because I wouldn't go trapesing with
+you--and then I went out after all."
+
+"Oh--I'd forgotten," Joan admitted without much interest.
+
+"Well, I didn't mean to go out, but Billy Emerson sent me a tip and ...
+I bet you can't guess who I've seen."
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"Arlington!"
+
+"Arlington!" Joan exclaimed.
+
+"Well, and why not?"
+
+"Nothing--only I thought you weren't looking for anything in musical
+shows."
+
+"No more am I, and it wasn't a musical show I went to see him about.
+Billy sent me a card of introduction with the tip, and Arlington saw me
+and--well, I guess it's just about settled. I'm to understudy Nella
+Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Arlington wouldn't promise, but told me to come
+in Saturday morning, and the understanding is he'll have contracts ready
+to sign then. I do believe my luck's turned at last!"
+
+"But," Joan argued, perplexed, "I don't understand.... Of course, it's
+fine to get the job, and all that--and I'm awf'ly glad for you,
+Hattie--but you act as excited as if it was the title role you expected
+to play."
+
+"Maybe I do," Hattie retorted. "That's what an understudy's for, isn't
+it--to play the star part in case of an emergency?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Anyhow, I don't mind telling you that's what I'm looking forward to."
+
+"You mean you think Mrs. Cardrow--?"
+
+"Now don't you ask me any questions; I can't tell you what I think; it's
+a secret." Having made this statement, Hattie sat down on the edge of
+the bed, lighted a cigarette, vacillated one second, and proceeded to
+divulge the secret: "You see, I called around to thank Billy Emerson,
+after my talk with Arlington, and he told me the whole story in
+confidence. Nobody's to know it yet, so you mustn't breathe a word to
+anybody; but the thing's all fixed, and Nella Cardrow's never going to
+play 'Mrs. Mixer' before a Broadway audience. She couldn't play it
+anyhow--'s just a plain-boiled dub--never did anything before she
+persuaded Marbridge to put her on in this show. It's _his_ money that's
+behind it, mostly--Arlington's too wise to risk much on an uncertain
+proposition like the Cardrow. Marbridge just hides behind Arlington."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Well, I guess he figures home would be none the happier if Friend Wife
+knew he was footing the bills for Nella Cardrow's show. He and Cardrow,
+Billy Emerson says, are just about as friendly as the law allows--and
+that isn't all."
+
+"But," Joan persisted stupidly, "if that's the case, I don't see what
+makes you think he'll throw her down to give you the part--"
+
+"If they ever caught anybody on Broadway as innocent as you pretend to
+be," Hattie commented with a scorn for grammar as deep as for Joan's
+obtuseness--"they'd arrest 'em, that's all! Who ever told you Marbridge
+was the kind of a guy to stick to a woman forever--not to say when she's
+losing money for him? Billy Emerson saw the show when they put it on up
+in Buffalo, a while ago, and he says the play's a wonder but Cardrow
+can't even look the part, much less act it. He says if they ever let her
+loose on the stage of a Broadway theatre--well, Marbridge and Arlington
+can just kiss their investment a fond farewell. For reasons of his own,
+Marbridge isn't ready to break with Cardrow yet, but he knows he's got a
+big success on his hands in this 'Mrs. Mixer' with her out of it. So
+they're going right ahead, just as if she was to be the star, but when
+the show opens it'll be little Miss Understudy who'll do all the
+acting."
+
+The actress tossed aside her cigarette and bent forward, regarding Joan
+with mock solicitude.
+
+"Does it begin to penetrate, dearie?"
+
+"It sounds to me like a pretty mean trick to play on Mrs. Cardrow," Joan
+suggested.
+
+"Don't you worry about her. She'll survive, all right. And anyhow, when
+you've been as long in this game as I have, you'll realize that the
+motto of the profession is 'Everybody for himself and the devil take the
+hindermost'! I've waited seven years for this chance, and I'm not going
+to let it get past me through any sentimental considerations, not if I
+know myself. And you'd do just the same thing in my place, too."
+
+"I don't see what right you've got to say that--"
+
+"Then you don't know yourself as well as I know you," Hattie laughed.
+"But listen: I oughtn't to have told you all this. You won't say
+anything, will you, dear?"
+
+"No, I won't say anything...."
+
+Nor did Joan consider it necessary to repay confidence with confidence
+by confessing the fact of her coincidental interview with Marbridge. The
+reflection that they must have been in adjoining offices at much the
+same time, in spite of Marbridge's assertion that Arlington was out,
+counselled reticence, even if envy hadn't served to impose silence upon
+Joan. And she was profoundly envious of Hattie's good fortune.
+
+Why could it not have been her own, instead?
+
+If Marbridge honestly esteemed her abilities one-half as highly as he
+had pretended to, why could he not have seen to it that Joan Thursday
+rather than Hattie Morrison was selected for Mrs. Cardrow's understudy?
+
+Still, the matter was not yet definitely settled. Hattie's contract
+remained a thing of the future, and she might be congratulating herself
+prematurely.
+
+Struck by this reflection, Joan withdrew even more jealously into her
+reserve....
+
+But she anticipated her appointment for Friday afternoon with an
+impatience that lent each hour the length of three, and when the time
+drew near prepared herself for it with such exacting attention to the
+minutiae of her toilet that a final survey in a cheval-glass sent her
+forth radiant with consciousness that she had never looked more
+charming.
+
+To her surprise and somewhat to her disappointment, Marbridge didn't
+receive her alone. She was shown into Arlington's office, finding there
+Marbridge in company with the great man himself.
+
+Entrenched behind his desk, Arlington didn't move when she entered, and
+only when Marbridge formally presented Joan deigned to rise half out of
+his chair and extend to her, across the mahogany barrier, a hand almost
+effeminately white, soft, and bedizened with rings.
+
+"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Thursday, I'm sure," he drawled, his clasp
+as languid as the glance with which he looked Joan over; and sank
+wearily back into his chair. "I've been hearing wonderful things about
+you--ah--from Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"He's very kind," said Joan in her best manner.
+
+"Not at all," Marbridge protested. "I've only been describing how
+splendid your work was in 'The Lie.' But Mr. Arlington is the original
+of the gentleman from Missouri: you've got to show him. However, I know
+you can--so that's all right."
+
+"Oh, I hope so," Joan replied with becoming diffidence--"if I ever get a
+chance."
+
+"You'll get that, never fear," Arlington observed dispassionately.
+"Marbridge has fixed it all up for you. It's a risk, a pretty big risk
+to take with an actress of your--ah--comparative inexperience, but as a
+rule I find it advisable to give Marbridge his head when he sets his
+heart on anything."
+
+"You're awf'ly good," Joan murmured.
+
+"Don't think it," Arlington returned in a tone of remote amiability,
+teetering in his chair. "I've nothing whatever to do with it, beyond
+engaging you and being responsible for your salary. It's all Marbridge's
+doing."
+
+He examined with a perplexed air his highly polished fingernails....
+
+"You're to have a small part in a new comedy we're putting on next
+September," he announced, "and at the same time you will understudy the
+star--Nella Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Your salary will be sixty a week
+unless through some accident you're called upon to play the title role
+regularly--and accidents will happen in the best regulated theatrical
+enterprises. In which case you'll draw one-hundred a week for the first
+season. There are some details which Marbridge will explain to you--and
+if you'll drop in any time Monday and ask for Mr. Grissom he will have
+your contracts ready. And now if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment."
+
+Consulting his watch, he rose and moved round from behind his desk.
+"Good day, Miss Thursday," he said with a shadow of a formal smile. "I
+shall see much of you, no doubt, when the rehearsals begin."
+
+"Oh, thank you--thank you!" Joan cried.
+
+Arlington disclaimed title to her gratitude with a weary gesture. "Don't
+thank me, please--thank Marbridge.... You won't be long, Vin?" he added,
+at the door.
+
+"I'll be with you in ten minutes."
+
+"Right you are. Good afternoon, Miss--ah--Thursday...."
+
+Alone with Marbridge, Joan began impulsively to protest her thanks, but
+on glancing up, fell silent, abashed by an expression that glowed in the
+man's eyes like a reflection of firelight.
+
+She lowered demure lashes to cloak her confusion, a smile about her lips
+at once sophisticated and timid: a distractingly pretty woman fully
+conscious of her allure and of his attraction for her: a vision of
+provoking promise.
+
+Marbridge drew a deep breath.
+
+"If you persist in looking like that," he said in a voice that trembled
+between laughter and a sigh--"don't blame me if I forget myself and take
+you in my arms and kiss you. There are limits to my endurance...."
+
+Joan looked up, smiling.
+
+"Well--" she said with a little nervous laugh--"Well, what of it?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Before Joan left Marbridge, they had arrived at an understanding which
+was not less complete and satisfactory in that it was largely implicit.
+
+Without receiving any definite explanation of the circumstances
+complicating the production of "Mrs. Mixer," Joan carried away with her
+a tolerably clear notion thereof, both confirming and supplementing the
+second-hand information of Hattie Morrison.
+
+Mrs. Cardrow owned a heavy interest in the play, Joan had gathered; and
+there existed, as well, a contract between her and Arlington which would
+have to be eliminated before it would be possible to go ahead and make
+the production with another actress in place of the erstwhile star. Some
+very delicate diplomatic manoeuvring was indicated....
+
+Interim, Joan was to be privately drilled by Peter Gloucester for some
+weeks prior to calling together the full company to rehearse for the
+September production. Gloucester was just then out of Town, but she
+would be advised when and where to meet him on his return.
+
+Marbridge was to be absent from New York until the middle of September
+or longer; but he promised to be back a week or two before the opening
+performance.
+
+There were other promises exchanged....
+
+With her future thus schemed, the girl was very well content, who had
+attained by easy stages to one of mental development in which those
+primary moral distinctions upon which she had been reared were no longer
+perceptible--or, if perceptible, had diminished to purely negligible
+stature.
+
+It was not in nature for her to disdain or reject her bargain on moral
+grounds: she knew, or recognized, none that applied.
+
+For over a year during the most impressionable period of her life, Joan
+Thursday had breathed the atmosphere of the stage. She had become
+thoroughly accustomed to recognize without criticism those irregular
+unions and regular disunions that characterized the lives of her
+associates. She had observed many an instance where the most steadfast
+and loyal love existed without bonds of any sort, and as many where it
+existed in matrimony, and as many again where neither party to a
+marriage made aught but the barest pretence of fidelity.
+
+She had remarked that material and artistic success seemed to depend
+upon neither the observance nor the disregard of sexual morality. She
+knew of husbands and wives against whom scandal uttered no whisper and
+whose talents were considerable, but who had struggled for years and
+would struggle until the end without winning substantial recognition.
+And she knew of the reverse. The one unpardonable sin in her world was
+the sin of drunkenness, and even it was venial except when it "held the
+curtain" or prevented its rising altogether.
+
+As far as concerned her attitude toward herself, she considered Joan
+Thursday above reproach, seeing that she had withdrawn from her marriage
+long before even as much as contemplating any man other than her
+husband. She held that she was now free, at liberty to do as she liked,
+untrammelled by opinion whether public or private: that she had outgrown
+criticism.
+
+True, Quard might divorce her. But what of that? If he did, Joan
+Thursday wouldn't suffer. If he didn't, he himself would be the last to
+pretend he was leading a life of celibacy because of her defection.
+
+Marbridge she really liked; his appeal to her nature was stronger than
+that of any man she had as yet encountered. He attracted her in every
+way, and he excited her curiosity as well. He was a new type--but in
+what respect different from other men? He was famously successful with
+women: why? He had wealth, cultivation of a certain sort (real or
+spurious, Joan couldn't discriminate) and social position; and this
+flattered, that such an one should reject the women of his own sphere
+for Joan Thursday--late of the stocking counter.
+
+And if she could turn this infatuation of his to material profit, while
+at the same time satisfying the several appetites Marbridge excited in
+her: why not? Other women by the score did as much without censure or
+obvious cause for regret. Why not she?
+
+How many women of her acquaintance--women whose interests, running in
+grooves parallel to hers, were intelligible to Joan--would have refused
+the chance that was now hers through Marbridge? Not one; none, at least,
+who was free as Joan was free; not even Hattie Morrison, whose views
+upon the subject of such arrangements were strong, whom Joan considered
+straitlaced to the verge of absurdity. Hattie, Joan believed, would have
+jumped at the opportunity.
+
+But of course, denied, Hattie would be sure to decry it, and with the
+more bitterness since Joan had won it in the wreck of Hattie's hopes.
+
+And here was the only shadow upon the fair prospect of Joan's
+contentment. She who had questioned Hattie's right to become a party to
+the conspiracy against Mrs. Cardrow--how could she ever go home and face
+the girl, with this treachery on her conscience?
+
+True: Hattie didn't know, wouldn't know before morning, might never
+learn the truth during the term of their association.
+
+None the less, to be with Hattie that night would be to sit with a
+skeleton at the feast of her felicity....
+
+On impulse Joan turned to the left on leaving the New York Theatre
+building, and moved slowly, purposelessly, down Broadway.
+
+It was an afternoon of withering heat: the pavements burning palpably
+through the paper-thin soles of her pretty slippers, and the air close
+with the smell of hot asphaltum. The rays of the westering sun made
+nothing of the fabric of Joan's white parasol, their heat penetrating
+its sheer shield as though it were glass. Mankind in general sought the
+shadowed side of the street and moved only reluctantly, with its coat
+over its arm, a handkerchief tucked in between neck and
+collar--effectually choking off ventilation and threatening
+"sun-stroke."
+
+Waiting upon the northeast corner of Forty-second Street for the traffic
+police to check the cross-town tide, Joan felt half-suffocated and
+thought longingly of the seashore....
+
+Once across the street, she turned directly in beneath the permanent
+awning of the Knickerbocker Hotel, and entered the lobby, making her way
+round, past the entrance to the bar, to the recess dedicated to the
+public telephone booths.
+
+A semi-exhausted and apathetic operator looked up reluctantly as Joan
+approached, with one glance appraising her from head to heels. At any
+other time the dainty perfection of Joan's toilet would have roused
+antagonism in the woman; today she found energy only sufficient for a
+perfunctory mumble.
+
+"What numba, please?"
+
+Joan hesitated, feeling herself suddenly upon the verge of dangerous
+indiscretion, but stung by the operator's look of jaded disdain, took
+her courage in hand and pursued her original intention.
+
+"One Bryant," she said.
+
+The operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her
+and iterated the number mechanically.
+
+In another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths.
+
+"Numba five--One Bryant," she said.
+
+Joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver.
+
+"Hello--Lambs' Club?" she enquired.... "Is Mr. Fowey in the club?... Will
+you page him, please.... Miss Thursday.... Yes, I'll hold the wire."
+
+The booth was hermetically sealed. Perspiration was starting out all
+over her body. And somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet,
+lurked a long unburied cigar. She thrust the door ajar, but only to
+close it immediately as Fowey's voice saluted her.
+
+"Hello?"
+
+"Hello, Hubert," Joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery
+in her accents.
+
+"Is that you, Joan--really?" the voice demanded excitedly.
+
+"Real-ly!" she affirmed. "What're you doing there, shut up all alone by
+yourself in that stupid club, Hubert?"
+
+Prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came
+briskly: "Where are you now, anyway?"
+
+"That doesn't matter," she retorted. She had meant to ask him to meet
+her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest Marbridge might chance
+to see them. "What really matters is that this is my birthday and I'm
+going to give a party. Have you got anything better to do?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"Then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the Sixth
+Avenue L at Battery Place."
+
+"Battery Place! What in thunder--"
+
+"Never mind--tell you all about it when we meet. Will you come?"
+
+"Will I! Well, rawther!"
+
+"Half an hour, then--"
+
+"I'll be there, with bells on!"
+
+"Then good-bye for a little--Hubert."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than Joan.
+
+As he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to
+join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight,
+dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so
+ultra-English in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger
+brother. And the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager
+countenance seemed little short of offensive. She was sorry now that she
+had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so
+insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of
+the man who now filled all her thoughts--Marbridge; and so transparent
+that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible
+doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had
+at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her
+requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.
+
+But she permitted nothing of her thoughts to become legible in her
+manner. After all, she had only wanted an escort for the evening, an
+excuse to postpone that unavoidable return to the company of the girl
+she had betrayed; and Fowey had seemed the most convenient and the least
+dangerous man she could think of. If in the inflation of his
+insufferable conceit he dreamed for an instant another thing.... Well,
+Joan promised herself, he'd soon find out his mistake!...
+
+Keeping up the fiction of her imaginary birthday, she outlined her
+plans: they would take one of the Iron Steamboat Company's boats from
+Pier 1, North River--a short walk from the station--to Coney Island.
+When that resort palled, they would drive to Manhattan Beach and dine,
+perhaps "take in" Pain's Fireworks; and return to New York by the same
+route.
+
+Fowey's objections were instant and sincere and well-grounded: the boats
+would be crowded beyond endurance with an unwashed rabble liberally sown
+with drunks and screaming children. If she would only let him, he'd get
+a taxicab--or even a touring-car.
+
+Quietly but firmly Joan overruled him. It must be her party or no party,
+as she proposed or not at all.
+
+He yielded in the end, but the event proved him right in all he had
+foretold. Joan was very soon made sorry she hadn't suffered herself to
+be gainsaid.
+
+They had half an hour to wait for the boat, and the waiting-room upon
+the second-storey of the pier was like an oven, packed with a milling,
+sweating mob exactly fulfilling Fowey's prediction. They were elbowed,
+shouldered, walked upon, and at one time openly ridiculed by a gang of
+hooligans, any one of whom would have made short work of Fowey had he
+dared show any resentment.
+
+Upon the boat, when at length it turned up tardily to receive them,
+conditions were little better, save that the open air was an
+indescribable relief after the reeking atmosphere of the pier. Fowey
+managed to secure two uncomfortable folding stools, upon which they
+perched, crowded against the rail of the upper deck; a wretched
+"orchestra" wrung infamous parodies of popular songs from several
+tortured instruments; children scuffled and howled; burly ruffians in
+unclean aprons thrust themselves bodily through the throng, balancing
+dripping trays laden with glasses of lukewarm beer and "soft drinks" and
+bawling in every ear their seductive refrain--"Here's the waiter! Want
+the waiter? _Who_ wants the waiter?"--and an alcoholic, planting his
+chair next to Joan's, promptly went to sleep, snoring atrociously, and
+threatened every instant to topple over and rest his head in her lap.
+
+A single circumstance modified in a way Joan's regret that she hadn't
+heeded Fowey's protests.
+
+As the boat swung away from the pier, a larger steamship of one of the
+coastwise lines, outward bound from its dock farther up the North River,
+passed with leeway so scant that the dress and features of those upon
+its decks were clearly to be discerned. And at the moment when the two
+vessels were nearest, Joan discovered one who stood just outside an open
+cabin door, leaning upon the rail with an impressively nonchalant pose,
+and smoking a heavy cigar. He wore clothing of a conspicuous
+shepherd's-plaid, and his pose was an arrested dramatic gesture.
+
+In a moment a woman emerged from the open door behind him and joined him
+at the rail, placing an intimate hand on his forearm and saying
+something which won from him a laugh and a look of tender admiration: a
+handsome, able-bodied woman, expensively but loudly dressed, her
+connection with the stage as unquestionable as was his.
+
+Joan dissembled the odd emotion with which she recognized the man, and
+turned to Fowey.
+
+"What boat is that, do you know, Hubert?"
+
+Fowey raked her with an indifferent glance, fore and aft. "Belongs to
+the New Bedford Line," he announced--"can't make out her name--connects
+at New Bedford for the boats to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Ever
+been up that way?"
+
+"No. What's it like?"
+
+"Pretty islands. Don't know Martha's Vineyard very well, but Nantucket's
+my old stamping-ground. Go up there in the middle of the summer--about
+now--and you'll find every actor and actress you ever heard of, and then
+some. Great place. Wish we were going there."
+
+"Don't be silly...."
+
+The boats were drawing apart. Joan looked back for the last sight she
+was ever to have of her husband.
+
+Though she couldn't have known this, she sighed a little, in strange
+depression.
+
+Perplexed, she tried vainly to analyze her emotion: was it regret--or
+jealousy?
+
+Of a sudden, in the heart of that immense crowd, with Fowey attentive at
+her elbow, she was conscious of a feeling of intense loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+When, after a long and tedious voyage over a sea as flat as a plate and
+unflawed by a single cooling drift of air, the steamboat was made fast
+to the end of that long iron pier which juts out from the flat, low
+coast of Coney Island, its passengers rose en masse and crowded toward
+the gangways. Joan and Fowey, attempting to hang back until the crowd
+had thinned out sufficiently to enable them to go ashore in comfort,
+were caught in the swirl of it and swept along willy-nilly.
+
+Once on the pier-head the multitude had more elbow room and spread out,
+the main body streaming headlong shorewards, keen-set for the delights
+promised by the two great amusement parks which had grown up in the
+heart of that frontier settlement of gin-mills, dance-halls, side-shows,
+eating-houses, and dives unspeakable.
+
+Joan and Fowey followed more at their leisure, constraint and silence
+between them like a wall. The girl was deeply disappointed with the
+expedition, as far as it had gone, doubting whether anything better
+would follow, and still labouring under that unaccountable depression
+which had settled down upon her spirits at sight of Quard on the New
+Bedford boat. Fowey, no less disgusted, was puzzled by his companion's
+attitude, at once tolerant and aloof, keenly watchful for an opening
+through which to pursue his conquest, and wondering how it would end. If
+she were simply bent on tantalizing him again, for her own amusement....
+
+He swore angrily but inaudibly.
+
+Near the shore end of the pier they delayed to watch the antics of the
+hundreds of bathers churning the shallows in front of huge and hideous
+bathing establishments. In countless numbers, they dotted the sea like
+flies and darkened the sun-baked, unclean sands, into which their feet
+had trodden the wreckage of ten thousand lunches.
+
+Fowey said something inexpressively cynical about the resemblance of the
+scene below to a congregation of bacilli crawling upon a slide beneath a
+microscope.
+
+Joan heard without response, either vocal or mental. She resented
+bitterly the superior attitude adopted by her companion. For her part,
+she would have asked nothing better than to mingle with the throng and
+taste those crude pleasures so dear to its simple heart and, had she but
+dared admit it, to her own. But she had Fowey to live up to.
+
+Very heartily she regretted the impulse which had dictated her
+invitation. She had been far happier alone--though it would have been
+strange had she been suffered to remain long alone.
+
+By the time they left the pier, the evening was so far advanced that the
+myriad lights of the tawdry town were flashing into being. They
+debouched into a roaring mob which filled the wide avenue from curb to
+curb, packed so densely, though in constant motion, that trolley cars
+and automobiles forced a way through it only at a snail's pace and with
+great difficulty. Encouraged by the excessive heat which rendered Town
+intolerable to all who had the means to escape it, the week-end swarming
+had begun in all sincerity. In spite of the terrific congestion which
+already obtained in all the streets and avenues and beaches, piers,
+amusement parks, catch-penny shows, saloons, and restaurants, scarcely a
+minute passed without the arrival at some one of the trolley terminals
+of a car packed to the guards with more visitors.
+
+A good-natured if rowdy mob, for the most part, with only a minimum
+element of the downright vicious in its composition, it was none the
+less bent on amusement in its cheapest form, that is to say, at somebody
+else's expense. It gathered thickest round the places of free
+entertainment, where acrobats performed on open-air stages or crawled
+upon high, invisible wires, or where slides were supplied gratis for
+public diversion: grinning always, but howling with delight when treated
+to real misadventure, as when some girl, negotiating a bamboo slide upon
+a grass mat, her skirts wrapped tight about her, would lose balance and
+shoot headlong, sprawling, to the level; the greater the exposure, the
+greater the diversion....
+
+Nor was Fowey permitted to escape unteased: his conspicuous clothing,
+and the broad black ribbons dangling from his horn-rimmed glasses were
+too tempting to be resisted. Once his Panama was smashed down over his
+eyes; and his glasses were so frequently jerked by their moorings from
+his nose that he was fain at length to pocket them and poke owlishly
+along at Joan's guidance.
+
+Dazzled to blindness by those ten million glaring bulbs which lifted up
+tier upon tier against the blank purple skies; deafened by an
+indescribable cacophony of bands, organs, bells, horns, human tongues
+incessantly clattering; suffering acutely from the collective heat of
+the multitude added to that of the still and muggy night; buffeted and
+borne hither and yon at the will of the mass: they contrived in the end
+to engage an open, horse-drawn vehicle, of the type colloquially known
+in those days as "low-neck hack," and ordered themselves driven to the
+Manhattan Beach Hotel.
+
+When presently they had gained the darkling peace of a long road between
+marsh-lands, Fowey resumed with his glasses his hateful cynicism.
+
+"That was considerable treat, all right," he said pensively.
+
+"Glad you liked it," Joan replied with the curtness of chagrin.
+
+"We'll go back and have some more after dinner," he suggested.
+
+"Thanks--I've had plenty."
+
+"No, but really!" he insisted. "We haven't seen half of it--"
+
+"Oh, shut up!"
+
+Her anger was real; and when he would have mollified the girl with soft
+words and an arm that sought to steal round her waist, she repeated her
+injunction with added coarseness and struck his hand away with a force
+that he felt.
+
+In spite of this, he schooled himself to patience.
+
+Dinner, served perfunctorily by a weary waiter and consumed upon the
+verandah of the hotel at a table, the best they could command, far
+removed from the comparative coolness and ease of those beside the
+railing, did little if anything to modify Joan's temper.
+
+She, who had set out, believing herself the happiest of mortals, to
+spend an evening of real enjoyment, felt utterly wretched and forlorn.
+
+Moment by moment her distaste for Fowey was gaining strength. She was
+put to it to listen to his bragging and to make response civilly. She
+did not relish her food, her company, or her surroundings; and in utter
+ennui tried to stimulate herself with her favourite brand of sweet
+champagne, insisting on another bottle when they had emptied one between
+them. It served only to stimulate a fictitious gaiety in her, one swift
+to wane.
+
+For all this, she was reluctant to contemplate going home. Anything were
+preferable to that--at least until she could feel reasonably sure of
+finding Hattie abed and asleep.
+
+They finished their meal at an hour too late to make it worth while to
+patronize one of the open-air entertainments with which she had promised
+herself diversion; and since she would neither go home nor, at Fowey's
+mischievous suggestion, return to Coney Island, they moved to another
+table, nearer the railing, and whiled away one more hour listening to
+the band music over their cigarettes and liqueurs.
+
+Toward eleven o'clock, Joan suddenly announced that she was sick of it
+all and ready to go. Fowey revived his preference for a motor-car, and
+got his way against scanty opposition. In a saner humour, Joan would
+have stuck to her original plan. As it was, she accepted the motor ride
+with neither gratitude nor graciousness.
+
+Curiously enough, once established in the car, her hat off, the swift
+rush of night air cooling her moist brows, her head resting back against
+the cushions, she permitted Fowey to repeat his ardent love-making which
+had made their previous ride together memorable. Her dislike of him was
+no less thorough-paced, but had passed from an active to a passive
+stage; she was at once too indifferent to resist him and so bored that
+she welcomed anything that promised excitement. She suffered his kisses,
+confident in her power to control him, and drew a certain satisfaction
+from reminding him, now and again forcibly, that there were limits to
+her toleration. But for the most part she lay in his arms in passive
+languor, her eyes half closed, and tried to forget him, or rather to
+believe him someone else, one whose embraces she could have welcomed....
+
+When they came to lighted streets, she bade Fowey "behave," and would
+not permit him even so slight a lapse from decorum as that of "holding
+hands."
+
+She sat up, rearranging the disorder of her hair, adjusted her hat,
+surreptitiously restored the brilliance of her lips with a stick of
+rouge.
+
+The man drew back sullenly into his corner, fuming....
+
+At her door, dismissing the car, he followed her up to the stoop.
+
+"Joan--" he began angrily.
+
+She turned back from using her latch-key, with a wondering, child-like
+stare.
+
+"Yes, Hubert?" she enquired with hidden malice.
+
+"You're not--you're not going to send me off like this?"
+
+"Why not?" she demanded with fine assumption of simplicity. "It's awful'
+late."
+
+Fowey seized her wrist.
+
+"Now, listen to me!"
+
+Joan broke his grasp with little or no effort.
+
+"Silly boy!" she said. "Do you really want to come in and visit a while
+before you say good night?"
+
+Her look was false with a winning softness. Fowey stammered.
+
+"You--you know--"
+
+"Then come along!" she said, with a laugh; and turning fled lightly
+before him up the darkened stairway.
+
+She had opened the door to the tiny private hallway of the flat when he
+overtook her, panting. She paused, with a warning finger to her lips.
+
+"S-sh!" she warned. "Don't wake Hattie!"
+
+He swore viciously, discountenanced; and she laughed and, leaving the
+door wide, went on into the small sitting-dining-room, meanly exulting
+in the discomfiture she had planned, knowing quite well that he had
+either forgotten Hattie or believed her to be spending this week-end out
+of Town, as before.
+
+In the act of lighting the gas, she heard the door close and saw Fowey
+come, white and shaken, into the room.
+
+"Hush!" she said gaily. "I'll make sure she isn't awake--"
+
+Removing her hat, she passed on into the adjoining bedroom, and stopped
+short with a sensation of sinking dismay. The room was empty, the bed
+she shared with Hattie untouched. So much was visible in the faint light
+entering through windows that opened on a well.
+
+Wondering, Joan struck a light. Its first glimmer revealed to her the
+fact that Hattie's trunk was gone. The flare of the gas-jet disclosed
+greater changes in the aspect of the room, due to the disappearance of
+Hattie's toilet articles and knick-knacks.
+
+Hattie had left, bag and baggage--had gone for good!
+
+But why?
+
+Had she discovered Joan's treachery? Or what had happened?
+
+And in her surprise and perplexity, the girl was conscious anew of that
+sense of loneliness. She had been afraid to return to the one whom she
+had betrayed so lightly; but now she was afraid to be without her.
+
+Going back to the adjoining room, she found Fowey standing beside the
+table and with a slight smile examining a sheet of paper.
+
+"I found this lying here," he announced, handing it over--"didn't
+realize it was anything until I'd read half of it."
+
+His smile was again confident, bright with premature pride of conquest.
+But Joan didn't heed it. She was reading rapidly what had been written,
+swiftly and in a sprawling hand, upon the half sheet of note-paper.
+
+     "By rights I ought to stay until you come back, whenever you
+     have the cheek to, and tell you what I think of you--I saw B.
+     E. this evening and he told me all about it--but I want never
+     to see you again--the rent's paid up till next Wednesday--then
+     you can stick or get out--I don't care which--and I wish you
+     joy of your bargain!--H. M."
+
+"You've been scrapping with Hattie, eh?" Joan heard Fowey say in an
+amused voice.
+
+Without answering, she let the sheet of paper fall to the table, and
+stood with head bowed in thought, suffering acutely the humiliation
+inspired by Hattie's contemptuous dismissal.
+
+"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry--"
+
+"Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of
+opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't
+matter."
+
+"It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly.
+
+Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position.
+
+"Oh ..." she said blankly.
+
+Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him
+off.
+
+"Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now--of
+course. I'm sorry. Good night."
+
+He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with passion; his small
+eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides,
+but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body
+trembling and shaken beyond control.
+
+She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of
+pity for him.
+
+"Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away."
+
+"No, I'm damned if I do. You asked me up here--I know now--just to tease
+me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone
+and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged--"don't treat me so
+cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you,
+more than a chance to torment me? My God! what kind of a woman are you?
+I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this
+week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were--"
+
+"What am I?" Joan cut in quickly.
+
+Fowey choked again, with a gesture of impotent exasperation.
+
+"You," he almost shouted--"you're the woman I love and who's driving me
+mad--mad I tell you!"
+
+"Hubert! You mean that? You really love me?"
+
+"You know I do. You know I'm crazy about you. Haven't you seen it from
+the first?"
+
+Hesitating, Joan experienced a sense of one in deep waters. There was a
+sound as that of distant surf in her ears. All through her body pulses
+were throbbing madly.
+
+She struggled still a little, instinctively; but Fowey advantaged
+himself of that instant of indecision. He held her in his arms, now; her
+face was stinging beneath his kisses.
+
+Almost unconsciously, she lifted her arms and clasped them round his
+neck, drawing his face to hers.
+
+"You poor kid!" she murmured fondly, her eyes closed.... "You poor
+kid...."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Without knowing how she had come there, Joan found herself standing
+beside the outer doorway, in the narrow hall; one hand hugging about her
+the kimono she must have snatched up by instinct, while yet not fully
+wakened, the other hand fumbling with the lock; sleep clouding her brain
+like a fog, fatigue weighting her eyelids and chaining her limbs, panic
+hammering in her bosom.
+
+Overhead the doorbell was ringing imperatively, without interruption,
+even as it must have been ringing for many minutes before she was
+consciously awake.
+
+Dimly she felt that this alarm by night must portend something strange
+and terrible.
+
+And still she held her hand, wondering. Who could it be? Not Quard: for
+she had seen him leave New York. Never Marbridge: that were unthinkable!
+Hattie Morrison, perhaps.... And that meant....
+
+The bell ground on implacably.
+
+At length she found courage to adjust the chain-bolt and open the door
+to the limit permitted by that guard.
+
+In the outer hallway a gas-jet burned, turned low, diffusing just enough
+illumination to show her the figure, somehow indefinitely familiar in
+spite of its style, of a man in a chauffeur's uniform: a young and wiry
+man clothed in khaki coat and breeches and leather leggins, and wearing
+a cap with visor shadowing heavily his narrow, sharp-featured
+countenance.
+
+As the door opened he removed his finger from the bell-push, and drove
+home recognition with his voice.
+
+"Miss Thursby live here? I got a message for her."
+
+Joan gasped: "Butch!"
+
+"It's me, all right," her brother admitted crisply in his
+well-remembered tone of irony. "You certainly are one sincere little
+sleeper. I been ringing here--"
+
+"How did you get in?"
+
+"Rang up the janitor--if _that_ matters. Lis'n: you betta hustle into
+your clothes quick 's you can if you wanta get home in time to say
+good-bye to the old woman."
+
+"Mother!" Joan shrilled. "What--what's the matter--?"
+
+"Dyin'," Butch told her briefly and without emotion. "She said she
+wanted to see you. So get a move on. My car's waitin', and I dassent
+leave it alone. Hustle--y' understand?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" Joan promised with a sob. "I'll hurry, Butch--"
+
+"See you do, then!"
+
+The boy swung about smartly and disappeared down the well of the
+stairway.
+
+Joan closed the door, and leaned against it, panting. Suppose he had
+wanted to come in!...
+
+For the moment, this was her sole coherent thought.
+
+Then, rousing, she crept stealthily back to the darkened bedroom,
+gathered up her clothing with infinite precautions against noise, and
+returned to the sitting-room to dress in feverish haste....
+
+There was an open taxicab waiting in front of the door. As she came out,
+Butch bent over and cranked the motor. Straightening up, he waved her
+curtly into the body of the car.
+
+"Jump in and shut the door," he ordered briefly, climbing into the
+driver's seat.
+
+"But--Butch--"
+
+"Doncha hear me? Get in and shut that door. We got no time to waste
+chinnin' here."
+
+Abashed and frightened, the girl obeyed.
+
+Immediately Butch had the cab in motion, tearing eastward at lawless
+speed through streets whose long ranks of yawning windows, seen
+fugitively in the formless dusk of early morning, seemed to look down
+leering, as if informed with terrible intelligence.
+
+She shut out the sight of them with hands that covered her face until
+the swift rush of cool air steadied and sobered her, so that she grew
+calmer in the knowledge that, in veritable fact (and this was all that
+really mattered) "nobody knew"....
+
+Then, sitting up, she composed herself, and with deft fingers completed
+the adjustment of her garments. By the time she had finished her toilet,
+aided by a small mirror inset between the forward windows, Butch was
+stopping the cab before the East Seventy-sixth Street tenement.
+
+Bending back, he unlatched the door and swung it open.
+
+"You go on up," he ordered. "I'll be around before long--gotta run this
+machine back to the garage."
+
+Joan stepped quickly to the sidewalk, and shut the door.
+
+"All right," she responded, and added, almost timidly, avoiding her
+brother's eyes: "Thank you, Butch."
+
+He grunted unintelligibly and, as Joan moved up the stoop, threw in the
+power again and drew swiftly away down the street.
+
+For an instant Joan held back in the vestibule, sickened to recognize
+anew the home of dirt and squalor she had fled, a long lifetime since,
+it seemed, and struggling with almost invincible repugnance for the
+ordeal awaiting her at the head of those five weary flights.
+
+Then, more through instinct than of her will, her finger pressed the
+call-button beneath the Thursby letter box.
+
+The latch clicked. She pushed the door open, moved reluctantly into the
+shadows and addressed herself wearily to the stairs, inhaling with a
+keen physical disgust the heavy and malodorous atmosphere in which her
+youth had been shaped toward womanhood.
+
+As the dining-room door admitted her, she checked again, almost tempted
+to question the soundness of those faculties which insisted that more
+than a year had passed, rather than an hour or two, since she had left
+that mean and sordid place.
+
+Above the dining-table blazed and wheezed a single gas-jet, whose ragged
+bluish flame was yet sufficiently strong to turn to the colour of night
+the dull dawnlight outside the air-shaft windows. It revealed to her not
+a single article of furniture other than as memory placed it, and showed
+her, seated on the far side of the table, her father lifting a heavy and
+sullen face from the note-book between his soiled fat fingers, that
+inevitable sheaf of dope lying at his elbow.
+
+There was no sort of greeting, in proper sense, between these two. For a
+little neither spoke. Joan hesitated, with shoulders against the panels
+of the door, in an attitude instinctively defiant and defensive. Thursby
+looked her up and down, a louring sneer marking his recognition of his
+daughter's finery.
+
+Suddenly, explosively, she found her tongue: "How's ma?"
+
+Thursby jerked a thumb in the direction of the bedrooms.
+
+"She died an hour ago," he said slowly, "just after Ed went to find you.
+Edna's in there."
+
+Joan made a gesture of horror.
+
+"My God!" she said throatily, and turned away.
+
+A moment later, loud cries of lamentation ringing through the flat
+testified that she had found her sister.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+With peculiar irony, the passing of that pallid, vague, and ineffectual
+character, Mrs. Thursby, proved the signal for the dissolution of the
+family which, denying her both respect and affection during her life,
+had none the less lost, in losing her, its sole motive or excuse for
+unity.
+
+The return from the cemetery was accomplished toward noon of a July day
+whose heavily overcast sky seemed only to act as a blanket over the
+city, compressing its heated and humid atmosphere until the least
+exertion was to be indulged in only at the cost of saturated clothing.
+
+The four were crowded in common misery within a shabby, stuffy,
+undertaker's growler.
+
+Thursby occupied the back seat with his eldest daughter, notwithstanding
+the fact that, since apprising her of her mother's death, the morning of
+her return, he had addressed no word to her directly. He sat now with
+fat and mottled hands resting on his knees, his waistcoat unbuttoned,
+exposing soiled linen, his dull and heavy gaze steadfastly directed
+through the window.
+
+Opposite him, on the forward seat, Edna wept silently and incessantly
+into a black-bordered handkerchief.
+
+Butch, beside her, looked serious and depressed in a suit of black
+clothing borrowed for the occasion.
+
+Nobody spoke from the time they re-entered the carriage, after the
+burial, until they left it. Joan huddled herself into her corner,
+putting all possible space between herself and her father. A sense of
+lassitude was heavy upon her. She meditated vaguely on the strangeness
+of life, its inscrutable riddle, the enigma of its brief and feverish
+transit from black oblivion through light to black oblivion. But the
+problem only wearied her. She dropped it from time to time and tried to
+think of other things; as a rule this resulted in her speculations
+centering about Butch.
+
+The boy mystified her, awed her a little with a suggestion of spirit and
+strength, character and intelligence, conveyed by a forceful yet
+unassuming manner. It was a new manner, strangely developed in the year
+that spaced her knowledge of him, only to be explained by his sudden
+determination to go seriously to work and make something of himself; and
+the motive for that remained inexplicable, and would ever as far as
+concerned Joan. For the personal reticence that had always sealed his
+cynical mouth was more than ever characteristic of the boy today; and
+the sympathy which once had existed between himself and Joan was become
+a thing of yesterday and as if it had never been. His attitude toward
+her was touched with just a colour of contempt, almost too faint to be
+resented; she shrank from it, feeling that he saw through her
+shallowness, that he knew her, not as Marbridge knew her, perhaps, or as
+Billy Salute, but thoroughly and intimately, and far better than she
+would ever know herself.
+
+She knew now--through Edna--that within the last twelve-month Butch had
+learned his trade of chauffeur and pursued it with such diligence that,
+aside from being the main support of the family which she had deserted,
+he was half-owner of his taxicab and in a way to acquire an interest in
+a small garage....
+
+When the carriage stopped, the father was the first to alight. With no
+word or look for either of his daughters, and only a semi-articulate
+growl for Butch, to the effect that they'd see one another again at
+dinner, he pulled his rusty derby well forward over his haggard, haunted
+eyes, thrust his hands deep into trouser-pockets, and slouched
+ponderously away in the direction of his news-stand. Before he turned
+the avenue corner, Joan, looking after him while she waited for Butch
+to settle with the driver, saw Thursby produce his packet of dope and,
+moistening a thumb, begin to con it as he plodded on.
+
+So, pursuing his passion to the end, he passed forever from her life,
+yet never altogether from her memory; in which, as time matured the
+girl, his inscrutable personality assumed the character of a symbol of
+aborted destiny. What he had been, whence he had sprung, what he might
+have become, she never learned....
+
+Then, preceded by Edna, followed by Butch, she climbed for the last time
+those weary stairs.
+
+Arrived in the flat, Butch shut himself into his room to change to
+working clothes. He could not afford to waste an afternoon, he said.
+Joan and Edna sat down in the dark and dismal dining-room, conferring in
+hushed voices until he rejoined them. He came forth presently, the
+inevitable cigarette drooping from his thin, hard lips, and sat down,
+his spare, wiry body looking uncommonly well set-up and capable in the
+chauffeur's livery.
+
+After a little hesitation, Joan mustered up courage to say her say, if
+with something nearly approaching appeal in the way that she addressed
+this taciturn and self-sufficient man who had replaced her loaferish
+brother.
+
+"I've been telling Edna," she said, "that I'm going to take care of her
+from now on."
+
+"That so?" Butch exhaled twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. "How?" he
+enquired without prejudice.
+
+"Well ... she's coming to live with me--"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm leaving where you found me. By the way, how did you
+know where to look for me, Butch?"
+
+"Seen you one day when you was livin' in the Astoria Inn. There's a
+dairy lunch on the ground floor where I gen'ly eat. After that I kept an
+eye on you."
+
+"Oh!" said Joan thoughtfully, wondering how much that eye had seen of
+the brief but lurid existence she had led before coming partially to her
+senses and moving to share Hattie Morrison's lodgings. "Well, I'll find
+a good place, and Edna can stay with me and act as my maid until she's
+old enough to find something to do for herself."
+
+"On the stage, eh?"
+
+"I guess so. I'm getting on, you know. Chances are I could give her a
+boost."
+
+Butch shook his head: "Nothin' doin'."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He was unmoved by the flash of hostility in Joan's manner.
+
+"I guess," he said after a deliberate pause, "we don't have to go into
+that. Anyway, I got other plans for Edna. She's goin' to the country,
+up-State, to spend the summer on a farm--family of a fellow I know.
+After that, if she's strong enough, she can come back and keep house for
+me, if she wants to, or go to work any way she chooses--that's not my
+business. Only--understand me--she isn't going to go into the chorus
+until she's old enough to know what she's doin', and strong enough to
+stand the racket. That's settled."
+
+Rising, he jerked the stub of his cigarette through the air-shaft
+window, and slowly drew on his gauntlets.
+
+"You do what packin' you wanta, kid," he advised Edna, "before three
+o'clock thisaft'noon. I'll be back for you then. Your train leaves at
+four. You'll travel along with the mother of this friend of mine--Mrs.
+Simmons, her name is."
+
+As he had said, the matter was settled. Joan conceded the point without
+bickering, with indeed a feeling of mean relief. Moreover, she was
+afraid of Butch....
+
+The flat in Fiftieth Street had gained associations insufferably
+hateful. She returned to it only long enough to pack up and move out.
+Incidentally she found, read, and destroyed without answering, a note
+from Fowey suggesting an assignation. Her paradoxical dislike for the
+man had deepened into detestation. She both hoped and intended never to
+see him again.
+
+She moved before nightfall, leaving no address, and established herself
+in an inexpensive but reputable boarding establishment, little
+frequented by the class of theatrical people with which she was
+acquainted, and where a repetition of her escapade was impossible. On
+the third day following she began rehearsing privately with Gloucester,
+and threw into the work all she could muster of strength, patience, and
+intelligence, leaving herself, at the end of each day's work, too
+exhausted in mind and body to indulge in any of the pleasures to which
+her tastes inclined.
+
+Fowey, unable to trace her and seeing nothing of the girl in those
+restaurants and places of amusement she had been wont to frequent, in
+time gave up the chase; and before the first presentation of "Mrs.
+Mixer" the newspapers supplied Joan with the news of his clandestine
+marriage and subsequent flight to Europe with a widow whose fortune
+doubtless promised compensation for the fact that she had a son nearly
+as old as her latest husband.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+The rehearsals of "Tomorrow's People" were arranged to begin on the
+twenty-third day of September; and since all the important roles had
+been filled before he left Town, and Wilbrow, whom he could trust, had
+charge of all other details, Matthias delayed his home-coming until the
+twenty-second.
+
+Not until the twentieth did he emerge from the wilderness up back of the
+Allagash country into the comparative civilization of Moosehead Lake. In
+eight weeks he had not written a line, received a letter, or read a
+newspaper. But, as he telegraphed Helena from the Mt. Kineo House, he
+was so healthy that he was ashamed of it.
+
+The day-letter telegram she sent in reply was delivered on the train.
+Its news, though condensed, was reassuring: Venetia was well and her boy
+developing into a famous ruffian; the two were making a visit at
+Tanglewood, and on the return of Marbridge from his summer in Europe
+would move back to New York, where Venetia was to reassume charge of his
+town-house.
+
+Thus satisfied as to the welfare of the woman he loved, Matthias gave
+himself up completely to the production of his play; and through the
+following four weeks lived in the theatre by day, dreamed of it by
+night, thought, talked, and wrote only in its singular terminology.
+
+Few facts unconnected with his own play penetrated his understanding, in
+all that period. But, dining with Wilbrow one night at the general table
+in the Players, he overheard Gloucester railing bitterly at the
+ill-fortune which had induced him to pledge himself to stage a modern
+satirical comedy for Arlington and to train for the leading part a raw
+and almost inexperienced stage-struck girl.
+
+He detailed his trials in vivid phrases:
+
+"As far as I know, she's never played in anything except a bum
+vaudeville sketch, and I had hell's own time making her fit to play
+_that_. And yet she's got the ineffable nerve to keep picking at my way
+of doing things on the general ground that it ain't Tom Wilbrow's. Seems
+he had the privilege of rehearsing her for a five-side part in that punk
+show of Jack Matthias', that went to pieces out on the Coast last
+Summer. If Wilbrow wasn't listening with all his ears, over there, I'd
+tell you what I said to the young woman the last time she threw him in
+my face.... What?... Oh, nobody you ever heard of. Calls herself
+Thursday--Joan Thursday.... Of course I rowed with Arlington about her,
+but he only shrugged and grinned and said she had to play it and I'd got
+to make her play it--offered to bet me a thousand over and above my fees
+I couldn't do it.... Sure, I took him up. Why not? I'll make her act it
+yet. I could make a Casino chorus boy act human if I wasn't so
+squeamish.... Oh, Marbridge--one of his discoveries. I saw him handing
+her gently into that big, brazen touring-car of his, in front of
+Rector's, night before last. Fragile's the word--'handle with care!'"
+
+Wilbrow, interrogated, supplied the context. Arlington had bought up,
+through a third party, Mrs. Cardrow's interest in "Mrs. Mixer," advising
+her to sell out because the play had already scored one failure and
+promising her another play in which she would stand better chance to win
+New York audiences. This was an old comedy from the French, revamped,
+and was even then being rehearsed with a scrub company and a scratch
+outfit of scenery, the production to be made on the same night that
+"Mrs. Mixer" was to tempt fate with Joan Thursday; the designated date
+being the twenty-fifth of October, a Wednesday.
+
+Matthias promptly dismissed the matter from his mind: he speculated a
+little, hazily about Marbridge, in his constitutional inability to
+understand that gentleman, felt more than ever sorry for Venetia and
+wondered how much longer she would stand it all--and plunged again into
+his preoccupation.
+
+"Tomorrow's People" was announced for production on Monday, October the
+twenty-third. But after the dress-rehearsal on Sunday certain changes
+recommended themselves as advisable to the judgment of the author, who
+persuaded the management to postpone the opening night until Wednesday.
+At ten minutes to twelve on that night the final curtain fell upon a
+successful representation; an audience in its wraps blocked the aisles
+until after midnight, applauding and demanding the author; who, however,
+was not in the theatre.
+
+He had, in fact, not been near it since the curtain, falling on the
+first act, had persuaded him of the general friendliness of an audience
+and the competency of the company. This culmination of a nerve-racking
+strain which had endured without respite for over a month found him
+without courage to await the verdict. He took to the streets and walked
+himself weary in vain effort to refrain from circling back toward the
+building whose walls housed his fate.
+
+At length, in desperation hoping to distract his thoughts from the
+supreme issue, he purchased a ticket of admission to another theatre,
+above whose entrance blazed the announcement "Mrs. Mixer," and stationed
+himself at the back of the orchestra to witness the last part of the
+performance.
+
+He saw the self-confidence of Gloucester supremely justified: the
+satiric farce marched steadily, scene by scene, to a success that was to
+keep it on Broadway through the winter and make the name of Joan
+Thursday a house-hold word throughout the Union. Her personal success
+was as unquestionable as her beauty; she played with grace, vivacity,
+charm, and distinction; and only to the initiate of the theatre was it
+apparent that Gloucester had found in her the perfect medium for the
+transmission of his art. Matthias could see, in company with a few of
+the more discriminating and stage-wise, that she employed not a gesture,
+intonation or bit of business which had not originated with Gloucester;
+she brought to her role on her part nothing but beauty and an unshakable
+self-confidence so thoroughly ingrained that it escaped suggesting
+self-consciousness. The triumph was, rightly, first Gloucester's, then
+the play's; but the public acclaimed the actress, and the one acidulated
+critic who hailed her, the following morning, as "at last!--the perfect
+human kinetophone record!" was listened to by none, least of all by the
+subject of his sarcasm. Marbridge, in a stage box, led the applause at
+the conclusion of each act; and at the end of the play Arlington came in
+person before the curtain, leading by the hand the gracefully reluctant
+Joan, and in a few suave sentences thanked the audience for its
+appreciation and a beneficent Providence for granting him this
+opportunity of fixing a new star in the theatrical firmament: the name
+of "this little girl," he promised (bowing to Joan) would appear in
+letters of fire over the theatre, the next night....
+
+Pausing in the lobby to light a cigarette before leaving, Matthias
+overheard one of Arlington's lieutenants confiding to another the news
+of the ruinous failure of the third initial production of that night.
+
+Half an hour later he met Wilbrow by appointment in a quiet,
+non-theatrical club, and received from him confirmation of rumours which
+had already reached him of his own triumph with "Tomorrow's People."
+
+"You're a made man now," Wilbrow told him with sincere good will and
+some little honest envy; "by tomorrow morning the pack will be at your
+heels, yapping for a chance to put on every old 'script in your trunk."
+
+"I suppose so," Matthias nodded soberly.
+
+"But there's one comfort about that," Wilbrow pursued cheerfully:
+"whatever the temptation, you won't give 'em anything but sound, sane,
+workmanlike stuff. You've proved yourself one of the two or three, at
+most, playwrights in this country who are able to think and to make an
+audience think without losing sight of the fact that, in the last
+analysis, 'the play's the thing.' We've got plenty of authors nowadays
+who can turn out first-chop melodrama, and we've got a respectable
+percentage of 'em who write plays so full of honest and intelligent
+thought that it gives the average manager a headache to look at the
+'script; but the men who can give us the sort of drama that not only
+makes you think but holds you on the front edge of your seat waiting to
+see what's coming next.... Well, they're few and far between, and you're
+one of 'em, and I'm proud to have had a hand in putting you before the
+public!"
+
+"You've got nothing on me, there," Matthias grinned: "I'm proud you had.
+And if I can get my own way after this--"
+
+"You don't need to join the I-Should-Worries on account of that!"
+
+"You'll be the only man who will ever produce one of my plays."
+
+Between one o'clock and two they parted. Matthias trudged home,
+completely fagged in body, but with a buoyant heart to sustain him.
+
+Venetia would be glad for him....
+
+He was ascending the steps of Number 289 when a heavy touring-car,
+coming from the direction of Longacre Square, swung in to the curb and
+stopped. Latch-key in hand, Matthias paused and looked back in some
+little surprise: the lodgers of Madame Duprat were a motley lot, but as
+far as he knew none of them were of the class that maintains expensive
+automobiles. But this car, upon inspection, proved to be tenanted by the
+chauffeur alone; who, leaving the motor purring, jumped smartly from his
+seat and ran up the steps.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, touching his cap, "but I'm looking
+for a gentleman named Matthias--"
+
+"I am Mr. Matthias."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I've been sent to fetch you. It's--er--important, I
+fancy," the man added, eyeing Matthias curiously.
+
+"You've been sent to fetch me? But who sent you?"
+
+"My employer, sir--Mr. Marbridge."
+
+"Marbridge!" Matthias echoed, startled. Without definite decision, he
+turned and ran down the steps in company with the chauffeur: Venetia in
+need of him, perhaps.... "What's happened?" he demanded. "Is Mrs.
+Marbridge--?"
+
+"If you'll just get in, sir," the man replied, "I'll tell you--as much
+as I know--on the way. It'll save time."
+
+He opened the door of the tonneau, but Matthias turned from it, walked
+round the car, and climbed into the seat beside the driver's. With a nod
+of satisfaction, the chauffeur joined him, threw in the power, and
+deftly swung the ponderous vehicle about.
+
+"Well?" Matthias asked as the machine shot across-town.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," the man replied after a moment--"but I'd rather not
+say anything, if it's all the same to you."
+
+"It isn't," Matthias insisted curtly. "I'm not on sufficiently friendly
+terms with Mr. Marbridge for him to send for me without explanation."
+
+"Yes, sir; but you see, part of my job is to keep my mouth shut."
+
+"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to forget that duty to some extent,
+or else stop the car and let me out."
+
+"Very good, sir. I don't suppose I can do any harm telling what little I
+know. After supper tonight, Mr. Marbridge told me to take the car to the
+garage and not to expect a call for it until sometime tomorrow morning;
+but when I got there, he was already wanting me on the telephone. He
+said there'd been an accident, and told me to find Mr. Arlington first
+and then you, and ask you to come immediately."
+
+"But why me?" Matthias asked, more of himself than of the driver.
+
+"He didn't say, sir."
+
+"Did he state what sort of an accident?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You found Mr. Arlington?"
+
+"No, sir; he wasn't in when I asked at his hotel. But I left a message
+before coming on for you."
+
+Matthias sat up with a start. Instead of turning up Broadway the man was
+steering his car straight across Longacre Square. Before he had time to
+comment on this fact they were speeding on toward Sixth Avenue.
+
+"Look here," he cried, "you're not taking me to Mr. Marbridge's home!"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Mr. Marbridge hadn't gone home when he telephoned me, sir."
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+"We'll be there in a minute, sir--an apartment house on Madison Avenue."
+
+"Oh!" said Matthias thoughtfully. "Was Mr. Marbridge--ah--alone when you
+left him tonight?"
+
+"I'd rather not say, sir, if you don't mind."
+
+Troubled by an inkling of the disaster, Matthias composed himself to
+patience.
+
+Turning south on Fifth Avenue, the car passed Thirty-fourth Street
+before swinging eastward again. It stopped, eventually, in the side
+street, just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, before a private
+entrance to a ground-floor apartment, such as physicians prefer. But
+Matthias could discern no physician's name-plate upon the door at which
+his guide knocked, or in either of the flanking windows.
+
+Opening, the door disclosed a panelled entry tenanted by a white-lipped
+woman in the black and white uniform of a lady's-maid. Her frightened
+eyes examined Matthias apprehensively as he entered, followed by the
+chauffeur.
+
+This last demanded briefly: "Doctor been?"
+
+The maid assented with a nervous nod: "Ten minutes ago, about. He's with
+the lady now--"
+
+"Lady!" the chauffeur echoed. "But I thought it was Mr. Marbridge--"
+
+"I mean the other lady," the maid explained--"the one what done the
+shooting. When Mr. Marbridge got the gun away from her, he locked her up
+in the bathroom, and then she had hysterics. The doctor's trying to make
+her hush, so's she won't disturb the other tenants, but.... You can hear
+yourself how she's carrying on."
+
+In a pause that followed, Matthias was conscious of the sound of
+high-pitched and incessant laughter, slightly muffled, emanating from
+some distant part of the flat.
+
+He asked abruptly: "Where is Mr. Marbridge?"
+
+The maid started and hesitated, looking to the chauffeur.
+
+"This is Mr. Matthias," that one explained. "Mr. Marbridge sent for
+him."
+
+"Oh, yes--excuse me, sir. This way, if you please."
+
+Opening a door on the right, the woman permitted Matthias to pass
+through, then closed it.
+
+He found himself in a dining-room of moderate proportions and handsomely
+furnished. Little of it was visible, however, outside the radius of
+illumination cast by an electric dome which, depending from the middle
+of the ceiling, focussed its rays upon a small round dining-table of
+mahogany. This table was quite bare save for a massive decanter of
+cut-glass standing at the edge of a puddle of spilt liquor: as if an
+uncertain hand had attempted to pour a drink. Near it lay a broken
+goblet.
+
+On the farther side of the table a woman with young and slender figure
+stood in a pose of arrested action, holding a goblet half-full of brandy
+and water. Her features were but indistinctly suggested in the penumbra
+of the dome, but beneath this her bare arms and shoulders, rising out of
+an elaborate evening gown, shone with a soft warm lustre. Matthias
+remembered that gown: Joan Thursday had worn it in the last act of "Mrs.
+Mixer." But she neither moved nor spoke, and for the time being he paid
+her no further heed, giving his attention entirely to Marbridge.
+
+Sitting low in a deeply upholstered wing-chair--out of place in the
+dining-room and evidently dragged in for the emergency--Marbridge
+breathed heavily, chin on his chest, his coarse mouth ajar, his face
+ghastly with a stricken pallor. His feet sprawled uncouthly. The dress
+coat and waistcoat he had worn lay in a heap on the floor, near the
+chair, and both shirt and undershirt had been ripped and cut away from
+his right shoulder, exposing his swarthy and hairy bosom and a sort of
+temporary bandage which, like his linen, was darkly stained. Closed when
+Matthias entered, his eyes opened almost instantly and fixed upon the
+man a heavy and lacklustre stare which at first failed to indicate
+recognition.
+
+Matthias heard himself crying out in a voice of horror: "Good God,
+Marbridge! How did this happen?"
+
+The man stirred, granted with pain, and made a deprecatory gesture with
+his left hand.
+
+"Needn't yell," he said thickly: "I've been shot ... done for...."
+
+His gaze shifted heavily to the woman. With effort he enunciated one
+word more: "Drink...."
+
+As though by that monosyllable freed from an enchaining spell, Joan
+started, moved quickly to his side and held the goblet to his lips.
+
+He drank noisily, gulping and slobbering; overflowing at either corner
+of his mouth, the liquor dripped twin streams upon his naked bosom.
+
+Mechanically Matthias put his hat down on the table.
+
+He experienced an incredulous sensation, as though he were struggling to
+cast off the terror and oppression of some particularly vivid and
+coherent nightmare.
+
+From the farther room that noise persisted of monotonous and awful
+laughter.
+
+Marbridge ceased to swallow and grunted. Joan removed the glass and drew
+away without looking at Matthias. At a cost of considerable will-power,
+apparently, the wounded man collected himself and levelled at Matthias
+his louring, but now less dull, regard.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said ungraciously. "Well, you'll do at a
+pinch.... I wanted Arlington ... but you if he couldn't be found."
+
+"Well," said Matthias stupidly, "I'm here.... The doctor's seen you, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes--did what he could for me--no use wasting effort--it's my cue to
+exit."
+
+"Oh, come! It's not as bad as that!"
+
+"The hell it ain't. The doctor knows--I know. Not that it matters. It
+was coming to me and I got it."
+
+"Where's the doctor?" Matthias insisted. "Why isn't he attending you
+now?"
+
+"He's in the other room ... trying to silence that crazy woman.... She
+plugged me and ... went into hysterics...."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Nella Cardrow.... Had the devil of a time with her before doctor
+came ... trying to keep her from rushing out and giving herself
+up ... all this in the papers.... But all right now: we'll hush it up."
+
+"Then that's what you want of me?"
+
+"Wait," Marbridge grunted. "Where's that girl?"
+
+Joan moved back to his side. "What can I do?" she said; and these were
+all the words Matthias heard her utter from first to last of that
+business.
+
+Marbridge nodded at her with a curling lip: "You can get out!"
+
+She turned sharply and left the room, banging the door.
+
+"That's the kind _she_ is," Marbridge commented. "You were lucky to get
+rid of her as easy as you did.... Give me more brandy, will you, like a
+good fellow--and be stingy with the water. I've got to ... hold out a
+couple of hours more."
+
+Matthias served him.
+
+"I presume Venetia knows nothing about this, yet?"
+
+Having drunk, Marbridge shook his head. "Not yet. Now, listen.... You
+guessed it: I want you to help hush this up, for Venetia's sake....
+Rotten mess--do no good if it gets in the papers--only humiliation for
+her. Will you--?"
+
+"What is it you want me to do?"
+
+"Help me home and keep your mouth shut.... You see, this is my place;
+I've had it years; very handy--private entrance--all that.... Nella used
+to meet me here. That's how she came to have a key. I'd forgotten....
+Well, I got tired of her, and she couldn't act, and Arlington was sore
+about that. So we planned to get rid of her. I guess you must've heard.
+It was a dirty business, all round.... And tonight, when her play went
+to pieces, just as we'd planned it should, she saw how she'd been bilked
+and lost her head.... Came here, let herself in quietly, without the
+maid's hearing her, and shot me when I came in with Joan. I managed to
+get the gun away before she could turn it on herself, and locked her up.
+Then--hysterics.... Well, I'm finished. I asked for it, and got it....
+No: no remorse bunk, no deathbed repentance, nothing like that! But I
+realize I've been a pretty rotten proposition, first and last. Never
+mind.... What I'm getting at's this: nobody need suffer but me. That's
+where _you_ come in. For Venetia's sake. You and Arlington and the
+doctor can cover it all up between you. Arlie can quiet that
+girl--Joan--and the doctor's all right; he'll want a pretty stiff cheque
+to fix the undertaker--and that's all right, too. Then you've got to
+scare Nella Cardrow so's she won't give herself away, and buy my
+chauffeur and that maid out there, Sara.... But first off, you'll have
+to help doctor get me home and in bed. I'm the sort that's got to die in
+the house."
+
+His chin dropped again.
+
+"Well ... I guess it's a good job ... at that...."
+
+He shivered.
+
+The hall-door opened and Arlington entered, followed by a lean man with
+worried eyes who proved to be the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Shortly before seven o'clock, that same morning, a limousine car pulled
+up quietly just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, and its occupant,
+with a word on alighting to his driver, addressed himself briskly to the
+door of the ground-floor flat.
+
+He was a handsome, well dressed, well-set-up and well-nourished animal
+of something more than middle-age: a fact which the pitilessly clear
+light of early morning betrayed, discovering lines and hollows in his
+clean-shaven countenance which would ordinarily have escaped notice.
+
+But he had passed that time of life when he could suffer a sleepless
+night of anxiety without visibly paying for it.
+
+His intention to announce himself by ringing the bell was promptly
+anticipated, the door opening before his finger could touch the button.
+He checked momentarily in obvious surprise, then jauntily lifted his hat
+as he stepped hurriedly inside.
+
+"Why, my dear!" he addressed the woman who held the door--"up so early!"
+
+"I haven't been to bed, of course, Mr. Arlington," Joan informed him.
+
+"Well," he observed, not without envy, "you don't look it."
+
+"I've been packing all night," she returned. "Of course--I can't stay
+here, after what's happened."
+
+"Of course not," he agreed sympathetically.
+
+Having closed the outside door, she moved before him into a small
+drawing-room which adjoined the entry-hall on the left, and when he had
+followed shut its door with particular care.
+
+"Sara's still packing," she explained, turning to Arlington. "Well?"
+
+He hesitated, looking her over with a doubtful eye. But she was, at
+least outwardly, quite cool and collected, her manner exhibiting no
+undue amount of anxiety.
+
+Still, a certain amount of make-believe would seem no more than
+decent....
+
+"Look here," he said almost sharply--"you're feeling all right, eh?"
+
+"Quite--only tired as a dog; and naturally--"
+
+"I understand," he interrupted. "But you'll be fit to go on tonight, you
+think?"
+
+"Don't worry about that," Joan advised him decidedly. "I'm hoping to get
+a nap before evening, but even if I don't, I know the first duty of an
+actress is always to her public."
+
+"Yes," Arlington agreed briefly, avoiding her eyes.... "Still, I must
+ask you to be prepared."
+
+Joan's figure stiffened slightly, and her dark eyes widened.
+
+"Dead?" she questioned in a low voice.
+
+Arlington nodded. "I'm sorry.... About half an hour after we got him
+home."
+
+The girl sat down suddenly and buried her face in her hands.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in a stifled voice--"how awful!"
+
+"There!" Arlington moved over and rested a hand familiarly on her
+shoulder. "Brace up. You'll forget all about this before long."
+
+"O no--never!" she moaned through her fingers.
+
+"But you will," he insisted, looking down at her with an odd expression.
+"To begin with, I'm going to make it my business to see that you forget.
+You must. You can't do justice to your--genius, if you keep harping on
+this accident. It wasn't your fault, you know. Just as soon as I've
+arranged a few details.... By the way, how's the Cardrow woman?"
+
+"Asleep," Joan answered. "She hasn't made a bit of trouble since the
+doctor gave her that dope--whatever it was."
+
+"Good. He'll be along presently with a nurse he can trust. And by that
+time I'll have you out of the way. I know just the place for you, a
+little flat uptown, on Fifty-ninth Street, overlooking the Park. You'll
+be very quiet and comfortable there, and near the theatre besides."
+
+"I'm glad of that. I was thinking, of course, I'd have to go to some
+hotel ... and I didn't want to."
+
+"And quite natural. You want to be alone until you feel yourself
+again.... I'll find you a good maid, and make everything smooth for you.
+You're not to fret about anything, and if you're troubled you must come
+right to me."
+
+"You're awf'ly kind."
+
+"Don't look at it that way, please."
+
+"How can I ever thank you?"
+
+"Oh, we'll talk that over some other time." Arlington removed his hand
+from her shoulder and went back to the table, upon which he had
+deposited a bundle of newspapers. "There's no doubt of your success," he
+pursued soothingly. "Your notices are the finest I've seen in years. I
+brought you the lot of them in case you care--"
+
+Joan uncovered her face and looked up quickly. "Oh, do let me see them!"
+
+Arlington placed the papers in her eager hands.
+
+"They're all folded with your reviews uppermost."
+
+"Oh, thank you ever so much!"
+
+But in the act of opening the bundle, Joan hesitated and let it fall
+into her lap.
+
+"There's nothing about--?" she questioned fearfully.
+
+"No, and won't be," he promised. "Besides, these were already on the
+presses by the time it happened.... You needn't worry," he resumed,
+moving to a window and looking abstractedly out, hands clasped behind
+him; "the affair will be kept perfectly quiet. Everybody's been seen
+and fixed, except the Cardrow, and the doctor has already given us a
+certificate of death under the knife--operation for appendicitis,
+imperatively required at an hour's notice.... By the way, I don't
+suppose you know, but--Marbridge didn't leave any papers or anything of
+that sort lying round here, did he?"
+
+There was no answer. He heard a paper rustle, and looking round saw the
+girl with her attention all absorbed by one of her notices.
+
+"Well," he said after a moment, "I'll go and have a talk with that maid,
+Sara."
+
+"All right," she returned abstractedly.
+
+"You're all ready to leave when I've fixed things up with her?"
+
+"Yes," she returned, without looking up.
+
+He hesitated a moment by the door, remarking the flush of colour that
+was deepening in her cheeks; then with a mystified shake of his head, he
+left the room very quietly.
+
+She remained alone for upwards of half an hour, in the course of which
+time she read all the reviews once and some of the more enthusiastic
+twice.
+
+Then carefully folding the papers, she put them aside and sat thinking.
+
+She thought for a long time without moving, her eyes shining as they
+looked ahead, out of the stupid and sordid turmoil of yesterday into the
+golden promise of tomorrow.
+
+She thought by no means clearly, with a brain confused by praise and
+sodden with fatigue; but above the welter of her thoughts, a single
+tremendous fact stood out, solid and unshakable, like a mountain
+towering about cloud-wrack:
+
+She was a Success.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN THURSDAY***
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