Joan Thursday: A Novel

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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....