Joan Thursday: A Novel

by Louis Joseph Vance

"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.

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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 manœuvre; 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.

"Whatever 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 manœuvre 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.

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