"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."