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?"