"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."