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?"