It was a Saturday afternoon, and Hattie had taken herself off to a nearby ocean beach for the week-end; something for which Joan was grateful, inasmuch as it enabled her to dress her part without exciting comment.
To her relief, a servant new to the house since her time, answered her ring at the bell of Number 289, and with an indifferent nod indicated the door to the back-parlour.
Behind that portal Matthias was working furiously against time, carpentering against the grain that play to discuss which he had lunched at Shanley's; the managerial personage having offered to consider it seriously if certain changes were made. And the playwright was in haste to be quit of the job, not only because he disapproved heartily of the stipulated alterations, but further because he was booked for some weeks in Maine as soon as the revision was finished.
Humanly, then, he was little pleased to be warned, through the medium of a knock, that his work was to suffer interruption.
He swore mildly beneath his breath, glanced suspiciously at the non-committal door, growled brusque permission to enter, and bent again over the manuscript, refusing to look up until he had pursued a thread of thought to its conclusion, and knotted that same all ship-shape.
And when at length he consented to be aware of the young woman on his threshold, waiting in a pose of patience, her eyes wide with doubt and apprehensions, his mind was so completely detached from any thought of Joan that he failed, at first, to recognize her.
But the alien presence brought him to his feet quickly enough.
"I beg your pardon," he said with an uncertain nod. "You wished to see me about something?"
Closing the door, Joan came slowly forward into stronger light.
"You don't remember me?" she asked, half perplexed, half wistful of aspect. "But I thought—the other day—at Shanley's—"