"I just couldn't get along with the star, and that's all there was to it," Joan declared. "He was a boozer and—well, I had to quit."
"And the sketch—"
"Oh, it went on, all right, I guess."
"Without you! Well, that's hard to credit. However...." Marbridge leaned back and for a moment stared thoughtfully out of the window. "I really can't think of anything we've got open just now that's good enough to offer you."
"Please don't think of me that way, Mr. Marbridge," Joan pleaded earnestly, more than half deceived. "I'm ready for anything, to get a chance to show these people what I can do. Anything—however small—just so it gives me a show—I don't care what!"
Marbridge preserved admirably his look of intent gravity. "Let me think a moment," he requested, pursing his full lips.
Joan watched him closely through that brief silence, her mood one of curious texture, compounded in almost equal parts of hope and doubt, of wonder and misgivings, of appreciation of her own courage and shrewdness, and of admiration for Marbridge.
He was by no means what she would have termed handsome, but he was uncommonly individual, a personality that left an ineffaceable impression of strength and masculinity; and with this he had an air of being finished and complete, as though he not only knew better than most how to take care of himself in all ways, but slighted himself in none. She thought his mode of dress striking, combining distinction and taste to an extraordinary degree.... And when in his abstraction he pinched his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, she was impressed with the discovery that a man's hand could be at once well-manicured and muscular....
He turned back abruptly with a sparkle of enthusiasm in his bold and prominent eyes.
"By George, I think I have it!..."