"I report?" Joan looked at him in astonishment; women reporters were disapproved of on the Evening Herald.
"I know it is unusual," Mr. Strangman admitted. "But Jones is ill, and our other men will all be busy on important turns. I just thought of you in passing; it is a pity to waste the ticket."
"I could try." Joan made an effort to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
"Yes, that is it, you could try. We should not want much," he added; "and it is not part of your duties as a secretary; still, you might enjoy it, eh?"
"Why, I should love it," she assented; hate was fast merging back into liking.
Strangman cackled his customary nervous laugh. "Then that is settled," he said, "and here is the ticket. You will have to have a fancy dress, hire it, I suppose, since the time is so short. That, and a taxi there and back, will come out of the paper. Hope it is a good show, for your sake."
Afterwards, when she looked back at that evening, at the Artists' Ball, Joan was ashamed to remember the eager heat of excitement which took possession of her from the moment when she stepped out of the Evening Herald taxi and ran along the passage to the ladies' cloak-room. She had, it seemed to her, no excuse; she was not young enough to have made it pardonable and she had long ago decided that the intoxication of life could be no longer hers. Its loss was to be part of the bitter lesson fate had taught her. Yet as she saw herself in the glass, a ridiculous figure in black flounces with just one scarlet rose pinned at her waist and another nodding on the brim of her hat, she could not keep the excitement from sparkling in her eyes and the colour of youth was certainly flaming in her cheeks. Fanny had fitted her out with clever fingers as a black Pierrette. A Pierrette, taken from the leaves of some old French book, with her hair done in little dropping curls just faintly powdered, as if a mist of snow lay over the brown.
She was young, after all, and the music called to her with insistent voice. "I am looking nice," Joan confided to her reflection, "and I will have a good time just for to-night."
Then she turned and went quickly, walking with light feet and eager eyes that sought for adventure into the crowded room.
It gave her first of all an immense sense of space. The whole opera house had been converted into a ballroom. There were hundreds of people present, and every imaginable fancy dress under the sun. Brilliant colours, bright lights and the constant movement of the crowd made up a scene of kaleidoscopic splendour.