"Why, I know you—at least I've seen you, only you don't remember me," Joy was saying impulsively.
Laura Ward, in the act of slipping off her coat, stopped in surprise.
"Why, I have seen you" she said. "Where was it?"
"I was posing for the Morrows," explained Joy. "You ran in and got some fixative. They had me for their mural decorations——"
"Joy!" called somebody in the tone of imperative need which is almost as summoning as a telephone bell, and Joy dashed off, holding up her green water-weeds with one hand and her draperies with the other. The meeting with Laura Ward seemed a pleasant sort of crowning to the day. She was the very same vivid, gipsy-looking girl who had dashed into the Morrow studio for a moment, and who had seemed to stand, to Joy then, for all the kinds of girl she had wanted to be and couldn't. And now she seemed just a pleasant person like oneself. Joy had caught up to her. It was like an omen.
"What is it?" she called dutifully as she ran.
She found no opportunity to see more of Miss Ward. She wanted to, for she was sure she was going to like her. She had always wanted to.
"It's a good audience," breathed Clarence over her shoulder, as they looked through peep-holes in the curtain. "All the sisters and cousins and aunts have turned up. I say, Joy, the Fairy Queen was good for ten tickets at least. There's a row of her dear ones right across from aisle to aisle."
The moment of the play had come all too swiftly, and in ten nerve-shattering minutes the curtain would go up. Ten minutes after that Joy would be rising out of a trap-door, in the character of a fairy who had spent the last twenty years at the bottom of a stream; incidentally she would be acting for the first time in her life. There was enough to be excited over; and yet it was none of these things that excited her—it was the curious note in Clarence Rutherford's voice as he spoke his trivial words in her ear.
She moved away from him automatically. She was a little tired, tonight, of his persistent flirtation. It was all very well for a while, but surely—surely, she thought, it was time he'd had enough of it; and she went back off the stage, looking, though she scarcely acknowledged it to herself, for John. She felt as if she wanted to see as much of him as she could.