"I--well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.

Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I guess I can take care of myself."

"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse _me_."

"That's all right--and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have come into some money--not much." Her gaze was as clear and straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."

"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to bra.s.s tacks: how about that sketch?"

"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"

He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition strikes you. That's what I want to know."

"You haven't made me any proposition."

"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"

"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."

"Ain't that enough?"

She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better, and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"

He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars...."

"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.

"But look here: you're only a beginner--"

"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"

"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but--"

"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"

"d.a.m.n Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"

"Fifty--and transportation on the road."

He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner, bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do anything in the world for you--"

"Fifty and transportation!"

"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the cast, outsida you and me. _David_'ll want fifty at least, and the _Thief_ thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission for booking us, leaving only seventy for _my_ bit--and I'm risking all I got salted away to try it out."

He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.

"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."

This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily silenced.

"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing mendacity--"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can get any figure I want to ask, in reason."

Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.

"He rehea.r.s.ed me in 'The Jade G.o.d' before Rideout went broke. I guess you heard about that."

The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast....

Look here: make it--"

"Fifty or nothing."

After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All right."

At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than elegance the food before him.

Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to her will....

There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of gratulate reflection.

From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance.

Pa.s.sing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned, and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy, ambitions achieved through adulation of men....

"Why, Miss Thursday, how _do_ you do?"

Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr.

Marbridge!"

Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday, and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome eyes ogled her effectively.

"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist stopping to speak. How are you?"

"I"--Joan stammered--"I'm very well, thanks."

"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as happy--more charming than both! You are--eh--not lonesome?"

His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard, exposed the innuendo.

"Oh, no, I--"

"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to call on you. Where do you put up in town?"

Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address--knowing in her heart that the truth was not in this man.

"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?"

She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia.

Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...."