Wondering incoherently, she stared about her. The rich, subdued glow of the shaded lamp suggested more than it revealed, but she was impressed by the generous proportions of the room. The drop-light itself stood on a long, broad table littered with a few books and a great many papers, inkstands, pens, blotters, ash-trays, pipes: all in agreeable disorder. Beyond this table was one smaller, which supported a type-writing-machine. Against the nearer wall stood a luxurious, if worn, leather-covered couch. There were two immense black walnut bookcases. The windows at the back disclosed a section of iron-railed balcony.

Joan grew sensitive to an anodynous atmosphere of quiet and comfort....

Drowsily she heard a quiet knocking at some door upstairs; then a subdued murmur of voices, the closing of a door, footsteps returning down the long staircase. When these last sounded on the tiled flooring, the girl spurred her flagging senses and got up in a sudden flutter of doubt, anxiety, and embarra.s.sment. The man entering the room found her so--poised in indecision.

"Please do sit down," he said quietly, with a smile that carried rea.s.surance; and, taking her compliance for something granted, pa.s.sed on to another arm-chair near the long table.

With a docility and total absence of distrust that later surprised her to remember, Joan sank back, eyes eloquent with the question unuttered by her parted lips.

Her host, lounging, turned to her a face of which one half was in dense shadow: a keen, strongly modelled face with deep-set eyes at once whimsical and thoughtful, and a mouth thin-lipped but generously wide.

He rested an elbow on the table and his head on a spare, sinewy hand, thrusting slender fingers up into hair straight, not long, and rather light in colour.

"I'm sorry to have to report," he said gently, "that 'The Dancing Deans, Maizie and May,' are on the road. So I'm informed by Madame Duprat, at least. They're not expected back for several weeks.... I hope you aren't greatly disappointed."

Her eyes, wide and dark with dismay, told him too plainly that she was.

She made no effort to speak, but after an instant of dumb consternation, moved as if to rise.

He detained her with a gesture. "Please don't hurry: you needn't, you know. Of course, if you must, I won't detain you: the door is open, your way clear to the street. But what are you going to do about a place to sleep tonight?"

She stared in surprise and puzzled resentment. A warm wave of colour temporarily displaced her pallor.

"What makes you so sure I've got no place to sleep?" she asked ungraciously.

He lifted his shoulders slightly and dropped his hand to the table.

"Perhaps I was impertinent," he admitted. "I'm sorry.... But you haven't--have you?"

"No, I haven't," she said sharply. "But what's that--"

"As you quite reasonably imply, it's nothing to me," he interrupted suavely. "But I'd be sorry to think of you out there--alone--in the rain--when there's no reason why you need be."

"No reason!" she echoed, wondering if she had misjudged him after all.

Without warning the man tilted the green lamp-shade until a broad, strong glow flooded her face. A spark of indignation kindled in the girl while she endured his brief, impersonal, silent examination. Sheer fatigue alone prevented her from rising and walking out of the room--that, and curiosity.

He replaced the shade, and got out of the chair with a swift movement that seemed not at all one of haste.

"I see no reason," he announced coolly. "I've got to run along now--I merely dropped in to get a ma.n.u.script. I think you'll be quite comfortable here--and there's a good bolt on the door. Of course, it's very unconventional, but I hope you'll be kind enough to overlook that, considering the circ.u.mstances. And tomorrow, after a good rest, you can make up your mind whether it would be wiser to stick to your first plan or--go home."

He smiled with a vague, disinterested geniality, and added a pleading "Now don't say no!" when he saw that the girl had likewise risen.

"How do you know I've left home?" she demanded hotly.

"Well"--his smile broadened--"deductive faculty--Sherlock Holmes--Dupin--that sort of tommyrot, you know. But it wasn't such a bad guess--now was it?"

"I don't see how you knew," she muttered sulkily.

He ran his long fingers once or twice through his hair in a manner of great perplexity.

"I can't quite tell, myself."

"It wasn't my fault," she protested with a flash of pa.s.sion. "I lost my job today, and because I said I wanted to go on the stage, my father put me out of the house."

"Yes," he agreed amiably; "they always do--don't they? I fancied it was something like that. But there isn't really any reason why you shouldn't go home tomorrow and patch it up--or is there?"

She gulped convulsively: "You don't understand--"

"Probably I don't," he conceded. "Still, things may look very much otherwise in the morning. They generally do, I notice. One goes to bed with reluctance and wakes up with a headache. All that sort of thing....

But if you'll listen to me a moment--why, then if you want to go, I shan't detain you.... My name is John Matthias. My trade is writing things--plays, mostly: I know it sounds foolish, but then I hate exercise. I live--sleep, that is--ah--elsewhere--down the street. This is merely my work-room. So your stopping here won't inconvenience me in the least...."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a ma.s.s of papers from the table, folded them hastily and thrust them into a coat pocket.

"That ma.n.u.script I was after. Good night. I do hope you'll be comfortable."

Before the amazed girl could collect herself, he had his hat and handbag and was already in the hallway.

She ran after him.

"But, Mr. Matthias--"

He glanced hastily over his shoulder while fumbling with the night-latch.

"I can't let you--"

"Oh, but you must--really, you know."

He had the door open.

"But why do you--how can you trust me with all your things?"

"Tut!" he said reprovingly from the vestibule--"nothing there but play 'scripts, and they're not worth anything. You can't get anybody to produce 'em. I know, because I've tried."

He closed the inner door and banged the outer behind him.

Joan, on the point of pursuing to the street, paused in the vestibule, and for a moment stood doubting. Then, with a bewildered look, she returned slowly to the back room, shut herself in, and shot the bolt....

On the platform of the stoop, Mr. Matthias delayed long enough to turn up his coat-collar for the better protection of his linen, and surveyed with a wry grin the slashing rush of rain through which he now must needs paddle unprotected.

"Queer thing for a fellow to do," he mused dispa.s.sionately....

"Daresay I am a bit of an a.s.s.... I might at least have borrowed my own umbrella.... But that would hardly have been consistent with the egregious insanity of the performance....

"I wonder why I do these awful things?... If I only knew, perhaps I could reform...."

Running down the steps, he set out at a rapid pace for the Hotel Astor; which in due time received and harboured him for the night.