For all this, she was reluctant to contemplate going home. Anything were preferable to that--at least until she could feel reasonably sure of finding Hattie abed and asleep.

They finished their meal at an hour too late to make it worth while to patronize one of the open-air entertainments with which she had promised herself diversion; and since she would neither go home nor, at Fowey's mischievous suggestion, return to Coney Island, they moved to another table, nearer the railing, and whiled away one more hour listening to the band music over their cigarettes and liqueurs.

Toward eleven o'clock, Joan suddenly announced that she was sick of it all and ready to go. Fowey revived his preference for a motor-car, and got his way against scanty opposition. In a saner humour, Joan would have stuck to her original plan. As it was, she accepted the motor ride with neither grat.i.tude nor graciousness.

Curiously enough, once established in the car, her hat off, the swift rush of night air cooling her moist brows, her head resting back against the cushions, she permitted Fowey to repeat his ardent love-making which had made their previous ride together memorable. Her dislike of him was no less thorough-paced, but had pa.s.sed from an active to a pa.s.sive stage; she was at once too indifferent to resist him and so bored that she welcomed anything that promised excitement. She suffered his kisses, confident in her power to control him, and drew a certain satisfaction from reminding him, now and again forcibly, that there were limits to her toleration. But for the most part she lay in his arms in pa.s.sive languor, her eyes half closed, and tried to forget him, or rather to believe him someone else, one whose embraces she could have welcomed....

When they came to lighted streets, she bade Fowey "behave," and would not permit him even so slight a lapse from decorum as that of "holding hands."

She sat up, rearranging the disorder of her hair, adjusted her hat, surrept.i.tiously restored the brilliance of her lips with a stick of rouge.

The man drew back sullenly into his corner, fuming....

At her door, dismissing the car, he followed her up to the stoop.

"Joan--" he began angrily.

She turned back from using her latch-key, with a wondering, child-like stare.

"Yes, Hubert?" she enquired with hidden malice.

"You're not--you're not going to send me off like this?"

"Why not?" she demanded with fine a.s.sumption of simplicity. "It's awful'

late."

Fowey seized her wrist.

"Now, listen to me!"

Joan broke his grasp with little or no effort.

"Silly boy!" she said. "Do you really want to come in and visit a while before you say good night?"

Her look was false with a winning softness. Fowey stammered.

"You--you know--"

"Then come along!" she said, with a laugh; and turning fled lightly before him up the darkened stairway.

She had opened the door to the tiny private hallway of the flat when he overtook her, panting. She paused, with a warning finger to her lips.

"S-sh!" she warned. "Don't wake Hattie!"

He swore viciously, discountenanced; and she laughed and, leaving the door wide, went on into the small sitting-dining-room, meanly exulting in the discomfiture she had planned, knowing quite well that he had either forgotten Hattie or believed her to be spending this week-end out of Town, as before.

In the act of lighting the gas, she heard the door close and saw Fowey come, white and shaken, into the room.

"Hush!" she said gaily. "I'll make sure she isn't awake--"

Removing her hat, she pa.s.sed on into the adjoining bedroom, and stopped short with a sensation of sinking dismay. The room was empty, the bed she shared with Hattie untouched. So much was visible in the faint light entering through windows that opened on a well.

Wondering, Joan struck a light. Its first glimmer revealed to her the fact that Hattie's trunk was gone. The flare of the gas-jet disclosed greater changes in the aspect of the room, due to the disappearance of Hattie's toilet articles and knick-knacks.

Hattie had left, bag and baggage--had gone for good!

But why?

Had she discovered Joan's treachery? Or what had happened?

And in her surprise and perplexity, the girl was conscious anew of that sense of loneliness. She had been afraid to return to the one whom she had betrayed so lightly; but now she was afraid to be without her.

Going back to the adjoining room, she found Fowey standing beside the table and with a slight smile examining a sheet of paper.

"I found this lying here," he announced, handing it over--"didn't realize it was anything until I'd read half of it."

His smile was again confident, bright with premature pride of conquest.

But Joan didn't heed it. She was reading rapidly what had been written, swiftly and in a sprawling hand, upon the half sheet of note-paper.

"By rights I ought to stay until you come back, whenever you have the cheek to, and tell you what I think of you--I saw B.

E. this evening and he told me all about it--but I want never to see you again--the rent's paid up till next Wednesday--then you can stick or get out--I don't care which--and I wish you joy of your bargain!--H. M."

"You've been sc.r.a.pping with Hattie, eh?" Joan heard Fowey say in an amused voice.

Without answering, she let the sheet of paper fall to the table, and stood with head bowed in thought, suffering acutely the humiliation inspired by Hattie's contemptuous dismissal.

"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry--"

"Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly.

Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position.

"Oh ..." she said blankly.

Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him off.

"Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now--of course. I'm sorry. Good night."

He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with pa.s.sion; his small eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides, but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body trembling and shaken beyond control.

She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of pity for him.

"Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away."

"No, I'm d.a.m.ned if I do. You asked me up here--I know now--just to tease me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged--"don't treat me so cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you, more than a chance to torment me? My G.o.d! what kind of a woman are you?

I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were--"