On this tableau the curtain fell – and rose and fell again and again at the direction of the house-manager deferring to an enthusiastic audience. Crude and raw as was this composition, the surprise of its last line and the strength with which it was acted, had won the unstinted approval of a public ever hungry for melodrama.

Quard, revivified, bowing and smiling with suave and deprecatory grace, Joan in tears of excitement and delight, and the subordinate members of the company in varying stages of gratification over the prospect of prompt booking and a long engagement, were obliged to hold the stage through nine curtain-calls…

On her way back to her dressing-room Joan was halted by a touch on her shoulder. She paused, to recognize Gloucester, of whose presence in the house she had been ignorant.

"Very well done, my dear," he said loftily; "very well done. You've got the makings of an actress in you, if you don't lose your head. Now run along and dry your eyes, like a good girl, and don't bother me with your silly gratitude."

With this he brusquely turned his back to her.

But Quard, overtaking her in the gangway, without hesitation or apology folded her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And Joan submitted without remonstrance, athrill and elate.

"Girlie!" he cried exultantly – "you're a wonder!

"I knew you could do it!.. But, O my Gawd! you nearly finished me when you let that gun off right in my face!.."

Somehow she found her way home alone, and shut herself up in the hall-bedroom to calm down and try to review the triumph sensibly.

Unquestionably she had done well.

Quard had done much better – but no wonder! She wasn't jealous: she was glad for his sake as well as for her own.

Of course, this meant a great change. There was to come the day of reckoning with Matthias… She had four letters of his, not one of which she had answered… If "The Lie" got booking, and she went on the road with it – as she knew in her soul she would: nothing now could keep her off the stage – she would almost certainly lose Matthias.

Quard, however, would remain to her; and of Quard she was very sure. That he loved her with genuine and generous devotion was now the one clear and indisputable fact in her unstable existence. If only he would refrain from drinking…

He was to telephone as soon as he received any encouraging news; and he had expected definite word from Boskerk before the afternoon was over. In anticipation of being called down-stairs at any minute, Joan remained in her street dress, aching for her bed though she was with reaction and simple fatigue. But it was nearly eight o'clock before she was summoned.

"That you, girlie?" the answer came to her breathless "Hello?"

"Yes – yes, Charlie. What is it?"

"I've seen Boskerk – in fact, I'm eating with him now. It's all settled. We're to open next Monday somewhere in New England – Springfield, probably; and we get forty weeks solid on top of that."

"I'm so glad!"

"Sure you are. We're all glad, I guess."

"And – Charlie – " she stammered.

"Hello?"

"Are you – are you all right?"

"Sure I'm all right. Good night, girlie. Take care of yourself. See you tomorrow."

"Good night," said Joan.

Hooking up the receiver, she leaned momentarily against the wall, feeling a little faint and ill.

Was it simply overtaxed imagination that had made her believe she detected a slight constraint in Quard's voice – a hesitation assumed to mask blurred enunciation?

XXIV

But when Joan met Quard in the morning her anxious eyes detected in his assured bearing none of the nervous unrest, in his clear eyes and the even tone of his coarse, pasty-pale skin none of the feverish stains, that are symptomatic of alcoholic excesses.

Surprised and grateful, she treated the man with a tenderness and sweetness she had otherwise been too wary to betray…

By Thursday it was settled that they were to open on Monday at Poli's Theatre in Springfield, for an engagement of a week. If the audiences there endorsed the verdict of the first, Boskerk promised Quard a full season's booking.

From the Springfield house he was to receive three hundred and fifty dollars. He permitted Joan to understand, however, that his fee would be no more than the sum he had first mentioned – three hundred dollars.

It was decided to leave New York by a Sunday train which would put them down in Springfield in the middle of the afternoon, enabling the company to find suitable lodgings before meeting to run through their lines in the evening. They would have an opportunity for a sketchy, scrambly rehearsal on the stage Monday morning, but dared not depend on that; for the greater part of their allotted period would necessarily be consumed in the selection of a practicable "set" from the stock of the theatre, in making arrangements for suitable furniture properties, and in drilling the house electrician in the uncommonly heavy schedule of light cues – any one of which, if bungled, was calculated seriously to impair the illusion of the sketch.

Joan thoughtfully stipulated for twenty-five dollars advance, against expenses. Quard protested, alleging financial straits due to his already heavy outlay, but the girl was firm. True, she still had (unknown to him) one hundred and twenty-five dollars; but not until near the end of their week at Springfield would they know whether or not they were to get further booking.

In the end the actor ungraciously surrendered.

She made her preparations for leaving her hall-bedroom with a craft and stealth worthy of a burglar preparing to break prison.

If her break with Matthias was to become absolute, she was determined not to leave any clue whereby she might be traced.

An enquiry as to the best place to take a dress to be dry-cleaned furnished sufficient excuse for lugging away one well-filled suit-case, which Joan left at a cheap theatrical hotel a few blocks farther uptown and east of Broadway, where she simultaneously engaged a room for Saturday night. And on Saturday afternoon she carried away a second suit-case containing the remainder of her wardrobe, informing Madame Duprat that she was going to visit her folks for a day or two.

But first she had to undergo a bad quarter-hour in the back-parlour.

The sense of her treachery would not lift from her mood. Perhaps she felt its oppression the more heavily because of her uncertainty: she couldn't yet be sure she wasn't committing herself to a step of irrevocable error; she was only sure that she was doing what she wanted to do with all her heart, whatever evil might come of it. And there would be more ease in companionship with Quard; with him she could have her own way in everything, could always be her natural self and still retain his respect – and her own. On the other hand, she could not look up to him, and was by no means as fond of him as of Matthias. Her fiancée was without reproach: he loved her; but his respect she could never own. Dimly she recognized this fact; though he thought he respected her, and did truly honour her as his promised wife, he was his own dupe, passion-blinded. Actually, they were people of different races, their emotional natures differently organized, their mental processes working from widely divergent views of life.

Even in this instance, Joan's perception of the gulf between them was more emotional than thoughtful…

She moved slowly about the room, resentfully distressed, touching with reluctant fingers objects indelibly associated in her memory with the man of her first love.

Sitting at his desk, she enclosed in a large envelope his letters. Two had arrived since Thursday; but these she had not opened. She hardly understood why she desired not to open them; she still took a real and deep interest in his fortunes; but she was desperately loath to read the mute reproach legible, if to her eyes alone, between his lines.

She meant to leave him a note of her own, tenderly contrite and at the same time firmly final; but in spite of a mood saturate with an appropriately gentle and generous melancholy, she could not, apparently, fix it down with ink on paper. Eventually she gave it up: destroyed what she had attempted, and sealed the packet, leaving Matthias no written word of hers save his name on the face of the envelope.

There remained the most difficult duty of all.

With painful reluctance, Joan removed the ring from her finger (where it had been ever since she had last parted with Quard) and replacing it in its leather-covered case, sat for a long time looking her farewell upon that brilliant and more than intrinsically precious jewel.

At length, closing the case, she placed it on top of the envelope, rose and moved to the door. There she hesitated, looking back in pain and longing.

There was no telling what might happen to it before Matthias returned. A prying chambermaid…

And then it was quite possible that "The Lie" would not last out the week in Springfield.

Quard had more than once pointed out: "There's nothing sure in this game but the fact that you're bound to close sooner 'n you looked for."

"Maybe I'll be back inside a week," Joan doubted.

There was always that chance; and she had already left one door open against her return.

"Anyway, it isn't safe, there. And I can mail it to him, registered, when I'm sure he's home."

Turning back, she snatched up the leather case and darted guiltily from the study and out of the house.

XXV

The stage-wise have long since learned to discount a "slump" in the next performance to follow a brilliantly successful première: the phenomenon is as inevitable as poor food on a route of one-night stands.

At Springfield, on Monday afternoon, "The Lie" was presented in a manner of unpardonable crudity. Quard forgot his lines and extemporized and "gagged" desperately to cover the consequent breaks in the dialogue; leaving poor Joan hopelessly at sea, floundering for cues that were never uttered.

At the last moment it was discovered that nothing had been provided to simulate, at the beginning of the second scene, the sound of a clock striking twelve, off-stage. The property man could offer nothing better than an iron crowbar and a hammer; the twelve strokes, consequently, resembled nothing in the world other than a wholly untemperamental crowbar banged by a dispassionate hammer. Fortunately, the effect was so thin and dead that it convulsed only the first few rows of the orchestra.

The light cues went wrong when they were not altogether ignored; and once, when Joan having indicated in a brief soliloquy her depression on being left alone in the gloomy house, gave the cue "I must have more light," at the same time touching a property switch on the wall, every light in the house other than the red "exit" lamps was "blacked out." And at all other times the required changes either anticipated or dragged far behind their cues.

The Thief forgot to load his revolver, with the result that Quard fired the only shot in their duel – and then fell dead. This so rattled David that he anticipated his first entrance and rushed on the stage only to back off precipitately while Joan was urging the Thief to go and leave her to shoulder his crime.

The only misadventure that failed to attend upon the performance was a traditional one of the stage: the theatre cat by some accident did not walk upon the scene at a climax and seat itself before the footlights to wash its face.

Nevertheless the sketch "got over" at the matinée, receiving three curtain calls; and at night – when the little company, conscious of its crimes, pulled itself together and acted with an intensity of effort only equalled by that of its first performance in New York – the house gave the piece a rousing reception.

Thereafter they played it well and consistently, with increasing assurance as days passed and use bred the habit in them all.

On Thursday Quard heard from Boskerk, and announced that the company would return to New York the following Monday to play a six weeks' engagement in the Percy Williams houses, beginning with a fortnight in Manhattan and winding up in Greenpoint, Long Island. He added that Boskerk was busy arranging a subsequent tour which would take them to the Pacific Coast and back. He did not add that the agent had successfully demanded as much as four hundred and fifty dollars a week for the offering from many of the more prosperous houses on their list; from which figure the price ranged down to as little as three hundred in some of the smaller inland towns. But even at this minimum, Quard had so scaled his salary list, contrary to his representations to Joan, that his gross weekly profit (excluding personal living expenses) would seldom be less than one hundred dollars a week.

Back in New York, Joan established herself temporarily at a small and very poor hotel on the west side of Harlem. Since their engagement took her no farther south than Sixty-third Street and Broadway during its first week, and the second week was played at One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, she felt tolerably insured against meeting either Matthias or any member of her own family.

She really meant to go home some time and see how her mother and Edna were doing, but from day to day put it off, if with no better excuse on the ground that she was too tired and too busy.

As a matter of fact she was in the habit of waking up at about ten, but never rose until noon; spent the hours between three and four and nine and ten in the theatre; and was ordinarily abed by half-past twelve or one o'clock. Up to the matinée hour, and between that and the night, she managed without great difficulty to kill time, spending a deal of it, and a fair proportion of her earnings, in the uptown department stores. She dined with Quard quite frequently, and almost invariably after the last performance they supped together, often in company with friends of his – for the most part vaudeville people whom he had previously known or with whom he struck up fervent, facile friendships of a week's duration.

They were a quaint, scandalous crew, feather-brained, irresponsible and, most of them, destitute of any sort of originality; but their spirits were high as long as they had a pay-day ahead, their tongues were quick with the patter of the circuits, and their humour was of an order new and vastly diverting to Joan. She had with them what she called a good time, and soon learned to look leniently upon the irregular lives of some who entertained her. Once or twice she was invited to "parties", sociable gatherings in flats rented furnished, at which she learned to regard the consumption of large quantities of bottled beer as a polite and even humorous accomplishment, and to permit a degree of freedom in song and joke and innuendo that would have seemed impossible in another environment.

Probably she would have felt less tolerant of these matters had Quard betrayed the least tendency to "fall off the wagon." But in her company, at least, he refrained sedulously from drink; and since his was one of those constitutions whose normal vitality is so high and constant that alcohol benumbs rather than stimulates its functions, he shone the more by contrast with their occasionally befuddled companions.

Joan admired him intensely for the steadfastness of his stand, and still more when she saw how established was the habit of regular if not always heavy drinking in the world of their peers. No one but herself pretended for a moment to regard the reformation of Quard as anything but a fugitive whim; and now and again she was made aware that his abstinence was resented. She once heard him contemptuously advised to "chuck the halo and kick in and get human again." At another time he explained a false excuse given in her presence for refusing an invitation: "It's no use trying to travel with that gang unless you're boozing. They got no use for me unless I'm willing to get an edge on. What's the use?"

There was a surliness, a resentment underlying his tone. Intuitively Joan bristled.

"No use," she said sharply. "You know what you're up against better than they do. You've got to stick to the soft stuff if you want to keep going."

"Oh, I know," he grumbled. "But it ain't as easy as you'd think."

"All right," she retorted calmly; "but I give you fair warning, I'll quit you the very first time you come around with so much as a whiff of the stuff on you."

"You don't have to worry," he responded. "I'm on all right… But," he added abruptly, "you needn't run away with any notion this piece would head for the storehouse if you was to quit it. The woods are full of girls who'd jump at your chance."

Joan answered only with an enigmatic smile. It is doubtful if Quard himself realized, just then, as keenly as the girl did, the depth and strength of his infatuation.

But Joan did not doubt her power. Neither did she overestimate it.

It was toward the end of their "time" in New York that she learned of the failure of "The Jade God," the information coming to her through the medium of one of those coincidences which would be singular anywhere but on the stage. An actress in a farcical sketch, which followed the intermission preceded by "The Lie," was assigned to use Joan's dressing-room when the latter was through with it. Naturally, the two struck up a chatting acquaintance. Joan one time replied to a question with the information that "The Lie" was booked for the Pacific Coast, and (Matthias in mind) confessed to some curiosity regarding Los Angeles. The other actress admitted ignorance of the West, but had only that morning received a letter from a sister who was playing with the Algerson stock company in Los Angeles. The letter contained a clipping describing the immediate and disastrous collapse of "The Jade God," which had been withdrawn after its third repetition. Reading the review, Joan was puzzled to recognize some of its references; she was fairly familiar with the play, but here and there she encountered strictures which seemed to involve scenes she couldn't remember. But of the fact of the failure there could be no doubt.

She was genuinely sorry. Her first impulse was to seek Matthias, if he were in town, and tell him of her sympathy; her second (discarded with even less ceremony than the first) to write to him. Two things held her back: sheer moral cowardice, that would not let her face the man whom she had failed even as had his play; and the impossibility of explaining that she loved the stage more than him or anything else in the world – except his ring. And while she never faltered from meaning to return this last "before long," she could not yet bring herself to part with it. Always it was with her, on her finger when at home and alone, in her pocket-book when abroad or with Quard; still in her imagination retaining something of its vaguely talismanic virtue; standing to her for something fanciful and magic, which she could not name, a visible token of the mystical powers that worked for her good fortune…

It was mid-October: sweetest of all seasons in New York; a time of early evenings and long, clear gloamings beneath skies of exquisite suavity and depth; of crisp and heady days whose air is wine in a crystal chalice; when thoughts are long and sweet, gentle with the beauty and the sadness of aging autumn.

At the first hint of winter Joan's heart turned in longing to the thought of furs. She wasted hours studying advertisements, and many more going from place to place, examining, rejecting, coveting. Her fancy was not modest: a year ago she would have been delighted with the meanest strip of squirrel for a neckpiece; today she felt a little ashamed even to price the less expensive furs, and would make no attempt to purchase until she had saved up enough money to meet her desires.

And then, one morning – they were playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Brooklyn – a messenger brought her a package from one of the Fulton Street stores and required a signed receipt. It contained a handsome coat of imitation seal with a collar of rich black fur and lined with golden brocade. Fitting her perfectly, it enclosed her in generous warmth from throat to ankle. Accompanying it was the card of "Mr. Charles Harborough Quard, Presenting 'The Lie,' the Sketch Sensation of the Year, Address c/o Jas. K. Boskerk, St. James Building, N.Y."

Not since that day when she had received his ring from Matthias had she been so happy.

Meeting Quard in the gangway outside her dressing-room, before the matinée performance, she showed her gratitude by lifting her face for his kiss.

In the world in which they existed, kisses were commonplaces, quite perfunctory, of little more significance than a slap on the shoulder between acquaintances. Not so Joan's: she had set a value upon her caresses, a standard peculiarly inflexible with respect to Quard. None the less, this was not the second time he had known her lips. But the occasion was one rare enough to render him appreciative.

He wound an arm round her, and held her tight.

"Like it, eh, girlie?"

"I love it!"

"Then I'm satisfied."

"But how did you guess what I wanted most?"

"Maybe I did a little head-work to find out."

"It's dear of you!"

"So long's you think so, I've got no kick coming."

She disengaged, drew a pace or two away.

"But what made you do it, Charlie?"

"Well, I can't afford to have my leading lady out of the cast with a cold."

Joan shook her head at him in gay reproof.

"Or do you want me to tell you what you know already – that I'm crazy about you?"

"Foolish! It's time we were dressing!"

But her laugh was fond, and so was the look she threw over her shoulder as she evaded his arms and vanished into her dressing-room.

Quard lingered a moment, with a fatuous smile for the panels of the closed door, and wagged his head doggishly. He felt that he was winning ground at a famous rate – the difficulties, the coolness and craft of his antagonist, considered. And in a way he was right, though perhaps not precisely the way he had in mind.

Even before his princely gift, Joan had been thinking a great deal about him, and very seriously. Instinctively she foresaw that their relationship could not long continue on its present basis of simple good-fellowship. Quard wasn't the sort to be content at arm's-length: he must either come closer or go farther away, and might be depended upon not to adopt the latter course until the former had proved impracticable.

And Joan didn't want him to go farther away. She was positive about this. But she was also very sure that the arm's-length relationship must be abridged only under certain indispensable conditions – decorously – and soon, if at all: else she must be the one to withdraw, lest a worse thing befall her. It was a problem of two factors: Quard's nature and her own; she had herself to reckon with no less than with him; and herself she distrusted, who was no stronger than her greatest weakness. He attracted her. She often caught herself thinking of him as she had thought of no other man – not Matthias, not the Quard of "The Convict's Return," not even Marbridge except, perhaps, for one shameful instant.

Something in the lawless, ranging, wanton grain of this man called to her with a call of infinite allure: something latent in her thrilled to the call and answered… That way lurked danger, disguised, but deadly.

They moved on to Greenpoint, thence to Trenton for a week.

Daily Quard's attentions became more constant, intimate and tender. They were much together, and now far more exclusively together than had been possible in New York, where acquaintances commandeered so much of their time. In Trenton they lodged at the same hotel, the other members of the company finding cheaper accommodations at greater distance from the theatre. This increased their close and confidential association. They fell into the habit of breakfasting together. Quard, always first to rise, would telephone to Joan's room, ascertain how soon she would be dressed, and order for both of them accordingly. In return for this privilege he had that of paying for both meals.

A negro waiter spoke of Joan one morning, in her presence, as "the Missus." When he had retired out of earshot, their eyes sought one another's; constraint was swept away in laughter.

"We might's well be married, the way we're together all the time," Quard presently ventured.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Joan retorted pertly.

"I mean, the way other people see us. I shouldn't be surprised if everybody in the hotel thought we was married, girlie."

Joan coloured faintly…

"Well, the room-clerk knows better," she said definitely. "I'd like another cup of coffee, please."

Quard snapped his fingers loudly to attract the attention of the waiter.

He grew aware of an awkward silence: that the thoughts of both were converging to a common point.

"Folks are fools that get married in the profession," he observed consciously. "It's all right if you've got a husband or I've got a wife at home – "

"I don't see it," Joan interrupted smartly. "Anyway, I haven't. Have you?"

The actor stared, confused. "Have I – what?"

"Got a wife at home?" Joan repeated, laughing.

"No – nothing like that!" he asserted with intense earnestness. "I mean, it's all right if you've got somebody keeping a flat warm for you, some place not too far off Broadway; but if you marry into the business – good night! You got all the trouble of being tied up for life, and that's all."

"Why?"

"Managers don't want husband and wife in the same company. They're always fighting each other's battles when they ain't fighting between themselves. So you're always playing different routes, and the chances are they never cross except it's inconvenient and you get caught and nominated for the Alimony Club."

"Do you belong?"

"Didn't I just tell you nothing like that?" Quard protested with unnecessary heat.

"Well," Joan murmured mischievously, "you seem to know so much about it. I only wondered…"

Their place on the bill was near the end, that week: a trick bicyclist followed them, and moving-pictures wound up the performance. Consequently, by the time they were able to leave the theatre in the afternoon the sun was already below the horizon. They emerged the same evening from the stage-door to view a cloudless sky of pulsing amber, shading into purple at the zenith, melting into rose along the western rim of the world. A wash of old rose flooded the streets, lifting the meanest structures out of their ugliness, lending an added dignity to rows of square-set, old-fashioned residences of red-brick with white marble trimmings.

"Which way are you going?" Quard enquired as they approached the corner of a main thoroughfare. "Back to the hotel?"

"No; I'm sick of that hole," Joan replied with a vivid shudder. "I'm going to take a walk. Want to come?"

"I was just going to ask you."

They turned off toward the Delaware.

It was the twenty-first of November – winter still a month away; yet the breath of winter was in the air. It came up cool and brisk from the river, enriching the colour in Joan's cheeks that were bright and glowing from the scrubbing she always gave them after removing grease-paint with cold cream. The blood coursed tingling through her veins. Her eyes shone with deepened lustre. They walked with spirit, in step, in a pensive silence infrequently disturbed.

"Of course," Quard presently offered without preface, "it's different in vodeveal, if you stick to it."

"What's different?"

"Being married."

Joan's eyes widened momentarily. Then she laughed outright. "Gee! You don't mean to say you've been chewing that rag ever since breakfast?"

"Ah, I just happened to think of it again," said Quard with the air of one whose motives are wantonly misconstrued.

Nevertheless, he wouldn't let the subject languish.

"There's plenty of family acts been playing the circuits Gawd knows how long," he pursued, with a vast display of interest in the sunset glow. "Look't the Cohans, before George planted the American flag in Longacre Square and annexed it to the United States. And they ain't the only ones by a long shot. I could name a plenty that'll stick in the big time until their toes curl. It's all right to trot in double-harness so long's you manage your own company."

"Well?" Joan asked with a sober mouth and mischievous eyes.

"Well – what?"

"If you're getting ready to slip me my two-weeks' notice, why not be a man and say so?"

"What would I do that for?" Quard demanded indignantly.

"Because you're thinking about getting married; and there's only room for one leading lady in any company I play in."

"Quit your kidding," the man advised sulkily; "you know I couldn't get along without you."

"Yes," Joan admitted calmly, "I know it, but I didn't know you did."

Quard shot a suspicious glance askance, but her face was immobile in its flawless loveliness.

He started to say something, choked up and reconsidered with a painful frown. A mature man's perfect freedom is not lightly to be thrown away. And yet … he doubted darkly the perfection of his freedom…

They held on in silence until they came to Riverside Park.

Over the dark profile of the Pennsylvania hills the sky was jade and amethyst, a pool of light that dwindled swiftly in the thickening shades of violet. Below them, as they paused on a lonely walk, the river stole swiftly, like a great black serpent writhing through the shadows. A frosty wind swept steadily into their faces, making cool and firm the flesh flushed with exercise. There was no one near them. A train of jewelled lights swept over the railroad bridge and vanished into the night with a purring rumble that lent an accent to their isolation. Joan hugged about her voluptuously her wonderful coat, stole a glance warm with gratitude at the face of Quard. He intercepted it, and edged nearer. Aglow and eager, she murmured something vapid about the prettiness of the sky.

He answered only with the arm he passed about her. She suffered him, lashes veiling her eyes, her head at rest in the hollow of his shoulder. The man stared down at her exquisite, suffused face, luminous in the last light of gloaming.