He folded her, unresisting, in both his arms, covering her face with kisses, ardent, violent kisses that bruised and hurt her tender flesh but which she still sought and hungered for, insatiable. She sobbed a little in her happiness, feeling her body yield and yearn to his, transported by that sweet, exquisite, nameless longing…

Then suddenly she was like a steel spring in his embrace, writhing to free herself. Wondering, he tried to hold her closer, but she twisted and fended him off with all the power of her strong young arms. And still wondering, he humoured her. She drew away, but yet not wholly out of his clasp.

"Charlie!" she panted.

"Darling!"

"How do you get married in New Jersey?"

He pulled up, dashed and a little disappointed, and laughed nervously.

"Why, you get a license and then – well, almost anybody'll do to tie the knot."

She nodded tensely: "I guess a regular minister will be good enough for us."

"I guess so," he demurred; and with another laugh: "I wasn't thinking serious' about it, but I guess I might's well be married as the way I am."

"Well," she said quietly, "we've got to. It's the only way…"

XXVI

And then, suddenly, the face of life was indescribably changed: Joan Thursday seemed but a memory, a slight and somehow wistful shadow in the shadowed depths of that darkling mirror, yesterday; in her place another creature altogether reigned, the Joan Quard of today, woman, actress, wife; with a gold band round her finger; mature, initiate of mysteries, ripe in wisdom; strong, poised serenely, clear of eye; with added graciousness in her beauty, conscious of added powers over Man, but discreet in their employment.

She thought a great deal about herself in those days: not, perhaps, more than had been common with her in that so-dead yesterday, but much, and more profoundly; reading a new meaning into the riddle of existence, so changed had all things become since her marriage.

Before her pensive vision Life unfolded rare, golden-vista'd promises.

With another man, or in another stratum of society, she might have fulfilled herself wonderfully, even unto her salvation…

To begin with, she was very happy. Fond to distraction of her husband, she never doubted that he worshipped her; he gave her quick wits no cause to entertain a doubt. They were together always, inseparable. She felt that nature must truly have fashioned them solely for one another, and could not forget her wonder that their passion should be so mutual, so complete. She loved him to distraction: all his traits, his robust swagger, his sonorous and flexible tones, the flowery eloquence of his gesture, his broad, easy-going, tolerant good-humour, the way he wore his clothes and the very cut and texture of them. And she ruled him like a despot.

Quard submitted without complaint. She was all his fancy had painted her, and something more; recognizing dimly that she excelled him variously (although he was quite incapable of analyzing these distinctions) he served her humbly, with unconscious deference to her many excellences. She was by way of making him a better wife than he deserved. If at times conscious of some little irk from her amiable but inflexible autocracy, he reminded himself that she was a finer woman than any he had ever known, well worth humouring: it wasn't on every corner a fellow'd pick up one like Joan.

He liked to follow her into hotel lobbies and restaurants and watch people turn to eye her, the men with sudden interest, the women with instinctive hostility. It even amused him to quell a too-ambitious stare with a fixed, grim, and truculent regard backed by the menace of his powerful physique. It gave a man standing, license to swagger, to own a woman like Joan.

He came to pander oddly to this vanity – would leave Joan to go to their room alone, while he strolled off to a bar to meet some crony or acquaintance of the day, tell his best story, and then suddenly excuse himself:

"Well, s'long. The wife's waiting for me."

The response rarely failed: "Ah, let her wait; have another drink. Did I ever tell you – "

A lifted, deprecatory palm, a knowing look: "No – guess I'll kick along; y'see, she's some wife…"

Conscious only of his adoration, Joan was enchanted by their mode of life, with its constant shifts of scene, its spice of vagabondage. She believed she could never tire of travelling.

Railroad journeys, with their inevitable concomitants of dirt, noise, and discomfort, never discouraged her: she really liked them; they were taking her somewhere – it didn't much matter where. She even derived a sort of pleasure from such nauseating experiences as rising to catch a train at four-thirty in the morning, against their "long jumps." And there was keen delight in napping in a parlour-car chair or with a head upon her husband's shoulder in a day-coach, to wake all drowsy, breathe air foul with coal-smoke, and peer through a black window-pane (shadowed by her hand) to catch a glimpse of some darkly fulgent breadth of strange water, or the marching defile of great alien hills, or a sweep of semi-wooded countryside bleached with moonlight – remembering that, only a few short months ago, the world of her travels had been bounded by Fort George on the north, Coney Island on the south, knowing neither east nor west.

She was discovering America: even as she was discovering Life…

Their route from Trenton took them south through Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Norfolk; whence they doubled back by steamer to New York, took a Sound boat to Fall River, played Boston, and drifted through New England in bitter cold weather, eventually striking westward again, via Albany, Buffalo, and the middle country.

Quard drew her attention to the fact that it was "a liberal education…"

Sometimes she thought pityingly of Matthias, and wondered if he knew she was married and what she was doing; and whether he were angry, or heart-broken, or eaten up with morbid jealousy; and how he would act should chance ever throw them together again. She was sorry for him: he had lost her. If only he had been a little more enterprising… She wondered what would have happened if Matthias had been more enterprising; he could have possessed her at any time during the brief period of their infatuation. If he had married her then, would she be as contented as she was now, with Charlie? She doubted it; Quard was so completely his opposite…

She ceased to worry about the ring. She meant to return it some day, perhaps. Though she did not wear it and had never so much as mentioned Matthias to Quard, it remained a possession whose charms tugged at her heart-strings. At times she amused herself formulating idle little intrigues, with the object (if ever set in motion) of excusing the appearance of the jewel upon her hand. But all her schemes seemed to possess some fatal flaw, and she was desperately afraid of the truth. Meanwhile, the ring lay perdue at the bottom of a work-basket of woven sweet-grass which she had purchased shortly after her marriage; twisted in an old, empty needle-paper and mixed in with a worthless confusion of trash, such as women accumulate in such receptacles, its hiding place was well calculated to escape detection by even an informed purloiner.

Quard's tardy engagement ring was set with an inferior diamond flanked by artificial pearls. Joan despised it secretly. For a long time it was the sole blemish on the bright shield of her happiness…

And then, the night of their opening day in Cincinnati, Quard escorted her from the theatre to the hotel, left her at the door, and turned back to "see a friend" who happened to be playing on the same bill.

This was quite the usual thing, and Joan went contentedly off to her room and in due course to bed, confident that Quard would return within an hour.

Five hours later she awoke to startled apprehension of the facts, first that she must have dropped off to sleep without meaning to, next that Quard had not returned, finally that it was past four o'clock in the morning.

With a little shiver of sickening premonition she rose, slipped into a dressing-gown, called a bell-boy, and instructed him to look for her husband. Some time later the boy reported that the bar was closed and the gentleman not to be found.

It was broad daylight when Quard staggered in with the assistance of the same bell-boy and his negro dresser. His eyes were glazed, his face ghastly, his mind wandered: he was as helpless as a child. With the aid of the boys, Joan managed to undress the man and put him to bed. At once he fell asleep, with the cold stump of a half-burned cigar obstinately clenched between his teeth. It was an hour before the muscles of his jaw relaxed enough to release it.

Dressing, Joan left the hotel, swallowed some coffee and rolls, tasteless to her, in a nearby restaurant, and wandered about until eight o'clock, when she found a drug-store open, and consulted the clerk. He advised bromo seltzer and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Armed with these, she returned to her husband, and shortly after noon, daring to delay no longer, roused him by sprinkling cold water in his face – all other methods having failed even to interrupt his stertorous breathing. Even then it was some time before she could induce him to swallow the medicine, and it required no less than three powerful doses, together with much black coffee and followed by a cold bath, to restore him to presentable condition. In the end, however, she succeeded in getting him to the theatre in time for the matinée.

Through it all she uttered no single word of reproach, but waited on the man with at least every outward sign of sympathy and devotion.

His remorse (when another nap at the hotel after the matinée had brought him to more complete realization of what had happened) was touching and, as long as it lasted, unquestionably sincere. Joan accepted without comment his lame explanation as to the manner of his temptation and fall during an all-night session at poker "with the boys," and gave genuine credulity to his protestations that it would never, never happen again.

But three weeks later in Chicago he repeated the performance, though under somewhat less distressing circumstances. As before, he left her in the lobby, "to finish his cigar and chin with Soandso." Within an hour he was half-led, half-carried to their room, in a hopelessly sodden condition. The actor with whom he had been drinking accompanied him, apparently quite sober, but puzzled; and after Quard had been helped to bed, explained to the girl that her husband's collapse had been incomprehensibly due to no more than three drinks.

"I never seen nothin' like it!" the man expostulated, with an air of grievance. "There he was, standin' up against the bar, with his foot on the rail, laughin' and kiddin', same's the rest of us; and he'd only had three whiskeys – though I will say they was man-size drinks; and then, all of a sudden, he turns white as a sheet and starts mumblin' to himself, and we all thinks he's joshin' until he keels over, limp's a rag. If the stuff gets to him like that, he's got no business touchin' it, ever!"

These experiences continued at varying intervals; and presently Joan began to understand that Quard had not only primarily a weakness to tempt him, but a constitutional inability to assert his will-power after he had surrendered to the extent of a single drink. One modest dose of alcohol seemed to exercise upon him a sort of hypnotic power, driving him on whether he would or not to the next, the next, and the next – until the nadir of unconsciousness was reached. It was not that he invariably succumbed to moderate indulgence, but that once started he rarely stopped until his identity was completely submerged. Indeed, the way of alcohol with him seemed never twice to follow the same route; but its end was invariably the same.

Hoping against hope, fighting with him, pleading, reasoning, threatening with him, even praying, Joan endured for a long time – much longer than, in retrospective days, seemed possible even to her; for she was honestly fond of her husband, far more so than she was ever of any other living being save herself.

They reached San Francisco the third week in April. For some time Quard had been drinking rather methodically but stealthily. A threat made by Joan, while he was sobering up from his last debauch, to the effect that on repetition of the offence she would leave him without an hour's notice, had frightened the man to the extent of making him hesitate to add one drink to another except at intervals long enough to retard the cumulative effect; but never a day passed on which, in spite of her watchfulness, he did not contrive to throw several sops to the devil in possession, if without ever quite losing his wits.

Detected with reeking breath, he would adopt one of three attitudes: he was a man, subject to the domination of no woman and of no appetite, had learned his lesson and now knew when to stop; or he was sorry – hadn't stopped to think – and wouldn't let it go any further; or nothing of the sort had happened, he had drunk nothing except a glass of soda-fountain nerve-tonic, or possibly it was his cigar that she smelled. With the first, Joan had no patience; and since she had a temper, it was the last resort in Quard's more sober stages, seldom employed save when potations had made him either indifferent or vicious. In his contrition, whether real or assumed, she tried hard to believe. But his lies never deceived her: to these she listened in the silence of contempt and despair.

On the Wednesday afternoon of their week in San Francisco, the girl did a bit of shopping after the matinée; it was half after five before she returned to the hotel, and walked into their room to find Quard, with his coat off, seated in a chair that faced the door. His back was to the windows, through which the declining sun threw a flood of blinding golden light, so that Joan's dazzled vision comprehended only the dark silhouette of his body.

She said "Hello, dearie!" lightly enough in the abstraction of reviewing some especially pleasing purchases, closed the door, walked over to the bureau, put down her handbag and a small parcel, and removed her hat. Then the fact that Quard had not answered penetrated her reverie. Disposing of her hat, she looked half casually over her shoulder, to discover that he hadn't moved. Two surmises struck through her wonder: that he had fallen asleep waiting for her; with poignant apprehension, that he had been drinking again. But this seemed hardly likely: he had been entirely rational and unintoxicated during the matinée.

She said sharply: "What's the matter?"

Quard made no answer.

With a troubled sigh she moved to his chair and bent over him. His eyes, wide and blazing, met hers with a look of inflexible hostility and rage; his mouth was set like a trap, his lips, like his face, were almost colourless. The air was pungent with his breath, but intuitively she divined that it was not drunkenness alone which had aroused this temper, the more dismaying since it was for the time being under control.

From the look in his eyes she started back as from a blow.

"Charlie! What's the matter?"

Quard opened his lips, gulped spasmodically, closed them without speaking. The muscles on the left side of his face twitched nervously.

Abruptly he shot up out of his chair, strode to the door, locked it and pocketed the key. His face as he turned was terrible to see.

She shrank away, but his eyes held hers in the fascination of fright.

"Why – Charlie! – what – "

He interrupted with an imperative gesture, took a step toward her, and shook his hand in her face. Between his thumb and forefinger glittered something exquisitely coruscant in the sunlight.

"What's that?" he demanded in a quivering voice.

She moved her head in assumed bewilderment, staggered to recognize the symbol of her broken troth with Matthias.

"I don't know. What is it? You keep moving it around so, I can't see…"

"There, then!" he cried, steadying the hand under her nose.

Instinctively her gaze veered to her trunk. Its lid was up. On the floor lay her work-basket in the litter of its former contents. Her indignation mounted.

"What were you doing in my trunk?" she demanded hotly.

Quard's eyes clouded under the impact of this counter attack. Momentarily his dazed expression made it very plain that he had taken advantage of her absence to drink heavily. And this was even more plain in the blurred accents, robbed of the sharpness rage had lent them, in which he endeavoured to justify himself.

"I wanted – shew on s'pender button – wanted work-basket…"

Anger returned; his voice mounted: "And I found this! What is it?"

Joan snatched at the ring, but he drew back his hand too quickly for her.

"It's mine. Give it to me!"

"Where'd you get it? Tha'sh what I wanna know!"

"None of your business. Give it – "

"T' hell it ain't my business. I'm your husband – gotta right to know where you get diamonds" – he sneered – "diamonds like this! I never bought it."

"No," she flamed back; "you're too stingy!"

"Stingy, am I?" He faltered swaying. "Tha'snough. I'm tightwad, so s'nother guy gets chansh to buy you diamonds. Tha's way of it, hey?"

"You give me that ring, Charlie," Joan demanded ominously.

"You got anotha good guess coming. What I'll give you is jush two minutes to tell me name of the fellow't give it to you."

"Don't be a fool, Charlie!"

"I don't intend to be fool – any longer. You tell me or – "

He checked, searching his befuddled mind for a compelling threat.

With a shift of manner, Joan extended her hand in pleading.

"Give me the ring, Charlie, and be sensible. I haven't done anything wrong. I can explain."

"Well…" Grudgingly he dropped the ring into her palm. But immediately her fingers had closed upon it, mistrust again possessed him. "Now, you tell me – "

"Very well," she interrupted patiently. "You needn't shout. I don't mind telling you now. It's my engagement ring."

"Your what?" sharply.

"My engagement ring. I was engaged last summer to Mr. Matthias, before we began to rehearse the sketch."

"Engaged?" he iterated stupidly. "Engaged for what?"

"Engaged to be married. He was in love with me. I meant to marry him until you and I met the second time – "

"Meant to marry who?"

"Mr. Matthias. We – "

"Matthias? What Matthias?"

"John Matthias, the author – the playwright. He wrote 'The Jade God.'"

Quard wagged his head cunningly. "Y'mean to tell me you was engaged to that guy, and – didn't marry him?"

"Certainly. I married you, didn't I, dear?"

"And if that's true, how't happen you didn't give'm back his ring? Eh?"

"I meant to, Charlie, but he was out of town and I didn't know his address."

"That's likely!" The actor laughed harshly. "Tha'sh good one, that is! You going to marry him, and didn't know his address. Expect me to believe that?"

"It's true, Charlie – it's God's truth."

"You're a liar!"

"Charlie – !"

"I say, you're a liar! Wha'sh more, I mean it."

Quard waved his hand, palm down, to indicate his scornful disposition of her yarn. Then he staggered, steadied himself by clutching the back of a chair, and conscious how this betrayed his condition, worked himself into a towering rage to cover it.

"I know better. 'F you'd ever got a chance to marry that feller, you'd 've jumped at it. He'd never've got away. You wouldn't 've given him no more chance'n you did me – you'd 've pulled wool over his eyes same way. I know what'm talking about. You're a liar, a dam' dirty little liar, tha's what you are."

Joan's colour deserted her face entirely.

"Charlie! don't you say that to me again."

"And what'll you do? Think I care? I know what you'll do, all right, because I'm going make you do it."

"What do you mean?"

"Wha's more, I know now who gave you that ring. I was fool not to guess it before. I didn't give it to you – no! Mist' Matthias didn't give it to you – no! But somebody did give it to you —eh? Tha's right, isn't it? And his name – 's name was Vincent Marbridge! Wasn't it?"

He thrust his inflamed face close to hers, leering wickedly.

"Marbridge!" Joan echoed blankly.

"Vincent Marbridge – tha's the feller't give you the ring. He's the feller't could do it, too – got all the money in the world – enough to buy dozens'r rings – enough to buy you all them good clothes you got hold of after you threw me down and before I was ass enough to take up with you again! A' that, you were a fool not to get more outa him."

The insult ate like an acid into the pride of the girl. She flushed crimson, then in an instant paled again. Her eyes grew cold and hard.

"That will do," she said bitterly. "You've said enough – too much. After all I've endured from you – your drunkenness, your – "

There was a maniac glare in the eyes of the man as he thrust his face still closer.

"And what'll you do, eh?" he shouted violently. "What'll you do?"

She turned her face aside, in disgust of his reeking breath.

"And what'll you do? Tell me that!"

"I'll leave you – "

"You betcha life you'll leave me. I knew that before you come into this room!"

"And I'm sorry I didn't go long ago – "

"The hell you are!" In a gust of uncontrollable frenzy, Quard struck her sharply over the mouth. "You go – d'you hear? – you damn' – "

In blind fury Joan flung herself upon him, sobbing, biting, scratching, kicking. He reeled back before that unexpected assault, then, sobered a trifle by its viciousness, caught her wrists, held her helpless for an instant, and threw her violently from him. She fell to her knees, lurched over on her side…

The door slammed: he was gone.

She knew the man too well not to know he would make instantly for the nearest bar; the only question was what guise intoxication would assume in him, this time. It was possible that he would drink himself raving mad and return fit for murder.

She must make her escape with all possible expedition…

Instantly Joan sat up, dried her eyes, convulsively swallowed her sobs, and felt of her bruised mouth.

Before her on the carpet the diamond ring winked sardonically in the sunset light.

She pondered savagely the wide and deep damnation it had wrought in her life.

It seemed impossible that only a few minutes had elapsed since she had entered this room, an affectionate, patient, and not unhappy wife. Now she sifted her heart and found in it not one grain of the love it had once held for Quard. This alone would have rendered irrevocable her decision to leave him.

The thing was over – settled – finished.

She gave a gesture of finality.

With all her heart she hoped that the sketch would go to the devil without her…

Rising, she went to the mirror, to stare incredulously at the face it presented for her inspection, a cruel caricature, lined, distorted, blowsy, stained with tears. At this vision, hysteria threatened again.

With a great effort she fought it down, and controlled and smoothed out the muscles of her face. Now she was more recognizable. Even her mouth was not seriously disfigured; he had struck with the flat of his hand only; her lips were sore and slightly but not markedly swollen. A veil would disguise them completely.

At the wash-stand she devoted some very valuable moments to sopping her face with cold water, and particularly her mouth and eyes. The treatment toned down the inflammation of weeping, rendered her flesh firm and cool once more, and left her with a feeling of spiritual refreshment, with nerves again under control and her will even more inalterably fixed than before.

Rouge and powder completed her rejuvenescence.

Turning to her trunk, she took out the tray – and paused with a low cry of consternation. From the tumbled and disordered state of its contents, it was plain that, having discovered the ring, Quard had searched diligently for further confirmation of his suspicions.

With quickening breath, the girl dropped to her knees and hastily but thoroughly ransacked and turned out upon the floor all her belongings. Within a brief period she satisfied herself of one appalling fact: Quard had not only insulted and struck her and cast her off – he had stooped to rob her. Her hands were tied: she had not money enough to leave him.

Probably, with the low cunning and fallacious reasoning of dipsomania, he had pouched her savings with that very thought in mind. Meaning to break with her, to have his scene and satisfy his lust for brutality, he had also planned to prevent Joan's leaving the cast of "The Lie" until a successor could be found and broken in. Penniless (he had argued) she would be obliged to play on, at least until Saturday, to earn her fare back East.

It was Quard's practice to carry his money in large bills folded in a belt of oiled silk which he wore buckled round his waist, beneath his underclothing – with a smaller fund for running expenses in a leather bill-fold more accessibly disposed. But Joan (finding a money-belt uncomfortable because of her corsets) had adopted the shiftless plan of secreting her savings in a pocket contrived for that purpose in an old underskirt. And since she had always held her husband rigidly to account for her individual fifty dollars per week, she had managed thus to set aside about three hundred dollars. Unfortunately, it had been their habit to carry duplicate keys to one another's luggage by way of provision against loss.

So that now she was left with less than twenty dollars in her pocket-book.

She paced the floor in wrathful meditation, pondering means and expedients. Once or twice she noticed the ring, but passed it several times before she paused, picked it up, and abstractedly placed it on her finger.

It did not once occur to her that she could raise money by hypothecating the jewel at a pawn-shop: by hook or crook she was determined to regain her own money. She was wondering what good it would do her to threaten Quard with arrest. Had a wife any right to her earnings, under the law?

After a time, she opened her handbag, found her personal bunch of keys, and unlocked her husband's trunk. Her pains, however, went for nothing; she investigated diligently every pocket of his clothing without discovering a piece of money of any description. But one thing she did find to make her thoughtful – Quard's revolver…

Removing this last, she relocked the trunk and rang for a bell-boy. Then she put the weapon on the bureau and covered it with her hat.

The youth who answered had an intelligent look. Joan appraised him narrowly before trusting him. She opened negotiations with a dollar tip.

"I want you to find my husband for me," she said. "If he's anywhere around the hotel, he'll probably be in the bar. But look everywhere, and then come and tell me. You needn't say anything to him. I just want to know where he is. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'm."

"You'd know him if you saw him – Mr. Quard, the actor?"

"Yes, ma'm."

"That's all. Hurry."

As soon as the boy was gone she turned again to her luggage, selecting indispensable garments and toilet articles and packing them in a suit-case. By the time a knock sounded again upon the door, she had the case strapped and locked.

"He ain't nowhere about the house, ma'm," the bell-boy reported. "He was in the bar a while, but he's went out."

Joan nodded, was dumb in thought.

"Do you want as I should go look for him, ma'am?"

"Can you leave the hotel?" Joan asked quickly.

"I'm just going off-duty now, ma'm; the night shift came on about ten minutes ago, at six o'clock."

"And you think you could possibly find him?"

"He took a cab, ma'm. The driver's stand is in front of the hotel. If I can find him, I can find where your husband went. Anyhow, it ain't hard to follow up a gentleman as – "

"As drunk!" Joan put in when the boy hesitated.

"Yes, ma'm."

Joan weighed the chance distrustfully; but it was at least a chance, and this was no time to be careful. Taking a five-dollar gold-piece from her scanty store, she gave it to the boy.

"Go find him," she said. "And if he seems to know what he's doing – just hang around until he doesn't: he won't keep you waiting long. Then bring him to me. But first take this suit-case down to the Union Ferry house, check it in the baggage-room, and give me the check when you bring him back. And – don't say anything to anybody."

"Yes, ma'm – no, ma'm."

Supperless, she sat down to wait, Quard's revolver ready to her hand.

Twilight waned; night fell; hours passed. Motionless and imperturbable, Joan waited on, the tensity of her mood betrayed only by the burning of her baleful, dangerous eyes.

At half-past nine a noise of scuffling feet, gruff voices and heavy breathing in the hallway, following the clash of an elevator gate, brought her to her feet. Going to the bureau, she opened a drawer and put the revolver away.

There would be no need of that, now.

Answering a knock, she threw the door wide. Two porters staggered in, one with the shoulders, one with the feet of Quard. The bell-boy followed. When they had lugged to the bed that inert and insensate thing she had once loved, Joan tipped the men and they departed. The boy lingered.

"Is there anything more I can do, ma'm?"

"Where did you find him?"

"Down on the Coast. I don't know what wouldn't've happened to him if you hadn't sent me after him. He was up an alley – had been stuck up by a couple of strong-arms. I seen 'em making their get-away just as I come in sight."

She uttered a cry of despair: "Robbed – you mean?"

"Yes, ma'm. He ain't got as much's a nickel on him."

Overwhelmed, Joan sank into a chair. The boy avoided her desolate eyes; he was a little afraid she might want part of the five dollars back.

"Hadn't I better send the hotel doctor up, ma'm?"

"Perhaps," she muttered dully.

"Yes, ma'm. And here's the check for your suit-case. Nothing else? Good night, ma'm."