Quard's condition was pitiable, but in her excited no compassion. His face was pallid as a death-mask save on one cheek-bone, where there was an angry and livid contusion. His hands were scratched, bleeding, and filthy, his clothing begrimed and torn, his pockets turned inside out. He seemed scarcely to breathe, and a thin froth flecked his slack and swollen lips.

With feverish haste she unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and tugged at his undershirt. Then she sobbed aloud, a short, dry sob of relief. She had discovered the money-belt. In another minute she had unbuckled and withdrawn it from his body. She took it to the other room, to the light, and hastily undid its fastenings.

There were perhaps two dozen fresh, new bills, for the most part of large denominations, folded once lengthwise to fit into the narrow silken tube; but someone knocked before she found time to reckon up their sum.

Hastily cramming the money, together with the tell-tale belt, into her handbag, Joan took a deep breath and said "Come in!"

There entered a grave man of middle-age, carrying a physician's satchel.

He said, with a slight inclination of his head: "Mrs. Quard, I believe?"

"Yes," Joan gasped. She nodded toward the alcove: "Your patient's in there."

He murmured some acknowledgment, turning away to the bedside. For several minutes he worked steadily over the drunkard. While she waited, her wits awhirl, Joan mechanically pinned on her hat.

Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat, turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street.

"Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear.

"He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right. But I need your help. You were going out?"

She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held up – all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday."

"I see. And you can do without him?"

"His understudy'll take his part – we'll manage somehow."

"Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance – a trained nurse."

"Do, please, doctor."

"Very well."

He moved toward the telephone.

"I'll be back in about an hour."

"Very well, Mrs. Quard."

He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it…

Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through a side door to the street.

In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry.

Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her transcontinental flight.

XXVII

When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window, began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration.

But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned, discovered only an empty impasse.

Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair, and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up. Curious whim of hers! Curious weather!

Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to investigate these unseasonable phenomena.

In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones, conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow sunlight.

In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.

At an open window across the way a public-spirited and extremely pretty young woman appeared with a towel pinned round her shoulders and let down her hair, a shimmering cascade of gold for the sun's rays to wanton with and, incidentally, to dry.

Somewhere at a distance a cracked old piano-organ was romping and giggling rapturously through the syncopated measures of Tin Pan Alley's latest "rag."

A vision drifted before Matthias' eyes, of the green slopes of Tanglewood, the white château on its windy headland, the ineffable blue of the Sound beyond…

Incredulous, he turned to consult his calendar: the day was Wednesday, the seventeenth of April.

It was true, then: almost without his knowledge the bleak and barren Winter had worn away and Spring had stolen upon Town, flaunting, extravagant, shy and seductive, irresistible Spring…

For a little Matthias held back in doubt, with reluctant thoughts of his work. Then – all in a breath – he caught up hat and stick, slammed the door behind him, and blundered forth to fulfill his destiny…

She was seated on a bench, in a retired spot sheltered from the breeze, open to the sun, when Matthias, having swung round the upper reservoir, came at full stride down the West Drive, his blood romping, his eyes aglow, warm colour in his face: for the first time in half a year feeling himself again, Matthias the lover of the open skies divorced from Matthias of the midnight lamp and the scored and intricate manuscripts – that Matthias whom the world rejected.

At a word, her companion rose and moved to intercept him; and at the sound of his name, Matthias paused, wondering who she could be, this strange, sweet-faced woman, plainly dressed.

"Yes?" he said, lifting his hat. "I am Mr. Matthias – yes – "

"Mrs. Marbridge would like to speak to you."

His gaze veered quickly in the direction indicated by her brief nod. He saw Venetia waiting, and immediately went to her, in his surprise forgetful of the woman who had accosted him. This last moved slowly in the other direction and sat down out of earshot.

"This is awfully good of you, Venetia," he said, bending over her hand. "I didn't see you, of course – was thinking of something else – "

"But I was thinking of you," she said. "I've been wanting to see you for a long time, Jack."

"Surely Helena could have told you where to find me…"

"I knew we'd run across one another, somehow, somewhere, sometime – today or tomorrow, without fail. So I was content to do without the offices of Helena. Do sit down. I want so much to talk to you."

"Most completely yours to command," he said lightly, and took the place beside her.

But his heart was on his lips and in his eyes, and Venetia was far from blind.

"Then tell me about yourself," she asked. "It's been so long since I've had any news!"

"Is it possible? I should have imagined my doting aunt – "

She interrupted with a slight, negative smile and shake of her head: "Helena doesn't approve of me, you know, and of late there has been a decided coolness between the families. I'm afraid George fell out with Vincent for some reason – not too hard to guess, perhaps."

He looked away, colouring with embarrassment.

"So," she pursued evenly – "about yourself: are you married yet?"

Matthias started, laughed frankly. "You didn't know about that, either?.. Well, it's true even Helena couldn't have told you much, for I told her nothing… No, I'm neither married, nor like to be."

"She was so very sweet and pretty – "

"Joan was wholly charming," he agreed gravely, "but – well, I fancy it was inevitable. We were lucky enough to be obliged to endure a separation of some weeks before, instead of after, marriage; and so we had time to think. At least, she must have foreseen the mistake we were on the point of making, for the break was her own doing – not mine."

"You think it would have been a mistake?"

"Oh, unquestionably. I confess I'd not have known it, probably, until too late, if she hadn't made me think when she threw me over. I hope it doesn't sound caddish – but I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief when I got back from California and found she'd cleared out without leaving me a line."

"I think I understand. And did you never hear from her?"

"Not from – by accident, of her. She was predestined for the stage – I can see that clearly now, though I objected then. She was offered a chance during my absence, jumped at it, and made a sort of a half-way hit in a very successful sketch which, oddly enough, I happened to have written – under a pseudonym. It had been kicking round my agent's office for a year; he didn't believe in it any more than I did; and I disbelieved in it hard enough to be ashamed to put my own name to it. That's often the way with a fellow's work; one always believes in the cripples, you know… Well, some actor chanced to get hold of the 'script one day, fell in love with it and put it on with Joan as his leading woman. If it had been anybody else's sketch, I'd never have known what became of her, probably. As it was, I knew nothing until I got back from the Coast… I believe they got married very shortly after it was produced; and now they're playing it all over the country. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," Venetia smiled. "And so your heart wasn't broken?"

He shook his head and laughed: "No!"

But a spasm of pain shot through his eyes and deceived the woman a little longer.

"And what have you been doing?" she pursued, meaning to distract him. "I mean, your work?"

He shrugged. "Oh, I've had an average luckless year. To begin with, Rideout fell down on his production of 'The Jade God' – the only time it ever had a chance to get over – and a man named Algerson bought his contract and put it on at his stock theatre in Los Angeles. That's why I went out there – to see it butchered."

"It failed?"

"Extravagantly!"

"But didn't you once have a great deal of confidence in it?"

"Every play is a valuable property until it's produced," he answered, smiling. "This one was killed by its production. Nothing was right: it needed scenery, and what they gave it had served a decade in stock; it needed actors, and what actors were accidentally permitted to get into the cast got the wrong rôles; finally, it needed intelligent stage direction, and that was supplied by the star, whose idea of a good play is one in which he speaks everybody's lines and his own. Then they rewrote most of the best scenes and botched them horribly."

"You couldn't stop them?"

"When I attempted to interfere, I was told civilly to go to the devil. Under my contract, I could have stopped them: but that meant suing out an injunction, which in turn meant putting up a bond, and – I didn't have the money."

"I'm so sorry, Jack!"

"Oh, it's all in the game. I learned something, at least. But the greatest harm it did me was to sap the faith of managers here. One man – Wylie – who was under contract to produce my 'Tomorrow's People,' paid me on January first a forfeit of five hundred dollars rather than run the risk after 'The Jade God.'"

"And so you lost both plays?"

"Oh, no; I still have 'Tomorrow's People,' and only a short time ago signed up with a manager who isn't afraid of his shadow. We'll put it on next Autumn."

"And you believe in that, too?"

"I know it will go," Matthias asserted with level confidence. "It's only a question of intelligence at the producing end – and I've arranged to get that."

"And meanwhile – you've been working?"

"Oh" – he spread out his hands – "one doesn't stop, you know. It's too interesting!"

And then he laughed again. "But, you see, you flatter a fellow into talking his head off about himself! Forgive me, and let me do a little cross-examining. How are you? And what have you been doing? You – you know, Venetia – you're looking more exquisitely pretty than ever!"

And so she was – more strangely lovely than ever in all the long span of their friendship: with a deeper radiance in her face, a clearer, more translucent pallor, in her eyes a splendour that lent new dignity to their violet-shadowed mystery.

"I'm glad of that," she said quietly. She folded listless hands in her lap, her eyes seeking distances. "I'm going to be very happy … I think…"

He looked up sharply.

That she wasn't happy now, he could well understand: that Marbridge was behaving badly was something rather too broadly published by the very publicity of his methods. Marriage had not been permitted to interfere – at least, not after his return from Europe – with the ordinary tenor of his bachelor ways. Matthias himself had seen him not infrequently in theatres and restaurants, but only once in company with Venetia – most often he had been dancing attendance upon a Mrs. Cardrow: she who had given her lips to Matthias, thinking him Marbridge, that long-ago night at Tanglewood. She was said to be stage-struck; and Marbridge was rumoured to be deeply, though quietly, involved in the financing of certain theatrical enterprises.

Surely, then, Venetia must know what everybody knew, and be unhappy in that knowledge.

But now she was so calmly confident that she was "going to be happy"!

He wondered if she were contemplating divorce…

And then in a flash he understood. That woman who had stopped him was not of Venetia's caste; if he guessed not wildly, she was a nurse. And Venetia afoot instead of in her limousine…

She turned her eyes to his, smiling with a certain diffident, sweet sedateness. "You didn't know, Jack?"

He shook his head, looking quickly away.

"But you've guessed?"

"Yes," he replied in a low voice.

Her hand fell lightly over his for a single instant. "Then be glad for me, Jack," she begged gently. "It's – it's compensation."

"I understand," he said, "and I'm truly very glad. It's kind of you to – to tell me, Venetia."

"It changes everything," she said pensively: "all my world is changed, and I am a new strange woman, seeing it with new eyes. I have learned so much – and in so short a time – I can hardly believe it. To think, it's not a year since that time at Tanglewood – !"

"Please!" he begged.

"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, Jack. But it's that I wanted to talk to you about. You won't mind, when you understand, as I have learned to understand… I tell you, I'm altogether another woman. Marriage is like learning to live in a foreign land, but motherhood is another world. I find it difficult to realize Venetia of a year ago: she's like some strange creature I once knew but never quite understood. And yet, little as I understood her, I can make excuses for her: I know her impulses were not bad. I know, better than she knew … she loved you, Jack."

"You must not say that, Venetia!"

"But it's true, my dear, most true," she insisted in her voice of gentle magic. "The rest … was just madness, the sort of madness that some men have the power to – to kindle in women. It's a deadly power, very terrible, and they – who have it – use it as carelessly as children playing with matches and gunpowder – "

"Oh, I understand, Venetia, I understand! Don't – "

"No – let me tell you. I've got to, Jack. I've had this so long in my heart to tell you!.. You must be patient with me, this once, and listen… You must know that I loved you then when I – ran to you – threw myself into your arms – made you ask me to marry you and promised I would and – and thought that I was safe from him because of my promise. But I didn't know myself – nor him. He seemed able to make his will my law so easily – so strangely!.. Even when I ran away with him, I knew that happiness could never come of it… It was just the madness … I couldn't help myself … I just could not help myself… And then – ah, but I have paid for my madness – many times over!.."

For the moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. The woman bent forward to gain a glimpse of his half-averted face, and searched it anxiously with her haunted eyes.

"You do understand, Jack?.. You forgive?.."

"There isn't any question of forgiveness," he said. "And I always understood – half-way. You know that – you must have known it, or you couldn't have said – what you have – to me."

The woman laughed a little, tender, broken laugh.

"I am so glad!" she said softly. "Perhaps it's wrong… But you've made me a little happier. I have needed so desperately someone to confess to – someone on whose sympathy I could count. And – Jack – the only one in the world was you… You – you've helped."

She rose, holding out both hands to him, and as he took them and held them tight he saw that her lovely eyes were wide and dim with tears.

"You've proved my faith in you," she said – "my gentle man – my knight sans peur et sans reproche!"

He bent his head to her hands, but before his lips could touch them, very gently she drew them away, and turned and left him.

Bareheaded and wondering, for a long time he stood staring at the spot where, in company with the nurse, she had disappeared.

XXVIII

As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan had reserved for her sole accommodation – in spite of the strain of thrift ingrained in her nature – she retired to it, buttoned securely the heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then, by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from Quard.

The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash.

Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in one of her stockings.

Then extinguishing the light, she lay back, but not to sleep. The pressure of her emotions was too strong to let her lose touch with consciousness. As a general rule, sleeping-cars had no terrors for Joan; never a nervous woman, her thoroughly sound and healthy organization permitted her to sleep almost at will, even under such discouraging circumstances as those provided by modern railway accommodations. But that night she lay awake till dawn flushed the windows with its wash of grey, awake and staring wide of eye into the gloom of her section, listening to the snores of conscienceless neighbours, and thinking, thinking – thinking endlessly and acutely.

But they were thoughts singularly uncoloured by remorse for what she had done or fear of its consequences.

She was not in the least sorry she had taken Quard's money; she was glad. The mere amount of it was proof enough for Joan that her husband had lied to her about the earnings of the sketch, had lied from the very beginning; otherwise he could by no means have laid by so much in the term of their booking to date. And for that, he deserved to suffer. She was only sorry he might not be made to understand how heavily he was paying for those months of deception. But that was something Quard would never know: with the story of the bell-boy he must be content; he must go through life placing the blame of his misfortune upon the heads of those nameless "stick-up men" of the Barbary Coast.

Nor was he likely to suffer otherwise. Joan was confident the man would manage somehow to find his feet financially, almost as soon as physically. A telegram to his agent, Boskerk, would bring him aid if all else failed; the play was too constant an earner of heavy commissions for Boskerk to let it fall by the wayside for lack of a few hundred dollars. So was it too strong a "draw" on the vaudeville circuits to be blacklisted and barred by managers because of the temporary break-down: something which Quard would readily explain and excuse (and Joan could imagine how persuasively) with his moving yarn of foot-pads and knock-out drops. Nor would it be more than a temporary break-down; with Quard restored to his senses, the absence of the leading woman would prove merely a negligible check. Joan entertained no illusions as to her indispensability: once, in Denver, when she had been out of the cast for two consecutive performances, suffering with an ulcerated tooth, another actress had gone on and actually read the part from manuscript without materially lessening the dramatic effect of the playlet as a whole. Other women by the score could be found to fill her place acceptably enough, if few as handsomely (Joan soothed her pride with this reservation). "The Lie" would go on its conquering way without her – never fear!

And Quard? Joan curled a lip: he wouldn't pine away for her. She had come to know too well his shallow bag of tricks; and life to him was not life if he lacked one before whose dazzled vision he could air his graces and accomplishments – strut and crow and trail a handsome wing in the dust. Looking back she could see very clearly, now, how love had waned as soon as lust was sated in the man. That night in Cincinnati had been the turning point: he had refrained from drink only as long as his wife continued to intoxicate his senses.

And Joan?.. In the stifling gloom of her curtained section the girl stretched luxuriously, breathed deep, and smiled a secret, enigmatic smile. No more than he, would she waste herself away with grief and longing. She was no longer another's but now her own mistress: a free adventurer, by the gold band upon her finger licensed to cruise with letters of marque.

Shortly before sunrise she fell asleep, still smiling, and slept on sweetly well into mid-morning. Then, rising, she refreshed herself in the wash-room, and went to a late breakfast with countenance as clear and firm and bright as if she had never known a wakeful hour.

The eyes of men followed her wherever she moved, and when she was seated alone in her section, dreaming over a magazine or gazing pensively out of the window, men discovered errands that took them to and fro in her vicinity more often than was warranted by any encouragement she gave them. For she gave them none, she ignored them every one. She was through with Man for good and all!

It was a brand new rôle, and to play it diverted her immensely for the time being…

She spent the greater part of her waking hours, during the next few days, planning what she would do with all that money. Clothes, of course, figured ever first in these projections, and then a suite of rooms at some ostentatious hotel, and taxicabs when she went out to call on managers. How many times hadn't she heard Maizie Dean solemnly affirm that "a swell front does more to put you in right than anything else, with them lowlifers"?

And again she was pleasurably diverted by a vision of herself, extravagantly gowned, returning to recount her Odyssey to an admiring audience composed of Ma, Edna, and, perhaps, Butch; at the close of which she would distribute largesse, not forgetting to return Butch's loan with open-handed interest, and go on her way rejoicing, pursued by envious benedictions…

New York received her like a bridegroom, clothed in April sunshine as in a suit of golden mail, amazingly splendid and joyous. After that weary grind of inland towns and cities, differing one from another only in degrees of griminess, greyness, and dullness, New York seemed Paradise Regained to Joan. She had not believed it could seem so beautiful, so magnificent, so sensuously seductive.

In the exaltation of that delirious hour she plunged madly into a department store near the Pennsylvania Station, even before securing lodgings, and bought herself a pair of cheap white kid gloves, simply for the sheer voluptuousness of possessing once again something newly purchased in New York.

It was the beginning of an orgy. Joan hadn't thought how shabby and travel-worn she must seem until she donned those fresh and staring gloves and saw them in relief against the wrinkled and dusty garments she had worn across the continent.

Thoughtful, she sought a nearby mirror and looked herself over, then shook her head and turned away to check her suit-case at the parcels desk and surrender herself body and mind to the sweet dissipation of clothing herself afresh from top to toe…

But first of all she visited the hairdressing and manicuring department: she meant to be altogether spick-and-span before venturing forth to woo and win anew this old and misprized lover, her New York.

It was the head saleswoman of the suit department whose remote disdain led Joan deeper into extravagance.

The girl had selected a taffeta costume which, while by no means the most expensive or the handsomest in stock, possessed the advantage of fitting well her average figure, requiring no alterations. On paying for it she announced her desire to put it on at once and have her old suit sent home.

"Reully?" drawled the saleswoman, disappointed in her efforts to induce the girl to buy a higher-priced suit which did require alterations. Conjuring a pencil from the fastnesses of her back-hair, she produced an order pad. "Miss – what did you say? Ah, Thursday! Thanks. What numba, please? Is it in the city?"

Joan flushed, but controlled her impulse to wither and blast this insolent animal.

"The Waldorf-Astoria," she said quietly – though never once had she ventured within the doors of that establishment – and withdrew in triumph to make her change of clothing.

And having committed herself to this extent, she enjoyed ordering everything sent to that hotel, which in her as yet somewhat naïve understanding was synonymous with the last word in the sybaritism of metropolitan life.

Her long experience on the road had served thoroughly to break her in to the ways of hotels, however, and she betrayed no diffidence in the matter of approaching the room-clerk for accommodations. Nor did she, apparently, find anything dismaying in the price she was asked to pay for a bedroom with private bath. It was only when, at length relieved of the attentions of the bell-boy whose unconcealed admiration alone was worth the quarter Joan gave him as a tip, she had inspected first her new quarters and then herself in a pier-glass, that the girl gave herself over to alternate tremors of self-approval and trepidation. These last were only increased when she reckoned up the money she had left, and appreciated how much she had spent in that one wild afternoon of shopping.

On the other hand, she reminded herself, a complete new wardrobe was a necessity to one whose former outfit was lost beyond recall. Quard would never have forwarded the clothing she had left behind in San Francisco, even if she could have found the effrontery to write and demand it. And if she had expended upwards of five hundred dollars since reaching New York, there was less extravagance in that than might have been suspected; she had purchased cannily in almost every instance and, at worst, but few things that she could well have done without in that sphere of life to which she felt herself called.

The excitement of unwrapping those parcels which began presently to arrive in shoals, and of reviewing such purchases as she had not worn to the hotel on her back, in time completely reassured her. It was with the composure of restored self-confidence and esteem that she presently went down to dinner.

Conscious that she was looking her handsome best in a modish afternoon gown, she was able to receive the attentions of the head-waiter with just the proper degree of indifference, to order a simple meal and consume it appreciatively without seeming aware that she dined in strange surroundings.

But all the while she was consumed with admiration of herself for her audacity, as well as with not a little awe-stricken wonder at the child of fortune, who in the space of one brief year – of less, indeed, than that full period – had risen from the stocking-counter of a department store and the squalor and poverty of East Seventy-sixth Street to the dignity of a leading woman and the affluence of lodging at the Waldorf!

True, she now lacked an engagement; but she had to support her demands for new employment the prestige of a successful season with "The Lie" – "the vaudeville sensation of the year," as Quard had truthfully described it.

Need she fret herself with vain questionings of an inscrutable future, who had made such amazing progress in so short a time?

Surely she was justified in assuming that the end for her was not yet, that she was dedicated to some far richer and more gorgeous destiny than any she had ever conceived in her most wild imaginings.

She had only to watch herself: she was her own sole enemy, with her fondness for the admiration of men and their society. Let them realize that weakness, and she was lost, doomed to the way too many capable girls had gone, to the end of infamy and despair. But if only she had the wit and art to make men think her weakness theirs…

And that much Joan was sure she possessed: she believed she had learned to know Man better than herself.

She meant to go far, now, a great deal farther than she had ever thought to go in those quaint, far-off days when the crown of her ambition had been to paint her pretty face, wear silken tights upon her pretty legs, and beat a drum in the chorus of Ziegfield's Follies.