Awakening at a late hour in a small bedroom bright with sunlight, Mr. Matthias treated himself to a moment of incredulity. Such surroundings were strange to his drowsy perceptions, and his transitory emotions on finding himself so curiously embedded might be most aptly and tersely summed up in the exclamation of the old lady in the nursery rhyme: "Lack-a-mercy, can this be I?"

Being, however, susceptible to a conviction of singular strength that he was himself and none other; and by dint of sheer will-power overcoming a tremendous disinclination to do anything but lie still and feel perfectly healthy, sound, and at peace with the world: he induced himself to roll over and fish for his watch in the pocket of the coat hanging on a nearby chair.

The hour proved to be half-past ten.

He fancied that he must have been uncommonly tired to have slept so late.

Then he remembered.

"One doesn't need to get drunk to be daft," was the conclusion he enunciated to his loneliness.

"I hope to goodness she doesn't go poking through my papers!"

The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.

"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her…"

But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her personality. She remained a shadow – a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith of girlhood: more than that, nothing.

He wagged his head seriously.

"Something about her!.. Must've been good-looking … or something…"

With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new play – something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.

A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely. He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall and burst unceremoniously into his room – not in the least disconcerted to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been otherwise.

His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang. He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a sheet of paper into the carriage and … sat back at leisure, his gaze wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.

A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.

He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.

Half an hour elapsed before he was disturbed. Then someone knocked imperatively on the door. He recognized the knock; it was Madame Duprat's. Swinging round in his chair he said pleasantly: "Come in."

Madame Duprat entered, filling the doorway. She shut the door and stood in front of it, subjecting it to an almost total eclipse. She was tall and portly, a grenadier of a woman, with a countenance the austerity of whose severely classic mould was somewhat moderated by a delicate, dark little moustache on her upper lip. Her mien was regal and portentous, sitting well upon the person of the widow of a great if unrecognized French tragedian; but her eyes were kindly; and Matthias had long since decided that it needed a body as big as Madame Duprat's to contain her heart.

"Bon jour, monsieur."

"Bon jour, madame."

This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will, when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather electrical.

"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row? Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles – that dachshund of Heaven! – turned suffragette – and proved it with pups?"

"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the conduct of monsieur himself?"

"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.

"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room last night?"

"Oh – that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully. "But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I – "

"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please – at my age?" madame demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?" The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with monsieur is that he left the young woman here alone!"

Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression: "I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is essentially Gallic."

"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because monsieur has a heart of pity?"

"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as that. It's not likely to happen again … and besides, the girl was a perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."

"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"

"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.

By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a formless, untrained hand:

"Dear Sir," he read with relief, "thank you – Your friend, Joan Thursby."

He found the matches and used one before looking up.

"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent opposition on the part of her father – a bigot of a man! – that she was obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I to turn her out to wander through the rain – at two o'clock in the morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the sort!"

Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.

"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"

"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for more than he bargained.

"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday, you said?"

He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."

"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"

The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.

With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed her message and herself entirely from his mind.

Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.

But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust back his chair and groaned from his heart.

He sat for a space, teetering on the rear legs of his chair, his lips pursed, forehead deeply creased from temple to temple. Then in a sepulchral tone uttering the single word "Snagged!" he rose and began to pace slowly to and fro between the door and the windows.

At the end of an hour he was still patrolling this well-worn beat – his way of torment by day and by night, if the threadbare length of carpet were to be taken as a reliable witness. And there's no telling how long he might have continued the exercise had not Madame Duprat knocked once again at his door.

Roused by that sound, he came suddenly out of profound speculations. Stopping short and bidding Madame enter, he waited with hands thrust deep in his trouser-pockets and shoulders hunched high toward his ears, a cloud of annoyance darkening his countenance.

Madame Duprat came in with a "Pardon, monsieur," and a yellow envelope. Placing this last upon the table, she announced with simple dignity, "A telegram, if you please," and retired.

Matthias strode to the table and with an air of some surprise and excitement tore open the message. He found its import unusual in more than one respect: it was not a "day-letter," and it had been written with a fine, careless extravagance of emotion that recked naught whatever of the ten-word limit.

He conned its opening aloud: "'Beast animal coward ingrate poltroon traitor beast' – "

At this point he broke off to glance at the signature and observe thoughtfully: "If Helena's going in for this sort of thing, I really must buy her a thesaurus: she's used 'beast' twice in two lines…"

He continued: "'How dared you run away last night? You promised. I was counting on you. I am disgusted with you and never want to see your face again. Return at once. Perhaps you won't be too late after all. Imperative. I insist that you return.'"

The signature was simply: "Helena."

He said with considerable animation: "But – damn it! – I don't want to get married yet! I don't see what I've done…"

Throwing back his shoulders and lifting a defiant chin, he announced with invincible determination: "I won't go. That's all there is about it. I will – not – go!..

"Besides," he argued plaintively, "I couldn't travel like this – clothes all out of shape from that drenching last night – no time to change – !"

Consultation of his watch gave flat contradiction to this assertion.

"And besides, I'm just getting this thing started nicely!" This with reference to the play.

With another groan even more soulful than the first he sat down at the table, seized the telephone in a savage grasp, and in prematurely embittered accents detailed a suburban number to the inoffensive central operator. In the inevitable three minutes' wait for the connection to be put through he found ample opportunity to lash himself to a frenzy of exasperation.

"Hello!" he roared suddenly. "Hel-lo, I say!.. Who is this?.. Oh, you, eh, Swinton? This is Mr. Matthias… No – I say, no! Don't call Mrs. Tankerville. Haven't time… Just tell her I'm coming down on the six-thirty… Yes… And send something to meet me at the station… Yes. Good-bye."

VI

Joan's was an awakening of another order; like the thoroughly healthy animal she was, the moment her eyes opened she was vividly and keenly alive, completely acquainted with her situation, in full command of every faculty.

With no means of determining the time save by instinct, she was none the less sure that the hour wasn't late: not late, at all events, for people who didn't have to be behind counters by half-past eight. So she lay still for many minutes, on the worn leather couch, listening intently. There was a great hush in the lodging-house: not a foot-fall, not a sound. Yet it was broad daylight – a clear and sunny morning.

Her quick eyes, reviewing the room in this new light, realized the substance of a dream come true. She liked it all: the high and dusty ceiling, the immense and gloomy bookcases, the disorderly writing-table, the three sombre and yellowing steel engravings on the walls, the bare, beaten path that crossed the carpet diagonally from door to window, the roomy and dilapidated chairs, even the faint, intangible, ineradicable smell of tobacco that haunted the air, even the generous cushion beneath her head.

Against this last she cuddled her cheek luxuriously, a shadowy smile softening her lips, her lashes low. She was enchanted by the novel atmosphere of this roomy chamber, an atmosphere of studiousness and clear thinking. And her thoughts focussed sharply upon her memories of the early morning hours, especially those involving the man who had put himself out to shelter her. She was consumed with curiosity about him and all that concerned him. In her inexperience she found it rather more than difficult to associate his courtesy, his solicitude and generosity with his aloofness, abstraction and detachment: the type was new and difficult to classify.

Was it true, then, that Man – flesh-and-blood Man as differentiated from the romantic abstractions that swaggered through the chapters of the ten-cent weekly libraries – could be disinterested with Woman, content to serve rather than be served, to give rather than take?

On the one side stood That One of the taxicab adventure, together with John Matthias: arrayed against these, a host composed of Ben Austins and Mr. Winters and men with knees – beasts of prey who stalked or lay in ambush along all the trails that webbed her social wilderness.

Were they truly different, Matthias and that other one? Or were they merely old enemies in new masks? How was one to know?..

A noise in the basement, the rattle of a kitchen range being shaken clear of ashes, startled the girl to her feet in a twinkling. However sharp her inquisitiveness and her desire to see and to know more of this man, she entertained no idea of lingering to be found there by him…

After bolting the door and before surrendering her tired body to the invitation of the couch, she had yielded to the temptation to make a brief tour of enquiry. The result had satisfied her that Matthias had lied in one particular, at least: unquestionably this was his work-room, but no less surely the man lived as well as worked in it, much if not all of the time. In its eastern wall Joan found a door opening into a small bedroom furnished with almost soldierly simplicity. And there were two large closets in the southern wall of the chamber; in one she found his wardrobe, a staggering array of garments, neatly arranged in sharp contrast to the confusion of his desk; the other was a bathroom completely equipped, a dazzling luxury in her eyes, with its white enamel, nickel-plate, glass and porcelain fittings.

She refreshed herself there after rising – not without a guilty sensation of trespass – returning to the larger room to complete her dressing; no great matter, since she had merely laid aside skirt, coat, and shirtwaist, and loosened her corsets before lying down. In a very little time then, she was ready for the street; but with her hands on the doorknob and bolt, she hesitated, looking back, reluctant to go a thankless guest.

Slowly she moved back to the centre-table, touching with diffident fingers its jumble of manuscripts, typewriter-paper, memoranda, and correspondence. There were letters in plenty, a rack stuffed with them, others scattered like leaves hither and yon, one and all superscribed with the name of John Matthias, Esq., many in the handwriting of women, a few scented, but very faintly. Joan wondered about these women and his relations with them. Was he greatly loved and by many? It would not be strange, she thought, if he were…

Her temper curiously unsettled by these reflections, she stood for a long time, staring and thinking. Then a renewed disturbance in the lower regions of the house sent her packing – but not until she had left an inadequate scrawl of thanks, whose poverty and crudity she felt keenly. Why had she never learned to write a hand of delicately angular distinction to bear comparison with the hands that had addressed those impeccably "correct" notes?..

The hallway was deserted. She let herself hastily out, believing she had escaped detection.

Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.

Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. A clock in the window of a delicatessen shop told her the hour was half-past seven, while the sight of the food unattractively displayed proved a sharper reminder of breakfast-time. She had no other concern in the world just then. It would be hours before she could accomplish anything toward establishing her independence; and what steps she was to take toward that consummation remained altogether nebulous in her understanding.

She had not gone far before a dairy lunch settled the question as to where she was to breakfast.

It was a small, shabby, dingy place, its walls plastered with white tiling and mirrors. Joan's order comprised a cup of brownish-yellow liquid, which was not coffee, and three weighty cakes known as "sinkers." These last might have been crude, childish models in putty of the popular American "hot biscuit," but were larger and slightly scorched on top and bottom, and when pried open revealed a composition resembling aerated clay. Joan anointed them generously with butter and consumed them with evident relish. Her powers of digestion were magnificent. The price of the meal was ten cents. She went away with a sense of repletion and seventy-two cents.

She turned northward again. An empty day of arid hours confronted her perturbed and questioning imagination. She was still without definite plans or notion which way to turn for shelter. She knew only that everything must be settled before nightfall: she dared not trust to find another John Matthias, she could not sleep in the streets or parks, and return to East Seventy-sixth Street she would not. She had her own exertions to rely upon – and seventy-two cents: the one as woefully inadequate as the other.

Near Columbus Circle she bought a copy of the New York World for the sake of its "Help Wanted" advertisements, and strolled on into Central Park.

Here she found some suggestion of nature rising refreshed from its over-night bath to bask in sunlight. The grass was nowhere scorched, and in shadowed spots still sparkled with rain-drops. The air was still, steamy, and heady with fragrance of vegetation. Upon this artificial, rectangular oasis a sky of robin's-egg blue smiled benignly. A sense of peace and friendly fortunes impregnated the girl's being. Somehow she felt serenely sure that nothing untoward could happen to her. The world was all too beautiful and kindly…

She discovered a remote bench and there unfolded her newspaper and ran hastily through its advertising columns, finding one reason or another for rejecting every opening that seemed to promise anything in the nature of such employment as she had theretofore known. There were no cards from theatrical firms in need of chorus-girls, and nothing else interested her. She was now obsessed by two fixed ideas, as they might have been the poles of her world: she was going on the stage; she was not going back behind a counter.

Yet she must find a way to live until the stage should open its jealous doors to her…

The morning hours ebbed slowly, with increasing heat. From time to time Joan, for one reason or another, would drift idly on to another bench.

Once, as she sat dreaming with vacant eyes, she was roused by the quick beating of muffled hoofs, and looked up in time to see a woman on horseback pass swiftly along a bridle-path, closely pursued by a man, likewise mounted. The face of the horsewoman burned bright with pleasure and excitement and her eyes shone like stars as she glanced over-shoulder at her distanced escort. She rode well and looked very trim and well turned out in her habit of light-coloured linen. Joan thought her charming – and unspeakably blessed.

Later they returned; but now their horses walked sedately side by side; and the woman was smiling softly, with her eyes downcast, as she listened to her companion, who bent eagerly close to her and spoke in a low and intimate voice.

For hours afterwards Joan was haunted by the memory, and rent with envious longing. A hundred times she pictured herself in the place of the horsewoman; and the man at her side wore always the manner and the aspect of John Matthias…

About two o'clock in the afternoon she lunched meagrely on crackers-and-milk at another dairy establishment on Columbus Avenue – reducing her capital to sixty-one cents. Then, recrossing the park, she made her way back through the sweltering side-streets toward her late home. She arrived in time to see her father's burly figure lumbering heavily up the street. His gaze was to the sidewalk, his mind upon the poolrooms, his thick, pendulous lower lip quivered with incessant, inaudible repetition of race-track names and records. He would not have recognized Joan had he looked directly at her. And he didn't look.

She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway…

Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise not untouched by alarm.

"Joan!"

The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of questions that was about to break.

"Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?"

"Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a frightened breath.

"Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly. "Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was gone?"

Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to her mother.

"No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He won't hear of your coming back – "

"A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's my things. I've done enough for this family… Now I'm going to look out for Number One."

The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal grievance.

"I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously.

Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without you – "

"Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and try it: I'm sick and tired of it!"

She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed but inquisitive.

Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting, in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in embittered silence, ignoring her sister.

"Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length.

"With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely.

"Who?" the other persisted.

Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face.

"Maizie Dean, if you got to know."

"Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her – "

"Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big money."

"Is she going to get you a job?"

"Of course – foolish!"

"Where's she live?"

"Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue."

"What's the number of the house?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Ain't you going back there?"

Joan shut down the lid of the suit-case and began to strap it. "Yes," she said with a trace of reluctance.

"I might wanta write to you," insisted Edna. "Anything might happen and you not know – "

"Oh, well, then," Joan admitted, with an air of extreme ennui, "the number's Two-eighty-nine. Catch that? Don't forget."

"I won't."

"Besides," Joan added, lifting her voice for the benefit of the listener in the dining-room, "you don't need to be so much in a rush to think I ain't ever coming back to see you. You got no right to think that of me, after the way I've turned in my pay week in and week out, right straight along. I don't know what makes you think I've turned mean. I'm going to come and see you and ma every week, and as soon's I begin to make money you'll get your share, all right, all right!"

"Joan – " the younger girl whispered, drawing nearer.

"What?"

"They had a nawful row last night – ma and pa – after you went."

"I bet he done all the rowing!"

"He" – Edna's thin, pale cheeks coloured faintly with indignation – "he said rotten things to her – said it was because you took after her made you want to go on the stage."

"That's like him, the brute!" Joan commented between her teeth. "What'd she say?"

"Nothing. Then he lit into Butch, but Butch stood up to him and told him to shut his face or he'd knock his block off."

"And he did shut his face, didn't he?"

Edna nodded vigorously. "Yeh – but he rowed with ma for hours after they'd went to bed. I could hear him fussing and swearing. She never answered one word."

Reminiscences of like experiences of her own, long white nights through which she had lain sleepless, listening to the endless, indistinguishable monologue of recrimination and abuse in the adjoining bedroom, softened Joan's mood.

She returned to the dining-room.

Her mother's head had fallen forward on arms folded amidst the odious disorder of unclean dishes. Through a long minute Joan regarded with sombre eyes that unlovely and pitiful head, with its scant covering of greyish hair stretched taut from nape to temple and brow and twisted into a ragged knot at the back, with its hollowed temples and sunken cheeks, its thin and stringy neck emerging from the collar of a cheap and soiled Mother Hubbard. With new intentness, as if seeing them for the first time, she studied the dejected curve of those toil-bent shoulders, and the lean red forearms with their gnarled and scalded hands.

Dull emotions troubled the girl, pity and apprehension entering into her mood to war with selfishness and obstinacy.

This drudge that was her mother had once been a woman like herself, straight and strong and fashioned in clean, firm contours of wholesome flesh. To what was due this dreadful metamorphosis? To the stage? Or to Man? Or to both?.. Must she in the end become as her mother was, a battered derelict of womanhood, hopeless of salvage?

Slipping to her knees, she passed an arm across the thin, sharp shoulders of the woman.

"Ma …" she said gently.

The response was a whisper barely audible, her name breathed in a sigh: "Joan…"

Beneath her warm, strong arm there was the faintest perceptible movement of the shoulders.

"Listen to me, ma: I ain't going to forget you and Edna. I am going to work hard and take care of you."

The mother moved her head slightly, turning her face away from her daughter. Otherwise she was wholly unresponsive. Joan might have been talking to the deaf.

She divined suddenly something of the tragedy and despair of this inarticulate creature whose body had borne her, who had once been as her daughter was now. Before her mental vision unfolded a vast and sordid tapestry – a patchwork-thing made up of hints, innuendoes and snatches of half-remembered conversations, heretofore meaningless, of a thousand-and-one insignificant circumstances, individually valueless, assembling into an almost intelligible whole: picturing in dim, distorted perspective the history of her mother, drab, pitiful, appalling…

Abruptly, bending forward, Joan touched her lips to the sallow cheek.

"Good-bye," she said stiffly; "I got to go."

She rose. Her mother did not move. Edna stared wonderingly, as though a bystander at a scene of whose meaning she was ignorant. Joan took up her suit-case and went to the door.

"S'long, kid," she saluted her sister lightly. "Take good care of ma while I'm away. See you before long."

She hesitated again in the open doorway, with her hand on the knob.

"And tell Butch I said thanks."

She was half-way down to the next landing before she became aware of Edna bending over the banisters.

"Joan – "

"What?"

The girl paused.

"I 'most forgot: Butch said if you was to come in to tell you to drop around to the store th'safternoon. Said he had something to tell you."

"What?" demanded Joan, incredulous.

"I dunno. He just said that this morning."

"All right. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Joan."