"Good afternoon, Joan."
But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence there a.s.sorted ill with his latest a.s.surance to the girl. Catching it up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go.
"And this," he said, smiling--"don"t forget it, please."
Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly.
"You--you don"t mean it?"
"Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I"ve really no use for it, Joan, and--well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned awry. "It might be of service to you some day."
With a cry of grat.i.tude that was half a sob, but with no other acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in a daze, and so from the house.
x.x.xI
So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone of an ichthyosaurus....
They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their sentiments, or their appet.i.tes, and if these failed you appealed to their pride in their self-a.s.sumed role of the protectors.
It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it.
By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world dest.i.tute of a single human soul that commanded her respect.
She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate chivalry....
As if she didn"t know what Arlington"s companies were like! The facts were notorious; n.o.body troubled to blink them; Arlington"s employees least of all. It wasn"t their business to blink the facts; a girl without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his choruses as a girl without a pretty figure.
But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure....
Joan glanced in a shop window, en pa.s.sant; but she saw nothing of the display of wares. The plate gla.s.s made a darkling mirror for the pa.s.sers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted her becomingly, even though it was a trifle pa.s.se.
She hurried home and changed it, and hurried forth again to keep an appointment with Hubert Fowey.
They dined at a pretentious hotel, in an "Orange Garden" whose false moonlight and tinkling, artificial fountain manufactured an alluring simulacrum of romantic night, despite the incessant activities of a ragtime-bitten orchestra and the inability of the ventilating system to infuse a hint of coolness into the heavy, superheated air.
Joan had little appet.i.te--the day had been too over-poweringly hot--but she was very thirsty; and Fowey provided a brand of champagne less sweet and heady than she would have chosen, and consequently more insinuative.
During the meal Billy Salute appeared at a table across the room and invisible to Fowey, whose back was toward it, but still not far enough removed to prevent Joan from recognizing that look in the dancer"s eyes which she resented so angrily. She didn"t once look at the man; but she never quite lost sight of him, and was well aware that he was ridiculing Fowey to his companion--an actor, by many an indication, but a stranger to Joan.
Provoked, she demonstrated her contempt of Salute by flirting outrageously with Fowey. Unconscious of her motive, that aspiring little dramatic author lost his head to some extent. Now and again his voice trembled when he spoke to her, and once he mumbled something about marriage, but checked at discretion, and let his words trail off inarticulately.
Joan was not to be denied.
"What did you say?" she demanded, with her most distracting smile.
"Oh, nothing of any importance," muttered Fowey, his face reddening.
"But you did say something. I only caught part of it. Hubert, I want to know!"
It was the first time she had used his given name.
"I--I only wondered if you were married," he stammered. "You talk so cursed little about yourself!"
"Does it matter?" she parried, surrender in her eyes.
He choked and gulped on his champagne.
"But you"re not, are you?" he persisted.
"What"s that to you?"
He hesitated and changed the subject, fearful lest his tongue compromise him.
"What shall we do now? Don"t say a roof garden. Let"s get out of this infernal smother. I vote for a taxi ride to Manhattan Beach."
Joan a.s.sented.
Leaving, they pa.s.sed Salute"s table. Joan gave the dancer a distant and chilling greeting, and swept haughtily past, ignoring his offer to rise.
The insolent irony of his eyes was incredibly offensive to her. They said: "I am waiting, I am patient, I make no effort, I am inevitable."
She swore in her soul that she would prove them wrong.
In the taxicab Fowey made some slighting reference to the dancer.
"He"s the devil!" Joan declared with profound conviction.
But she wouldn"t explain her reasons for so naming him.
When occasion offered, in the more shadowed stretches of their course to the sea, Fowey attempted to kiss her. But she would have none of him then, fending him off by main strength and raillery; and she was pleased with the discovery that she was stronger than he. Yet another evidence of the inferiority of man!
At the beach, Fowey ordered a claret cup. Joan demanded an ice and drank sparingly; but when again in the motor-car, homeward-bound, she was abruptly smitten with amazement to find herself in Fowey"s arms, submitting to his kisses if not returning them.
For a time she remained so and let him talk love to her.
It was pleasant, to be--wanted....
Arrived at the little flat, she had to prevent Fowey"s following her in, again by main strength, slamming the door in his face.
Bolting the door, she turned to a mirror "to see what a fright she must have looked." But it seemed a radiant vision that smiled back at her.
She thought hazily of Hubert Fowey.
"That kid!" she murmured, not altogether in contempt, but almost compa.s.sionately.
It was a shame to tease him so....