Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't, as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this knowledge with a thrilling heart.

Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone, as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a typewriter.

Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie Quard.

But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late, behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than ever before.

It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of her memory.

By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she was very anxious to make him realize her again.

But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed up and departed, all in an afternoon.

So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained, kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once again removed from her reach.

She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women…

Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience. Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would never go far without influence.

The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed, did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and a fresh shirtwaist – both recent purchases.

In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the stoop.

Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away, she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative movement to rise was barely perceptible – a start, a sinking back. So that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever she might be) and lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.

He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging manner.

"Mr. Matthias – " Joan began with a slight, determined nod.

"Oh – good evening," he stammered.

Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a cool smile.

He shook his head slowly: "So sorry – I've got a shocking memory. It'll come back to me in a minute. Won't you – ah – come in?"

Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday," she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.

"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday – of course! Won't you sit down?"

Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue to the identity of Joan Thursday.

"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said, choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to go, and you let me stay here – "

"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now. Joan Thursday – to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've often wondered what became of you."

"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."

"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before this, if that's the case."

"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."

"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that could have happened – !"

"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."

"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did you? At least, I seem to remember you – ah – weren't in very good form, financially, that night we met."

"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs – the Deans, you know."

"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any – the Deans didn't – at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."

"Why, that's splendid!" said Matthias, affecting an enthusiasm which he hardly felt. "And – you made good – eh?"

"Well" – she laughed a little consciously – "I guess I did make good. But he didn't. He was a boozer, and they threw us out of the bill last Wednesday."

"That's too bad," said Matthias sympathetically. "I see."

And truly he did begin to see: she was out of a job and wanted assistance to another. It wasn't the first time – nor yet merely the hundredth – that he had been approached on a similar errand. People seemed to think that – simply because he wrote plays which, if produced at all, scored nothing more than indifferent successes at best! – he could wheedle managers into providing berths for every sorry incompetent who caught the footlight fever. It was very annoying. Not that he wouldn't be glad to place them all, given time and influence; but he had neither.

Joan, watching him closely, saw his face darken, guessed cunningly the cause. And suddenly the buoyant assurance which had been hers up to this stage in their interview deserted her utterly. No longer enheartened by faith in the potency of her good looks and the appeal of her necessity, she became again the constrained and timid girl of unreasonable and inarticulate demands.

After a brief silence, Matthias looked up with a smile.

"I don't suppose you have anything else in sight?"

Joan shook her head.

"And you need a job pretty hard – eh?"

"Oh, I do!" she cried. "I haven't hardly any money, and the Deans have gone away, and the agencies won't pay any attention to me – "

"I understand," he interrupted. "Half a minute: I'll try to think of something."

Unconsciously he began to pace the way his feet had worn from door to window.

"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.

She started and instinctively lied: "Twenty…"

His surprise was unconcealed: "Really?"

She faltered unconvincing amendment: "Nearly."

"No matter," he said briskly. "It comes to the same thing: you're under twenty. The stage is no place for girls of your age. Don't you think you'd better chuck it – go home?"

Not trusting herself to speak, she shook her head, her eyes misty with disappointment.

"Besides, you're too good looking…"

Struck by her unresponsiveness, he paused to glance at her, and noted with consternation the glimmer of tears in her lashes.

"Oh, I say! Don't cry – we'll find something for you, never fear!"

"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I – I didn't mean to… Only, I can't go home, and I must find something to do, and you'd been so kind to me, once, I thought – "

"And I will!" he asserted heartily. "I'm only trying to advise you… I don't want to preach about the immorality of the theatre. A sensible girl is as safe on the legitimate stage as she would be in a business office – safer! But theatrical work has other effects on one's moral fibre, just as disastrous, in a way. It's lazy work; barring rehearsals, you won't find yourself driven very hard – unless ambition drives you, and you've got uncommon ability and mean to get to the top. Otherwise, you won't have much to do, even if constantly engaged. You'll get average small parts; you may be on in one act out of three or four. But even if you appear in every act, you'll only be in the theatre three hours or so a day. The rest of it you'll waste, nine chances out of ten. You'll lie abed late, and once up it won't seem worth while starting anything before it's time to show up at the theatre. That's the real evil of stage life: to every hard-working actor it turns out a hundred – five hundred – too lazy even to act their best, of no real use either to themselves or to the world."

He checked and laughed in a deprecatory manner. "I didn't mean to speechify like this, but I do know what I'm talking about."

Joan had listened, admiring Matthias intensely, but thoroughly sceptical of his counsel, to the tenor of which she paid just sufficient heed to perceive that doubts admitted would condemn her cause.

"I mean to succeed," she said in an earnest voice: "I mean to work hard, and I do believe I'll make good, if I ever get a chance."

"Then that's settled!" assented Matthias promptly. "The thing to do now is to find out what you can do with a chance."

He pawed the litter of papers on the table, and presently brought to light a typed manuscript in blue paper covers.

"This," he said, rustling the leaves, "is the first act of a play we're going to put on early in September. It goes into rehearsal in a week or ten days. There's a small part in the first act – a stenographer in a law office – a slangy, self-sufficient girl – you might be able to play. As I say, it's small; but it's quite important. It's the fashion nowadays, you know, to write pieces with small casts and no parts that aren't vital to the action. If you should bungle, it would ruin the first act and might kill the play. But I'm willing to try you out at rehearsals – with the distinct understanding that if you don't fit precisely you'll be released and somebody else engaged who we're sure can play it."

"That's all I ask," said the girl. "You – you're awful' kind – "

"Nonsense: I'd rather have you than anyone else I can think of just now, because you're pretty, and pretty women help a play a lot; and the man who's putting this piece on would rather have you because he'll get you for less money than he'd have to pay an actress of experience. So, if you make good, all hands will be pleased."

"Shall I begin to study now?" Joan asked, offering to take the manuscript.

"Not necessary. Your part will be given you when the first rehearsal is called. I merely want to refresh my memory, to see how much you'll have to do."

He ran hastily through the pages.

"As I thought: you are on at the opening for about ten minutes, and near the end of the act for a two-minute scene. Twelve minutes' work a day for, say, twenty-five dollars a week: that isn't bad. You'll be out of the theatre by half-past nine every night… You see the point I've been trying to make?"

"Yes," Joan assented. "It seems very easy. I hope I can do it."

"I'm sure you can," said Matthias. "But – how are you going to live between now and the opening?"

Joan's eyes were blank.

"Have you any money?" he insisted.

"A very little," she faltered – "eighteen dollars – "

"You won't get pay for rehearsals; and they'll last three weeks; after we open it will be another week before the ghost walks. That's – say – six weeks you've got to scrape through somehow. Eighteen dollars won't cover that. Perhaps you'd better go back to your old job until we start."

"I was fired from the last, and it would take more than two weeks for me to find anything like it, I know."

"And there you are!"

Matthias tossed the manuscript back to the table, waved his hands eloquently and threw himself into a chair, regarding her with his whimsical, semi-apologetic smile.

"I'm afraid," he added after a minute, "I've reached the end of my string. Further suggestions will have to come from you."

"I don't know," said the girl doubtfully. "Maybe I can think of something – maybe something will turn up."

"I hope so. Perhaps even I may invent something. If I do, I'll let you know, Miss Thursday."

He arose, his manner an invitation to go, to which she couldn't be blind.

She got up, moved slowly toward the door.

"I hope I haven't bothered you much – put you out of your writing – "

"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted insincerely.

"And you have been awful' good to me."

"Please don't think of it that way."

He was holding the door for her, but on the threshold she hesitated.

"Unless," she ventured half-heartedly – "unless I could help you some way with your work."

"Help me?" he exclaimed, at once amazed and amused.

"I mean, copying – if you ever have any."

"Type-writing?"

She nodded, with a flush of hope. "When I was a kid – I mean, before I left school – I studied a while at a business college – nights, you know. They taught me type-writing by the touch system, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of shorthand, and so had to give it up and go to work in a store."

"Now that is a helpful thought!" he cried, turning back into the room. "Wait a minute. There may be something in this. Let me think."

But his deliberation was very brief.

"It can be done!" he announced in another moment. "I have got a lot of stuff to be copied. You see, about a month ago I…"

He checked, his eyes clouding without cause apparent to the girl.

"Well!" he went on with a nervous laugh – "I didn't feel much like work. Guess I must've done too much of it, for a while. Anyway, I found I had to quit, and went out of town for a while. Of course I couldn't stop work really – a man can't, if he likes his job – and so I took some manuscripts along and revised them in long-hand. Now they ought to be copied – I'd been thinking of sending them out to some public stenographer – but if you want the work, it's yours."

XV

Never had any of her difficulties been adjusted in a manner more satisfactory to Joan. She rose at once from an abyss of discouragement to sunlit peaks of happiness. Installing a rented type-writing machine in the room adjoining her own (temporarily without a tenant and willingly loaned by Madame Duprat) she tapped away industriously from early morning till late at night, sedulously transcribing into clean type-script the mangled manuscripts given her by Matthias. By no means a rapid worker, after renewing acquaintance with the machine she made up for slowness by diligence and long hours. And the work interested her: she thought the plays magnificent; and a novel which Matthias gave her when his stock of old plays ran low she considered superb. It was his first and only book, and had not as yet been submitted to the mercies of a publisher. But to Joan it was something more than a book; it was a revelation, her primal introduction to the world of the intellect. From poring over its pages, she grew hungry for more, thrilled by the discovery that she could find interest and pleasure in reading.

She began to borrow extensively from the circulation branch of the Public Library in Forty-second Street, and to read late into the night, defying the prejudices of Madame Duprat on the question of gas consumption…

Refusing an offer of public stenographer rates, she had asked for ten dollars a week. This Matthias paid her, under protest that the work was worth more to him. The arrangement was, however, a fortunate one; for though at first Joan earned more than she received, after rehearsals of "The Jade God" had started she was seldom able to give more than two or three hours a day to the copying.

These rehearsals furnished her with impressions vastly different from those garnered through her experience with "The Convict's Return."

The company assembled for the first time on a mid-August morning, in the author's study. There were present eight men, aside from Matthias and the manager, his producing director and his press agent, and four women, including Joan. After brief introductions, the gathering disposed itself to attention, and Matthias, rocking nervously in his revolving desk-chair, read the play aloud. To most of those present the work was new and unfamiliar; they listened with intense interest, keenly alive to the possibilities of the various parts for which they had been cast.

But Joan was not of these; she had typed all the parts and knew not only the story but her own slight though significant rôle (as she would have said) "backwards." Sitting in a shadowed corner, she devoted herself to studying those with whom her lines were to be cast.

The leading lady was an actress who, after several attempts to star at the head of her own company, was reduced to playing second to the young and handsome matinée hero of several seasons ago, planning to return in triumph to the stage after an unsuccessful effort to retire from it into the contented estate of well-financed matrimony. Through their widely published photographs Joan was familiar with the features of both.

She thought the star charming; good-humoured, good-looking, well-mannered, slight and graceful, he had all the assurance of a Charlie Quard and none of his vain swagger.

But Joan decided on sight to detest the leading woman. She was a pale, ashen blonde, with a skin as colourless as snow, level dark brows, sharp blue eyes set close to the bridge of her pointed nose, and a thin-lipped, violent mouth. The first impression she conveyed was one of dangerous temper; the second, that she had been happy in her choice of photographers. Throughout the reading, she sat negligently on the arm of a chair, swinging a foot and staring out of the window with an air of immitigable disdain.

Of the other women, one was a grey-haired, sweet-faced lady of perhaps fifty years, whose eyes softened winningly whenever they encountered Joan's, the other an unlovely creature of middle-age and long stage experience, who seemed to have no interest in life aside from her unfolding part. The remainder of the company, of a caste hall-marked by the theatre, offered nothing novel to Joan's eyes – aside from a fat, red-faced lump of a youth who was to act a thick-witted, sentimental office-boy, in love with the stenographer (Joan). This one she decided to tolerate on suspicion; he resembled a type which she had found difficult, apt to impertinence and annoying attentions.

Rideout, the man financially responsible for the production, was an English actor of reputation and considerable ability. Carrying his stoutish body with an ease that almost suggested slenderness: with his plump, blowsy face, twinkling eyes and fat nose of a comedian: the insuppressible staginess of his gesture would have betrayed his calling anywhere. Now and again Joan surprised an anxious expression lurking beneath his humorous smile; she had inferred from some casual remark made by Matthias that Rideout was staking all he possessed on the success of this play.

The producing manager, Wilbrow, was a short, lean-bodied American, with lantern jaws, large intent eyes, and a nervous frown. Joan was impressed with the aloof pleasantness of his manner: she was to know him better.

The reading over, the company was dismissed with instructions to report at ten the next morning at an obscure dance-hall masquerading under the name of an opera house, situate in the immediate neighbourhood, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several lingered to affix signatures to contracts – Joan of their number; and when these were gone, there remained in conference the star, the leading woman, Matthias, Rideout, and Wilbrow.

Going out to dinner that night, Joan passed Matthias bidding good-bye to the leading woman in the hallway. He seemed tired and wore a harassed look; and later, when the girl delivered the outcome of her day's copying, he had a manner new to her, of weary brusqueness.

The first rehearsal proper was held in a stuffy and ill-ventilated room, so dark that it was necessary to use the electric lights even at high noon. The day was fortunately cool, otherwise the place had been insufferable. There was little attempt at acting; the company devoted itself, under Wilbrow's patient direction, to blocking in the action. They had no stage – simply that bare, four-square room. Half a dozen chairs and a few long benches were dragged about to indicate entrances and properties. Nobody pretended to know his part – not even Joan, who knew hers perfectly. The example of the others, who merely mumbled from the manuscripts in their hands, made the girl fear to betray amateurishness by discovering too great an initial familiarity with her lines. So she, too, carried her "'script," and read from it. When not thus engaged, she sat watching and noting down what was going on with eager attention.

But she took away with her a depressing sense of having engaged in something formless and incoherent.

But succeeding rehearsals – beginning with the second – corrected this misapprehension. That afternoon developed Wilbrow suddenly into a mild-mannered, semi-apologetic, and humorous tyrant. He discovered an individual comprehension of what was required for the right development of the play, and an invincible determination to get it. He never lost either temper or patience, neither swore nor lifted his voice; but having indicated his desire, wrought patiently with its subject, sometimes for as long as an hour, until he had succeeded in satisfying it. He worked coatless, with his long black hair straggling down over his forehead and across his glasses: an incredibly thin, energetic, and efficient figure, dominated by a penetrating and masterful intelligence. Not infrequently, taking the typed part from the hands of one of his puppets, he would himself give a vivid sketch of its requirements through the medium of intonation, gesture, and action. And to Joan, at least, the effects he created by these means were as striking in the feminine rôles as in the masculine. Utterly devoid of self-consciousness, he had the faculty of seeming for the moment actually to be what he sought to suggest: one forgot the man, saw only what he had in mind.

Another thing that surprised the girl more than a little was the docility with which her associates submitted to his dictation and even invited it. She had heard of actors "creating" rôles; but in this company no one but the producer seemed to be creating anything. The others came to rehearsals with minds so open that they seemed vacuous; not one, whether the star, his leading woman, or any of their supporting players, indicated the least comprehension of what they were required to portray or the slightest symptom of original conception. What Wilbrow told them and then showed them how to do, they performed with varying degrees of success. So that Joan at last came to believe the best actors those most susceptible to domination, least capable of independent thought. As he gradually became acquainted with his lines and the business Wilbrow mapped out for him, the star began to give more compelling impersonations at each rehearsal; but to the girl he never seemed more than a carbon filament of a man, burning bright with incandescence only when impregnated with the fluid genius of a superior mentality. So, likewise, with the leading woman…

As for herself, Joan was hardly happy in her endeavour to please. Having unwisely formed her own premature conception of her part, and lacking totally the technical ability to express it, she ran constantly afoul of Wilbrow's notions. She was called upon first to erase her own personality, next to forget the personality which she had meant to delineate, and finally to substitute for both these one which Wilbrow alone seemed able to see and understand. She strove patiently and without complaint, but in a stupefying welter of confusion. While on the pretended stage she was constantly terrified by Wilbrow's mild but predominant regard, which rendered her only awkward, witless, and ill-at-ease. Then, too, her attempts to imitate his brilliant and colourful acting were received with amusement, not always wholly silent, by the rest of the company. She seemed quite unable to follow his lead; and toward the end of the first week, throughout the whole of which (she was aware from the calm resignation of Wilbrow's attitude) she had improved not one whit, she began to despair.

Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of earning her weekly stipend.

On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed, there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow, Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the stage of a Broadway theatre.

She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair. Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could purchase – and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she earned as typist – and she had been engaged with the understanding, implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of "The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.

There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress of recognized ability!..