"I shall fight the horrors of my life better if I do not fast," she told herself, immediately afterwards chiding herself almost angrily for recurring to her "dead miseries." With a certain desperation born of the discovery that she had not cast the skin of her experiences on the threshold, she set herself to court oblivion by plunging violently into present sensations. She laughed and talked, ate, drank champagne, and Vansittart, opposite, gazed at her with admiring beatitude. Joan’s lovely neck, alabaster white as it rose from her square-cut black dress, her delicately-tinted oval face with its perfect features, now brightened by her temporary gaiety, her great dark eyes, gleaming with subdued, if incandescent fire, her halo of golden hair--all were items in the general effect of radiant beauty. Vansittart hardly knew what she was talking about; he felt that the dreamy music discoursed by the little orchestra below was a fitting accompaniment to the melody of her delightful speaking voice, that was all. He was plunged in a perfect rhapsody of self-gratulation. And she? Her suspicions were as alert as ever. She saw he was in a "brown study," and, although his eyes looked dreamy ecstasy into hers, and a vague smile of as vague a content hovered about his lips, she would rather he lived outside himself. She herself was trying madly to live in externals--to stifle thought! "What are you thinking about?" she asked, leaning forward. "You!" he said passionately. "How can I think about anything else with you there opposite me?" "Hush, the waiter is listening," she said. But just at that moment the waiter was aroused by the dramatic critic and his friend rising and pushing back their chairs, and went forward to help them assume their light overcoats. "Your friend is going, and you have not introduced him to me," said Joan. "I will," said he, and, abruptly joining the departing men, he brought back the critic, in no wise reluctant. "Mr. Clement Hunt--Miss Thorne, very soon to be Lady Vansittart," he said. "May I offer my congratulations?" Mr. Hunt’s face, if not handsome, was pleasant. His voice betrayed a past of public school and college. Joan instinctively liked him. After a little small talk and apologies on his part for haste--duty called him to be at his post at the raising of the curtain upon the new drama--he departed, volunteering to pay their box a visit between the acts. "He is a capital good fellow, dearest," said Vansittart, asking her permission to smoke as the waiter brought their coffee. "But you must know that, for I would not otherwise have introduced him to you." "He looks it," said Joan warmly. "I suppose you know who that couple are?" asked Mr. Hunt, as he rejoined his friend. "Lord Vansittart, wasn’t it? What a beautiful girl! But if all is true they say, what an unfortunate creature!"