"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing mendacity--"Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can get any figure I want to ask, in reason." Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped. "He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess you heard about that." The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast.... Look here: make it--" "Fifty or nothing." After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All right." At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than elegance the food before him. Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to her will.... There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of gratulate reflection. From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance. Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned, and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy, ambitions achieved through adulation of men.... "Why, Miss Thursday, how _do_ you do?" Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr. Marbridge!" Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday, and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome eyes ogled her effectively. "Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist stopping to speak. How are you?" "I"--Joan stammered--"I'm very well, thanks." "As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as happy--more charming than both! You are--eh--not lonesome?" His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard, exposed the innuendo. "Oh, no, I--" "Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to call on you. Where do you put up in town?" Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address--knowing in her heart that the truth was not in this man. "And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?" She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia. Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So glad to have run across you. Good afternoon...." Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her with odd intentness.