Even in this instance, Joan's perception of the gulf between them was more emotional than thoughtful.... She moved slowly about the room, resentfully distressed, touching with reluctant fingers objects indelibly associated in her memory with the man of her first love. Sitting at his desk, she enclosed in a large envelope his letters. Two had arrived since Thursday; but these she had not opened. She hardly understood why she desired not to open them; she still took a real and deep interest in his fortunes; but she was desperately loath to read the mute reproach legible, if to her eyes alone, between his lines. She meant to leave him a note of her own, tenderly contrite and at the same time firmly final; but in spite of a mood saturate with an appropriately gentle and generous melancholy, she could not, apparently, fix it down with ink on paper. Eventually she gave it up: destroyed what she had attempted, and sealed the packet, leaving Matthias no written word of hers save his name on the face of the envelope. There remained the most difficult duty of all. With painful reluctance, Joan removed the ring from her finger (where it had been ever since she had last parted with Quard) and replacing it in its leather-covered case, sat for a long time looking her farewell upon that brilliant and more than intrinsically precious jewel. At length, closing the case, she placed it on top of the envelope, rose and moved to the door. There she hesitated, looking back in pain and longing. There was no telling what might happen to it before Matthias returned. A prying chambermaid.... And then it was quite possible that "The Lie" would not last out the week in Springfield. Quard had more than once pointed out: "There's nothing sure in this game but the fact that you're bound to close sooner 'n you looked for." "Maybe I'll be back inside a week," Joan doubted. There was always that chance; and she had already left one door open against her return. "Anyway, it isn't safe, there. And I can mail it to him, registered, when I'm sure he's home." Turning back, she snatched up the leather case and darted guiltily from the study and out of the house. XXV The stage-wise have long since learned to discount a "slump" in the next performance to follow a brilliantly successful première: the phenomenon is as inevitable as poor food on a route of one-night stands. At Springfield, on Monday afternoon, "The Lie" was presented in a manner of unpardonable crudity. Quard forgot his lines and extemporized and "gagged" desperately to cover the consequent breaks in the dialogue; leaving poor Joan hopelessly at sea, floundering for cues that were never uttered.