Back in New York, Joan established herself temporarily at a small and very poor hotel on the west side of Harlem. Since their engagement took her no farther south than Sixty-third Street and Broadway during its first week, and the second week was played at One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, she felt tolerably insured against meeting either Matthias or any member of her own family. She really meant to go home some time and see how her mother and Edna were doing, but from day to day put it off, if with no better excuse on the ground that she was too tired and too busy. As a matter of fact she was in the habit of waking up at about ten, but never rose until noon; spent the hours between three and four and nine and ten in the theatre; and was ordinarily abed by half-past twelve or one o'clock. Up to the matinée hour, and between that and the night, she managed without great difficulty to kill time, spending a deal of it, and a fair proportion of her earnings, in the uptown department stores. She dined with Quard quite frequently, and almost invariably after the last performance they supped together, often in company with friends of his--for the most part vaudeville people whom he had previously known or with whom he struck up fervent, facile friendships of a week's duration. They were a quaint, scandalous crew, feather-brained, irresponsible and, most of them, destitute of any sort of originality; but their spirits were high as long as they had a pay-day ahead, their tongues were quick with the patter of the circuits, and their humour was of an order new and vastly diverting to Joan. She had with them what she called a good time, and soon learned to look leniently upon the irregular lives of some who entertained her. Once or twice she was invited to "parties", sociable gatherings in flats rented furnished, at which she learned to regard the consumption of large quantities of bottled beer as a polite and even humorous accomplishment, and to permit a degree of freedom in song and joke and innuendo that would have seemed impossible in another environment. Probably she would have felt less tolerant of these matters had Quard betrayed the least tendency to "fall off the wagon." But in her company, at least, he refrained sedulously from drink; and since his was one of those constitutions whose normal vitality is so high and constant that alcohol benumbs rather than stimulates its functions, he shone the more by contrast with their occasionally befuddled companions.