He dropped the pen and rose, his manner inviting her to leave. "Wednesday?" she repeated, reluctantly getting up again. "At four, if that's convenient." "Yes, indeed, it is. And ... thank you so much ... Jack." "No, no," Matthias expostulated wearily. "No, I mean it," she insisted. "You're awf'ly sweet not to be--unkind to me." "Believe me, I could never be that." "Then--g'dafternoon." "Good afternoon, Joan." But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence there assorted ill with his latest assurance to the girl. Catching it up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go. "And this," he said, smiling--"don't forget it, please." Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly. "You--you don't mean it?" "Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I've really no use for it, Joan, and--well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned awry. "It might be of service to you some day." With a cry of gratitude that was half a sob, but with no other acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in a daze, and so from the house. XXXI So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone of an ichthyosaurus.... They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their sentiments, or their appetites, and if these failed you appealed to their pride in their self-assumed rôle of the protectors. It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it. By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world destitute of a single human soul that commanded her respect. She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate chivalry.... As if she didn't know what Arlington's companies were like! The facts were notorious; nobody troubled to blink them; Arlington's employees least of all. It wasn't their business to blink the facts; a girl without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his choruses as a girl without a pretty figure. But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure.... Joan glanced in a shop window, en passant; but she saw nothing of the display of wares. The plate glass made a darkling mirror for the passers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted her becomingly, even though it was a trifle passé.