For a moment, in her surprise and consternation, Joan could only stare and stammer. But obvious though her agitation was, Marbridge ignored it gracefully. Shutting the door tight, he advanced with an outstretched hand and a smile there was no resisting--with, in short, every normal evidence of friendly pleasure in their meeting. "Well, Miss Thursday!" he said, gratification in his carefully modulated voice. "This is public-spirited of you!" Joan shook hands limply, her face crimson beneath his pardonably admiring stare. "I--thank you--but--" "Really," he went on smoothly, "I consider it mighty nice of you to look me up. Fancy your remembering me! Do sit down. We must have a chat. Fortunately, you've caught me in an off-hour." Retaining her hand coolly enough, he introduced the girl to a capacious lounge-chair beside the desk, then settled himself behind it. Joan shook her wits together. "You're awf'ly kind--" "I--kind?" Marbridge denied the implication with an indulgent smile. "My dear Miss Thursday, if you get to know me well--and I sincerely hope you will some day--you'll find there's not a spark of human generosity in my system. I think only of my own pleasure. How can there be kindness to you in my seizing this chance to improve our acquaintance? I declare, I thought you'd forgotten me!" "Oh, no!" Joan protested. "Really? That's charming of you. But tell me about yourself. How long have you been back?" "Not long," Joan replied instinctively to the first stock question that marks every other similar meeting in the theatrical district of New York. "That is--I mean--a couple of months." "Oh, then you didn't stay with 'The Lie'?" "You knew about that?" Marbridge nodded briskly. "Indeed, I did! Pete Gloucester told me all about you--how splendidly you were doing at rehearsals--and then, one afternoon in Chicago, I saw the sketch billed and dropped in at the theatre for the sole purpose of seeing you. And if I hadn't had a train to catch, I'd have come right round back to congratulate you. Fact! You were wonderful. You were more than wonderful: you were downright adorable, and no mistake!" Under the tonic stimulus of his flattery, Joan recovered her self-possession with surprising readiness--so swiftly that she almost forgot to cover the phenomenon with prolonged evidences of pretty confusion. She looked down, her colour high, and smiling traced with a gloved forefinger an invisible seam in her skirt; and then, looking up shyly, she appraised Marbridge with one quick, shrewd, masked glance. Her instinct had not misled her: this man esteemed her at a high value. "It's awf'ly kind of you to say so," she murmured demurely. Marbridge bent forward, leaning on the desk, his gaze ardent. "I only say what I think, Miss Thursday. I watched you act that afternoon--and so far as I was concerned, you were the whole sketch!--and made up my mind then and there you were a girl with a great big future." "Oh, but really, Mr. Marbridge--"