The operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her and iterated the number mechanically. In another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths. "Numba five--One Bryant," she said. Joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver. "Hello--Lambs' Club?" she enquired.... "Is Mr. Fowey in the club?... Will you page him, please.... Miss Thursday.... Yes, I'll hold the wire." The booth was hermetically sealed. Perspiration was starting out all over her body. And somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet, lurked a long unburied cigar. She thrust the door ajar, but only to close it immediately as Fowey's voice saluted her. "Hello?" "Hello, Hubert," Joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery in her accents. "Is that you, Joan--really?" the voice demanded excitedly. "Real-ly!" she affirmed. "What're you doing there, shut up all alone by yourself in that stupid club, Hubert?" Prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came briskly: "Where are you now, anyway?" "That doesn't matter," she retorted. She had meant to ask him to meet her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest Marbridge might chance to see them. "What really matters is that this is my birthday and I'm going to give a party. Have you got anything better to do?" "No--" "Then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the Sixth Avenue L at Battery Place." "Battery Place! What in thunder--" "Never mind--tell you all about it when we meet. Will you come?" "Will I! Well, rawther!" "Half an hour, then--" "I'll be there, with bells on!" "Then good-bye for a little--Hubert." "Good-bye." Fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than Joan. As he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight, dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so ultra-English in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger brother. And the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager countenance seemed little short of offensive. She was sorry now that she had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of the man who now filled all her thoughts--Marbridge; and so transparent that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.