She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway.... Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise not untouched by alarm. "Joan!" The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of questions that was about to break. "Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?" "Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a frightened breath. "Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly. "Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was gone?" Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to her mother. "No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He won't hear of your coming back--" "A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's my things. I've done enough for this family.... Now I'm going to look out for Number One." The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal grievance. "I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously. Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without you--" "Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and try it: _I_'m sick and tired of it!" She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed but inquisitive. Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting, in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in embittered silence, ignoring her sister. "Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length. "With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely. "Who?" the other persisted. Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face. "Maizie Dean, if you _got_ to know." "Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her--" "Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big money." "Is she going to get you a job?" "Of course--foolish!" "Where's she live?" "Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue." "What's the number of the house?" "What do you want to know for?" "Ain't you going back there?" Joan shut down the lid of the suit-case and began to strap it. "Yes," she said with a trace of reluctance.