Joan opened the door and stepped out into the chill dampness of the April night. The white arc of electric light beat down upon her as she came forward and it fell as glaringly upon the figure of Pierre. He had pushed forward from the little crowd of nondescripts always waiting at a stage exit, and stood, bareheaded, just at the door of her motor drawn up by the curb. She saw him instantly and from the first their eyes met. It was a horrible moment for Joan. What it was for him, she could tell by the tense pallor of his keen, bronzed face. The eyes she had not seen for such an agony of years, the strange, deep, iris-colored eyes, there they were now searching her. She stopped her heart in its beating, she stopped her breath, stopped her brain. She became for those few seconds just one thought--"I have never seen you. I have never seen you." She passed so close to him that her fur touched his hand, and she looked into his face with a cool, half-disdainful glitter of a smile. "Step aside, please," she said; "I must get in." Her voice was unnaturally high and quite unnaturally precise. Pierre said one word, a hopeless word. "Joan." It was a prayer. It should have been, "Be Joan." Then he stepped back and she stumbled into shelter. At the same instant another man--a man in evening dress--hastily prevented her man from closing the door. "Miss West, may I see you home?" Before she could speak, could do more than look, Prosper Gael had jumped in, the door slammed, the car began its whirr, and they were gliding through the crowded, brilliant streets. Joan had bent forward and was rocking to and fro. "He called me 'Joan,'" she gasped over and over. "He called me 'Joan.'" "That was Pierre?" Prosper had been forewarned by Jasper and had planned his part. She kept on rocking, holding her hands on either side of her face. "I must go away. If I see him again I shall die. I could never do that another time. O God! His hand touched me. He called me 'Joan' ... I must go...." Prosper did not touch her, but his voice, very friendly, very calm, had an instantaneous effect. "I will take you away." She laughed shakily. "Again?" she asked, and shamed him into silence. But after a while he began very reasonably, very patiently: "I can take you away so that you need not be put through this unnecessary pain. I can arrange it with Morena. If Pierre sees you often enough, he will be sure to recognize you. Joan, I did not deserve that 'again' and you know it. I am a changed man. If you don't know that now I have the heart of--of devotion, of service, toward you, you are indeed a blind and stupid woman. But you do know it. You must." She sat silent beside him, the long and slender hand between her face and him.