She turned away and reached up for her hat, which hung on a peg just above her head. "I think I would rather go straight home," she added. Fanny sprang to her feet and caught at her companion with impulsive hands, dragging her into the centre of the room. "Nonsense," she said, "you want cheering up far more than I do. Here, gentlemen," she went on, "you perceive a young lady suffering from an attack of the blues. If you will wait two minutes I'll make her face respectable--doesn't do to shock Sevenoaks--and we will all go to supper. Meanwhile let me introduce you--Miss Rutherford, known in the company as Sylvia Leicester, the some dancer of the Brown show." "If Miss Rutherford does not feel up to supper," Dick suggested--he wanted, if possible, to help the girl out of her difficulty; he realized that she did not want to come--"let us make it another night, or perhaps you could all come to lunch with me to-morrow?" Again Joan had lifted her eyes and was watching him, but now the defiance was uppermost in her mind. His face, to begin with, had worried her; the faint hint of having seen him somewhere before had been perplexing. She always disliked the way Fanny would welcome the most promiscuous acquaintances in their joint dressing-room at all times. She thought now that it must have been contempt which she had read in this man's eyes, and apart from their attraction--for in an indefinite way they had attracted her--the idea spurred her to instant rebellion. "No, let's go to supper," she exclaimed; "Fanny is quite right, I do want to be cheered up. Let's eat, drink, and be merry." She turned rather feverishly and started rubbing the make-up off her face with Fanny's rag. The other girl, meanwhile, slipped behind a curtain which hung across one side of the room and finished her dressing, carrying on an animated conversation with Swetenham all the time. Dick drew a little closer to Joan. "Why do you come?" he asked. "You know you hate it and us." Under the vanishing paint the colour flamed to Joan's face and died away-again. "Because I want to," she said; "and as for hating--you are wrong there; I don't hate anything or anyone, except, perhaps, myself." The last words were so low he hardly heard them.