Sometimes people came to the club who attracted Joan's attention--quieter people than Effie May's friends, more simply dressed, who never seemed to join in the accentuated hilarity after dinner. Once in such a group she recognized the girl who had eyed her aloofly on the train coming home from boarding school. Joan suddenly yearned to do some aloof eyeing on her own account, now that she was no longer shabby but wore a frock as smart as any in the room. She watched her opportunity, and followed the stranger into the dressing-room with some such truculent idea in view; but was disarmed by the courtesy with which the other made room for her at a mirror, where they powdered their noses side by side in amity. As she was leaving the room, however, she heard the aloof one murmur to a friend: "What a lot of strange people one sees at this club nowadays! I wonder where they all come from? It's getting very mixed." Joan went white with anger. She struggled with the temptation to explain proudly that she was not a strange person, that her name entitled her to any society she chose to enter, that it was her step-mother who was "mixed," not she.... And then she remembered that it was only thanks to her step-mother that she happened to be there at all. For the moment this encounter with the enemy took away Joan's heart for dancing. Crowd-loneliness got her by the throat. Was there always to be just one of her, and so many of everybody else? She slipped out on to a terrace that overlooked a valley with the great river gleaming far off, still holding some faint glow of the sunset's aftermath. There was a bench at the far end, lost in shadow, and she was about to seat herself there when she saw that it was already occupied. "Oh," she said, drawing back. "I didn't notice you!" "Women rarely do," remarked a plaintive voice with a smile in it. "I'm used to that. And yet I notice them, dreadfully!" Joan laughed a little, and retreated. "I won't disturb you," she murmured; but the voice held her. "Oh, please! Please do. I want to be disturbed. I simply came here to see my moonrise." A shadowy arm pointed out a dim glow over the trees to eastward. "Why _your_ moonrise, especially?" "By right of discovery. I seem to be the only person aware of it.... May I share it with you?" "You are sure you wouldn't rather see it alone?" "Goodness gracious!" cried the voice quite querulously, "what human being ever wanted to watch a moonrise alone?" Joan chuckled, and sat down to the first conversation she had enjoyed since her last one with Stefan Nikolai--one of the few real conversations, she thought afterwards, in her life. Yet it was difficult to remember the many things they talked about. Smoke, for one. He pointed out the dim loveliness of the city below, towers and battlements and the airy span of a bridge against the gray-gold sky.