Matthias smiled, but not unkindly. "I mean," he said slowly--"neither of
us really cared."
"Speak for yourself--" Joan cut in with a flash of temper; but he
obtained her silence with a gentle gesture.
"Please ... I mean, we both lost our heads for a time. That was all
there was to it, I think. Naturally it couldn't last. You were wise
enough to see that first and--ah--did the only thing you decently could,
when you threw me over. I understood that, at once."
"But I," she began in a desperate effort to regain lost ground--"I was
afraid you'd hate and despise me--"
"Not a bit, Joan--believe me, not for an instant. When I had had time to
think it all out, I was simply grateful. I could never have learned to
hate or despise you--as you put it--whatever happened; but if you hadn't
been so sensible and far-sighted, the affair might have run on too far
to be remedied. In which case we'd both have been horribly unhappy."
This was so far from the attitude she had believed he would adopt, that
Joan understood her cause to be worse than forlorn: it was lost; lost,
that is, unless it could be saved by her premeditated heroic measure.
Fumbling in her bag, she found his ring.
"Perhaps you're right," she said with a little sigh. "Anyhow, it's like
you to put it that way.... But what I really came for, was to return
this."
She offered the ring. He looked, startled, from it to her face,
hesitated, and took it. "O--thanks!" he said, adding quite truthfully:
"I'd forgotten about that"; and tossed it carelessly to his work-table
where, rolling across the face of a manuscript, it oscillated
momentarily and settling to rest, seemed to wink cynically at its late
possessor.
Joan blinked hastily in response: there was a transient little mist
before her eyes; and momentarily her lips trembled with true emotion.
The scene was working out more painfully than she had ever in her
direst misgivings dreamed it might.
Deep in her heart she had all along nursed the hope that he would insist
on her retaining the ring. That would have been like the Matthias of her
memories!
But now he seemed to think that she ought to be glad thus to disburden
her conscience and by just so much to modify her indebtedness to him!
Struck by this thought, Joan gasped inwardly, and examined with startled
eyes the face of Matthias. It was her first reminder of the fact that he
had left her one hundred and fifty unearned dollars. She had forgotten
all about that till this instant. Otherwise, she would have hesitated
longer about calling. She wondered if he were thinking of the same
thing; but his face afforded no index to his thoughts. He wasn't looking
at her at all, in fact, but down, in abstraction, studying the faded
pattern of the carpet at his feet.
She wondered if perhaps it would advance her interests to offer to
return the money, to pay it back bit by bit--when she found work. But
wisely she refrained from acting on this suggestion.
"I'm sorry I was so long about bringing it back," she resumed with an
artificial manner. "I was always meaning to, you know, and always kept
putting it off. You know how it is when you're on the road: one never
seems to have any time to one's self."
"I quite understand," Matthias assured her gravely.
She grew sensitive to the fact that he was being patient with her.
"But I really mustn't keep you from your work," she said, rising.
"You--you knew I was working, didn't you?"
"I heard," Matthias evaded--"in a roundabout way--that you were playing
in vaudeville."
The girl nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes; I was all over, playing the lead
in a sketch called 'The Lie.' It was a regular knock-out. You ought to
have seen how it got over. It's still playing, somewhere out West, I
guess."
"You left it, then?" Matthias asked, bored, heartily wishing her out of
the house.
She was aching to know if he had learned of her marriage. But then she
felt sure he couldn't possibly have heard about it. Still, she wondered,
if he did know, would it modify his attitude toward her in any way?
"Yes," she resumed briskly, to cover her momentary hesitation, "I left
it the week we played 'Frisco. I had to. The star and I couldn't seem to
hit it off, somehow. You know how that is."
"And yet you must have managed to agree with him pretty well, from all I
hear."
"What did you hear?"
(Did he really know, then?)
"Why," Matthias explained ingeniously, "you must have been with the
sketch for several months, by your own account. You couldn't have been
bickering all that time."
Confidence returned.... "Oh, that! Yes, of course. But I could see it
coming a long ways ahead. So I quit, and came back to look for another
engagement. You--"
She broke off, stammering.
"Beg pardon?" Matthias queried curiously.
Joan flushed again. "You don't know of anything I could do, just now, I
suppose?"