him arrange his dishes.

"Some day, if you are interested, come and I'll tell you more about that
line in your hand." She rose with quiet grace and moved away.

"Oh! I say--" Raymond followed her with his eyes--"why not to-day?"

"There are others," Joan tossed back and was gone.

That night she went to Patricia Leigh's. Patricia had had a busy and
prosperous day. She had written some verses that she felt were
good--they had a tang that always gave Patricia the belief in their
quality; she had sold two other small things. She was, therefore, at her
flightiest, and greeted Joan with delight.

"I'm so glad Syl is not tagging on, Joan," she said. "Syl is the best
they make, but she does somehow get under the skin and make people feel
themselves 'seconds'."

Joan sank into a chair.

"Syl is writing reams to her John," she explained. "I doubt if she
noticed my leaving. She probably thinks I'm still singing."

And then Joan told Patricia about the man who, for some unknown reason,
had made himself permanent in her interest.

"I wish I knew about him," she murmured; "I cannot recall any one in the
least like him in Mrs. Tweksbury's life. I don't want to ask Aunt
Doris--besides, he may just be a chance acquaintance of Mrs.
Tweksbury's. I hardly think that, though--for she looks volumes at him
and he sort of appropriates her."

Patricia was frankly interested--she was flying, and at such moments her
bird's-eye view was a wide and sympathetic one.

Joan, too, in this mood was bewitching.

"All Joan needs," thought Patricia, "is to discover her sex appeal; get
it on a leash and take it out walking. She's like a marionette
now--hopping about, doing stunts, but not conscious of her performance."

"Lamb!" Patricia lighted a fresh cigarette, "a week from to-night you
breeze in here and what I do not know about your young man, by that
time, will not count for or against him."

"But, Pat, do be careful!" Joan was frightened by what she had set in
motion.

"Careful, lamb? Why, if carefulness wasn't my keynote, I'd be--well! I
wouldn't be here."

CHAPTER XIII

"_Joyous we launch out on trackless seas carolling free, singing our
songs._"

A week from that night Joan again eluded Sylvia. She did it by not going
to the studio for dinner. She felt deceitful and mean, but there were
heights--or were they depths?--that Sylvia could not reach, and
intuitively Joan felt that Sylvia would disapprove of what she was