Physically he attracted her. Divested of his coat, his chest swelled impressively beneath a pink-striped silk shirt. When he lifted an arm, the clinging sleeve moulded itself to an admirable biceps. As he strode to and fro the stuff of his thin summer trousers shaped itself to legs that might have proved enviable to Sir Willoughby Patterne himself. His wide-lipped mouth disclosed an excellent outfit of large, white, strong teeth. His jet-black hair curled engagingly at his temples and over his generous pink ears. She liked his big, muscular, mobile hands....
She started suddenly, to discover that he had concluded and was facing her with an expectant expression, and sat up and smiled faintly, with embarrassment, trying to remember what it had all been about.
From the window, May Dean drawled languidly: "Is that the finish?"
Quard waved an arm. "Curtain!" he said; and sat down.
He laughed uncomfortably: "As bad as all that?"
"It'd make a wonderful chaser," Maizie commented without lifting her eyes from the counterpane.
Quard turned desperately back to Joan. "What do you think of it, Miss Thursday?"
"I think so too," she said with all the animation she could muster. The other women laughed aloud. She flushed and added: "I mean, I think it's wonderful. I don't know what a chaser is."
"A chaser, dearie," Maizie explained in tones of acute commiseration, "is an act put on in the continuous houses to chase out the chair-warmers and make room for more."
"Well," said Quard, shuffling the manuscript, "I don't care if it is a chaser, so long as it stakes me to the eats till something else turns up."
On that day when she discovered the disappearance of John Matthias, Joan left the house later than had been her wont, and returned earlier, after a faint-hearted and abortive attempt to interview the stage-manager of a new musical production then being assembled to rehearse against an early opening in the Autumn.
The Deans were out. She had no place to go other than to her bare and lonely room, and she felt uncommonly hopeless and friendless. Subconsciously she had been holding in reserve, as a last hope, an appeal to the generosity of Matthias. He was a playwright, an intimate of managers: surely he would be able to suggest something, no matter how poorly paid or inconspicuous. Now, with the date of his return indefinite, she felt unjustly bereft of that last resource.