In a convulsive tremor the woman choked off her sobs and lifted her face to stare vacantly. Enough light seeped in from the street to reveal the features of Nelly Marquis.

Her voice broke huskily on the hush: "Who are you?"

"Miss Lee--Linda Lee. Can't I do something----?"

With startling fury the girl struck aside Lucinda's hands and at the same time flung herself back and away.

"No!" she cried thickly. "No, no, no! Not you! Go away--please go!"

"I only wanted to help you, if I could," Lucinda explained, getting to her feet. "If you're unhappy--I'm so sorry----"

The movement must have been misinterpreted, for the girl sprang up like a threatened animal.

"I don't want your help!" she stormed throatily. "I don't want anything to do with you--only to be left alone!" She flung herself at Lucinda as if to thrust her out by force. "Go! go! go!" she screamed. Then the window slammed.

"Poor thing!" Lucinda told herself--"she must have heard...."

XXIV

There was at this time little room in Lucinda's inner life for other people's troubles, she was much too agreeably engrossed in doting on this radiant new avatar of Linda Lee, victress in a form of duel of which Summerlad was reputed a master who had never known defeat. Rumours current of his success with women had found her credulous and lenient; mortal vanity saw to that. It feeds on strange foods, vanity, it waxes fat on inconsistencies. Think as well as you will of yourself, you shall not find unacceptable the belief that one well loved by many has been laid low by love of you alone.... And indeed a great part of that indecision at which Lucinda in those days played so daintily was due to the knowledge, unformulated in her consciousness but none the less exercising constant influence on her moods, that she was less in love with Lynn than in love with being loved by Lynn Summerlad the idolized.

In many ways admirable, a fine animal who kept himself always exquisitely fit, intelligent enough to share or seem to share her every taste and prejudice, Lynn had laid a spell upon her mind no less than on her senses. The minor faults of which she had earlier been aware, the little things he sometimes did or said that jarred, he had amended. Or she was no longer competent to perceive them....

So she put away all care on account of the strange woman whose unhappiness had excited her quick compa.s.sion, and let fancy have its fling at the dissipation of thinking how blessed was her lot, how supremely distinguished as fortune's favorite she was who had everything, youth, beauty, health and riches, and to whom all things good were granted, love, friends, admiration and envy of the general, and--never to be misprized--a life, in its present phase, of vicissitudes highly diverting.

And if she knew seasons when memories twinged like an old wound slow to mend beneath its scar, she found a certain casuistry to console regrets and compound with conscience, holding herself spiritually, as in material circ.u.mstances, a free agent, free to listen to any man, if she would, and if she would to love him. The phantom fiction of a legal bond, all that was left of her married life, she could do away at will, at little cost in inconvenience....

That morning, as every morning now, she woke with a smile responsive to the smiling promise of the day; and when she had lazily girded on her armour against fault-finding eyes, called for her car and sallied forth to while away yet another day of idleness.

Her rooms were so situate, at the end of one wing of the hotel and on the lower floor, that to reach the main entrance she had to pa.s.s the corner-room now occupied by Nelly Marquis; and malicious luck would have it that the two should meet.

The Marquis girl had been out and was returning with a small packet gripped in a shabbily gloved hand. A well-made woman with a graceful carriage, her face held elements of beauty of a wild, sweet sort, but dimmed and wasted by despondency and impaired health. Today the dark rings under her eyes were deeper, the eyes themselves more desperate than when their look had first appealed to Lucinda's sympathies. And seeing her so, Lucinda with a solicitous cry--"Why, Miss Marquis!"--paused and extended an impulsive hand.

The girl swerved away from the hand, shrinking to the wall, her scant natural colour ebbing till the rouge was livid on cheeks and lips, while her eyes grew hard and hot.

"Well!" she said sullenly--"what do you want?"

Confounded by this proof of a hostility as pertinacious as it was perverse, Lucinda faltered: "But--you are ill----"

"Well: and if I am, what's that to you?" The words uttered in a level tone nevertheless seemed to force explosively past the tremulous, waxen lips. "Oh, don't worry your head about me; think about yourself. Don't forget you can be contaminated by a creature like me, don't forget"--she accomplished a singularly true reproduction of Summerlad's tone--"I'm 'really not the sort you can afford to get mixed up with'!"

"I'm so sorry you heard, Miss Marquis. Of course neither of us had any idea you were----"

"Eavesdropping! why don't you say it? I'm not ashamed."

"But are you fair to me? I meant you no harm, I didn't say--what you resent--you know."

The girl gave a grimace of pure hate. "No," she snarled--"_you_ didn't say anything unkind, you were too busy posing as Lady Bountiful to pa.s.s uncharitable remarks! But he--he said enough--enough for me. Oh, I'm not saying he didn't tell the truth! I'm 'a bad lot,' all right--a rotten bad lot, if you want to know--and I'll be worse before I'm better. So you watch out and keep away from me--d'you hear? I want and warn you to keep away from me. I don't want your pity or your charity or any of your holier-than-thou b.u.t.ting in--all I want's just to be let alone. Any time I change my mind, I'll send you an engraved notice.... I trust I make myself clear, Miss Lee!"

"Yes, thank you," said Lucinda coolly--"quite"--and went her way.

Insolence so patently hysterical could neither hurt nor harden her heart. She consigned the affront to the limbo of the insignificant, and had put all thought of it away when, fifteen minutes later, her car brought her to the Lontaine bungalow.

Here Lucinda had to rout f.a.n.n.y out of bed and make her dress, against her protestations that she'd been on a party the night before, with Harry and some people, so needed rest and kind words more than exercise and open air.

The reflection cast a shadow as transitory as a flying cloud's upon the bright tranquillity of Lucinda's temper, that f.a.n.n.y, by her own frank account, had been going in for parties rather heavily of late, and it wasn't doing her any good. Not that she showed ill effects more than in a feverish look that really enhanced her blonde prettiness. But with f.a.n.n.y's insatiable appet.i.te for the sort of thing that she called fun....

After all, that was f.a.n.n.y's concern, and Harry's. One had confidence in their ultimate good sense, in their knowing where to draw the line, when to call a halt.

From the Lontaine bungalow the two proceeded to the Zinn Studios, having nothing better to do and thinking to pick up Harry there and run him down to the Alexandria for luncheon. But the shabbily furnished little office a.s.signed to Linda Lee Inc. was empty, the blue-and-white car was missing from the yard, and n.o.body had any information concerning Lontaine's whereabouts or probable return.

This was nothing unusual, Lontaine was always on the wing, blowing to and fro between Los Angeles and the studio; but his absence left the young women at loose ends until f.a.n.n.y suggested that they look up Lynn, find out what he was doing, and make him stop it.

Summerlad's company was busy doing nothing at all on one of the enclosed stages, contentedly lounging in and about a bizarre ball-room set and waiting for something to happen; the occupation which, Lucinda by this time had come to know, earns the motion-picture actor about ninety per cent. of his wages; the other ten being paid him for actual acting.

Neither Lynn nor Joseph Jacques, his director, was in evidence, but the cameraman said the two of them had retired to the director's office for a conference.

To the office Lucinda and f.a.n.n.y accordingly repaired and--their knock being answered by a morose growl--there discovered Summerlad, in elaborate evening clothes, tilted back in a desk-chair, a thoughtful scowl on his handsome, painted face, with Jacques, a mild-mannered, slender young cinema sultan in riding-breeches and boots, sitting on the desk itself and moodily drumming its side with his heels. These got upon their feet in such confusion that f.a.n.n.y was moved wickedly to enquire whether Lucinda or herself had been the subject of their confabulations.

"And," she further stipulated, sternly, "what you were saying about whichever of us. I never saw two people look more guilty of scandal."

"It wasn't scandal," Jacques insisted with an air of too transparent virtue. "We had been talking about Miss Lee, though."

"Wondering if you'd care to be an angel to us, Linda."

"Look out, Linda," f.a.n.n.y warned, "when a man begs a woman to be an angel to him, he's generally working her up to do something she oughtn't."

"What is it?" Lucinda enquired, laughing at Summerlad's dashed expression.

"I'm not sure you ought to, at that," he replied--"in your position, that is. But it'd be sure angelic of you."

"Help us out of the worst sort of a hole, Miss Lee," Jacques added. "I wish you would."

"But what is it?"

"Oh, nothing at all!" Summerlad a.s.sured her with a laugh that decried the very idea--"all we want you to do is forget you're a star, or going to be, and play a little part with me in this picture we're doing now."

"But how can I? I'd love to--you know that, Lynn--but we've no way of knowing when Mr. Nolan will be ready."

"That's just it, Miss Lee. It isn't any part at all, so to speak, we'll only need you three or four days; what Mr. Summerlad's afraid of is, you'll think it beneath your dignity."

"Is it such an undignified part?"

"Well, you'd have to play second fiddle to Alice Drake."

Miss Drake was Summerlad's leading woman pro tem. Lucinda made a laughing face.