"Yes, Linda--afraid it was."

"Afraid----?"

"Your amiable husband's in for an interesting life, if that young woman has got her claws into him."

"Lynn: where do you suppose the girl has been all this time, since that night she left the hotel?"

"Good Lord! how should I know?"

"People don't drop out of sight like that in Hollywood. One keeps meeting them if they're in Town, one can't help it--there are so few places to go. It seems funny she should disappear so completely for--how long is it? four weeks? five?--and then turn up in Bel's company."

"It is funny," Summerlad agreed in a tone that rang true.

"I'm only wondering where he fell in with her."

"Well," Lynn submitted: "I daresay if you were to ask him...."

"Or if you were to ask her!"

But immediately Lucinda repented her resentment of what she had hastily taken to be an attempt to becloud impatience with ill-timed levity. For Lynn treated her to the reproof of a sulky silence, in which he persisted till she felt constrained, in self-justification, to adopt the very tone that had vexed her.

"Or don't you think that would be a good idea, Lynn?"

The man shifted in his corner till he sat half-facing her, his manner seriously defensive.

"Look here, Linda! I've known a long time you suspected there was something between this Marquis girl and me--or had been----"

"Wait a minute, Lynn: I may be stupid, women in love usually are, they say; but that thought never crossed my mind before the moment when, back there in the restaurant, I saw you didn't want me to know you'd seen her."

"Then it must have been my conscience, I guess." Lynn fumbled for and found her hand beneath the rug that covered their knees. "You see----"

"Oh, I see!" Lucinda snapped, and drew her hand away.

"No, you don't----"

"But I do, Lynn: and I'm quite reasonable about it. Only, I presume, I needed this to make me understand the kind of man I'd given my heart to."

"That's unfair. You know perfectly, nine times out of ten the man isn't to blame. Besides----"

"Say, rather, I have wit enough to know the causes underlying every form of human relationship are obscure past comprehending.... It isn't a question with me of blame or excuse, it's just a feeling that's suddenly come over me, a thought come home I've been refusing to think ever since we fell in love, Lynn, that I've committed my life to the care of a man who can never be wholly mine, whom I must always share with his memories of other sweethearts."

"Well, but what about _my_ feelings? Do you suppose it makes me happy to be all the time reminded that Bellamy Druce----?"

"Please, dear, don't. Forgive me--I couldn't help it. Besides, there's this to be said: if I did love another man before I met you, he was the only one; while you have known so many loves like--like this Marquis girl--not, you know, not quite----"

"Oh, I get you!" Summerlad laughed harshly. "You don't have to be more plain-spoken. And I can't deny you've got some excuse. On the other hand, if you love me, you must love me for what I am, not as I might have been if I'd stuck to pounding the ivories in Winona's leading nickelodeon."

"Pounding the ivories?"

"Playing piano in a moving-picture theatre in a Wisconsin village."

"I thought you told us, one night, you'd never done any work before going into pictures?"

"Wouldn't call that work," Summerlad explained in haste and not too convincingly. "Work is something that puts real money in the old pay envelope. I'd be ashamed to tell you what the nickelodeon handed me Sat.u.r.day nights. But it was just a sort of a lark for me. The regular orchestra was an old schoolmate of mine and when he went on his vacation I doubled for him, you see. Of course my folks kicked like steers about my taking a common job like that, but I thought it was fun; and watching the screen for music cues put it into my head I could show 'em something if I ever got a chance in pictures...." Here Summerlad was troubled by a dim reminiscence of some statement with which this account, likewise, failed to jibe, and sheered back to his former thread of argument.

"Anyway, you're all wrong about Nelly Marquis. She's one that didn't happen, if you've got to know the truth."

"Oh!" Lucinda commented without emotion--"didn't she?"

"Along with a hundred others I get the credit for----"

"I daresay, by Hollywood standards, 'credit' is the right word."

"Oh, hang it all, Linda! you _must_ understand. A man in my line.... Oh, you know how it is.... There'll always be women ready to make fools of themselves over any man who manages to get a certain degree of prominence. And an actor has got to keep in the public eye. Men are just as bad, for that matter; they'll run in circles around an actress, simply because she's on the stage, who can't hold a candle for looks or good disposition to the little girl who lives two doors away on their home street. I met Nelly Marquis shortly after I'd made my first real dent in pictures. She'd come out here to try her luck, after some experience on the legitimate stage. She was so hard hit I used to be afraid to leave the house until I'd sent out scouts to make sure the coast was clear. I've always thought that trouble of hers was more than half responsible for her mania about me."

"What trouble?"

"Dope. She's a hop nut. c.o.ke--cocaine's her big bet. That's what her friend the doctor boggled about telling you--must've been the trouble, that time you found her stretched out: an overdose. I didn't like to tell you because--well, frankly, I didn't want you to think I knew so much about the girl."

"Oh, what a pity!"

"I can't hold myself responsible----"

"But why should you?"

"I mean, I don't believe it was simply disappointment drove her to it.... Hang it! I can't seem to help talking like an a.s.s tonight. What I'm trying to say is this: Nelly took to the dope after I'd met her, but only, I believe, because she got in with the wrong crowd. That's easy in Hollywood. It's hard to tell till you are in with them. And there's an awful lot of that sort of thing goes on more or less quietly out here.

They lead one another on. When they've tried everything else they take a chance on the hop to see if there's really anything in it; and then they're gone. They drift into little cliques and have parties, ether parties and that sort of thing, you know, where they choose one by lot to stay off the stuff and watch the others to make sure n.o.body strangles to death while they lie around him in a circle----"

Lucinda lifted her hands to her ears. "Please, Lynn, please! I don't want to hear any more. It's too dreadful!"

"I'm sorry. I only wanted you to understand why I felt I had to warn you against Nelly. She's unfortunate, G.o.d knows, but she's dangerous, too.

They all are, once the stuff gets a hold on them, there's nothing they won't do, no lie they won't tell...."

"And this is what goes on in this earthly paradise!"

"It isn't California, it isn't Hollywood, it's human nature, one sort of human nature. You'll find the same thing going on in every big city; read the newspaper accounts of the campaign against the drug traffic.

Only, out here we know more about it, because the studios make it more or less one big village, and it's hard to keep anything quiet, talk will get about...."

They were drawing near the cross-road that led to Summerlad's bungalow.

He bent forward and spoke to the driver, and the car held on toward Hollywood.

"I'm taking you home first, Linda. My foot isn't troubling me now to speak of, and.... Well: talking about how rapidly gossip spreads made me think it would be better you shouldn't be seen driving up to my place with me at this time of night."

With a stabbing pain of loneliness and penitence, Lucinda perceived that she had only Lynn's love and consideration to rely upon for salvation from the gins and pitfalls of this outre world in which she lived, self-outlawed from her kind. No one else cared, not another soul in all Los Angeles would lift a hand in her behalf save at the dictates of self-interest.

And in a sudden pa.s.sion she turned and clung to him again, begging forgiveness for her suspicions and complaints. And Summerlad soothed her, patting gently the head that rested on his shoulder, smiling over it confidentially at the smiling midnight moon.