"Sure you can. They hired you because I put Lyddy up to askin' them to. I'd thought you'd be pleased for the big money an' all. There's no pleasin' some."
"It isn't that. You don't understand. To-day——"
"Well, what's happened to-day that's so turrible, then?"
But how could Harrietta tell her? "To-day——" she began again, faltered, stopped. To-day, you must know, this had happened: It was the Big Scene of the film. Lydia Lissome, in black lace nightgown and ermine negligee, her hair in marcel waves, had just been "shot" for it.
"Now then, Miss Fuller," said young Garvey, the director, "you come into the garden, see? You've noticed Joyce go out through the French window and you suspect she's gone to meet Talbot. We show just a flash of you looking out of the drawing-room windows into the garden. Then you just glance over your shoulder to where your husband is sitting in the library, reading, and you slip away, see? Then we jump to where you find them in the garden. Wait a minute"—He consulted the sheaf of typewritten sheets in his hand—"yeh—here it says: 'Joyce is keeping her tryst under the great oak in the garden with her lover.' Yeh. Wait a minute ... 'tryst under tree with'—well, you come quickly forward—down to about here—and you say: 'Ah, there you are!'"
Harrietta looked at him for a long, long minute. Her lips were parted. Her breath came quickly. She spoke: "I say—what?"
"You say: 'Ah, there you are.'"
"Never!" said Harrietta Fuller, and brought her closed fist down on her open palm for emphasis. "Never!"
It was August when she again was crossing desert, plains, and farmlands. It was the tail-end of a dusty, hot, humid August in New York when Ken stood at the station, waiting. As he came forward, raising one arm, her own arm shot forward in quick protest, even while her glad eyes held his.