“Now you listen,” she began. “You don’t know all I’ve done for you. You don’t know me at all. Suppose something came out about me that you didn’t think I’d ‘a’ been guilty of. You can’t ever tell about people in this business. You don’t know me at all-not one little bit. I might ‘a’ done lots of things that would turn you against me. I tell you you got to wait and find out about things. I haven’t the nerve to tell you, but you’ll find out soon enough—”
The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. This was a scene he could identify—a scene in which the woman trembled upon the verge of revealing to the man certain sinister details of her past, spurred thereto by a scoundrel who blackmailed her. He studied the girl in a new light. Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one panic-stricken by the threatened exposure of some dreadful complication in her own past. Certainly she was suffering.
“I don’t care if this fever does carry me off,” she went on. “I know you could never feel the same toward me after you found out—”
Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the sleeve of her jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. She who had always shown herself so competent to meet trouble with laughing looks was being overthrown by this nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it didn’t matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of.
“I don’t care what you’ve done,” he said, his own voice husky. She continued to weep.
He felt himself grow hot. “Listen here, Kid”—He now spoke with more than a touch of the bully in his tone—“stop this nonsense. You—you come here and give me a good big kiss—see what I mean?”
She looked up at him from wet eyes, and amazingly through her anguish she grinned. “You win!” she said, and came to him.
He was now the masterful one. He took her protectingly in his arms. He kissed her though with no trace of the Parmalee technique. His screen experience might never have been. It was more like the dead days of Edwina May Pulver.
“Now you stop it,” he soothed—“all this nonsense!” His cheek was against hers and his arms held her. “What do I care what you’ve done in your past—what do I care? And listen here, Kid”—There was again the brutal note of the bully in his voice—“don’t ever do any more of those stunts—see what I mean? None of that falling off streetcars or houses or anything. Do you hear?”
He felt that he was being masterful indeed. He had swept her off her feet. Probably now she would weep violently and sob out her confession. But a moment later he was reflecting, as he had so many times before reflected, that you never could tell about the girl. In his embrace she had become astoundingly calm. That emotional crisis threatening to beat down all her reserves had passed. She reached up and almost meditatively pushed back the hair from his forehead, regarding him with eyes that were still shadowed but dry. Then she gave him a quick little hug and danced away. It was no time for dancing, he thought.