"Not sure I know, myself. I don't want anything to happen to worry you."
"What could?"
"Oh, I don't know. If I did, I could take measures to prevent its happening. But not so long as you insist on living here. A hotel's no place for a woman alone. People all the time coming and going.... Who knows who and what they are? You might be recognized."
"So that's what's on your mind?"
"I don't like to think of any outside influences working on you just now."
"Just now?"
"Distracting your attention from really important matters, like me and what you're going to do about me. I'm so desperately in love with you, Linda."
Lucinda said nothing for a little. She had been expecting this for days. Now that it came it found her, of course, unprepared. Nothing to complain of in that; a declaration of love always finds a woman unprepared, no matter how long she may have been preparing for it. The primitive instinct of flight from the male is deathless, though it manifest only as in that one brief moment of panic that Lucinda knew.
She was glad of the darkness of that section of the hotel veranda where they had been sitting for a quarter of an hour after returning from dîner à deux in the city. It had seemed early to part, as people interested in each other reckon the age of an evening together—not much after ten—and since no one was visible on the veranda, Lucinda had suggested that Summerlad stop and chat a while. Now she wished she hadn't.
Not that it made much difference. This had been bound to come before long. One knew the signs in a man who had held his peace about as long as he could. Five weeks since that night when, in the Beverly Hills bungalow, she had concluded that Summerlad's interest in her was neither impersonal nor of a transitory nature....