An amazingly long time for him to wait, had she but known, a tribute to the sincerity of the passion she had inspired, to the respect in which he held her whose training had not been such as to encourage much respect for women in general. Almost anybody in Hollywood would have told her that Lynn Summerlad was "a fast worker." That no one had done so was probably due in most part to an impression that to carry such information were work of supererogation....
The worst of it was, she was glad.
How strange (and what proof of her heart's unique intricacy!) that she should be affected by such paradoxical displeasure in the pleasure it gave her to hear Lynn profess a passion of which she had been so long and well aware; as if it grated upon some slumbering sense of what was fitting; as if any reason today existed why Lynn shouldn't be in love with her and, for the matter of that, she with him (only, of course, she wasn't) or why he need hesitate to speak and she be loath to listen....
"Well, Linda?"
She put away her pensiveness, smiling softly in the darkness that enfolded them, smiling to see Summerlad bending forward in his chair, whose arm just failed to touch the arm of hers, anxiously searching her face for a clue to her mind, but with the anxiety of impatience more than the anxiety of doubt. He wanted to have her in his arms. A pleasant place to be, perhaps; but she wasn't ready yet, she was not yet sure....
"Well, my friend!" she said in amused indulgence—"so it seems you love me."
"How long have you known it?"
"Quite as long as you have loved me."
"And you——?"
"I don't know yet."