Most of the time, of course, all of it spent with Lynn or in dreaming of him, she was merely but comprehensibly a young woman in love and glad of it; pleased with herself, pleased with her lover, delighting in the sweet secrecy with which it were seemly for the while to screen their love.
Nevertheless, dark hours alternated in apprehension of what she was resolved must be her final talk with Bel. But how successful dared she hope to be in the business of making Bel agree even to that? Lucinda found it by no means easy to compose an attitude which she could depend upon to dishearten Bel decisively, without going to the length of telling him point-blank that she was in love with another man and meant to marry him as soon as her professional commitments would leave her free to go through the mill of Reno. And to know Bellamy as she did was to have a good warrant for mistrusting lest, far from reeling down to defeat under the impact of that revelation, he might be moved merely to make fun of it. It would be just like Bel to refuse to believe that Lucinda Druce née Harrington meant to marry a movie actor.
"Go ahead, Linda, by all means divorce me if your heart's set on it"—one could almost hear him say it—"but don't tell me you're doing it just to marry a man who paints his nose for a living."
Somehow one got scant comfort of the retort obvious, that if Lynn did paint his nose he at least did it with nothing more harmful than paint.
At all costs, then, she must avoid the risk of telling Bel what she intended, and keep the tone of the impending scene in tune with the dignity which she had thus far been successful in maintaining, be firm but cool, and give him clearly to understand it was hopeless his attempting to make whole again that sacred vessel which his impious hands had shattered.
Maintained upon such a plane that scene must have been both beautiful and conclusive. And no doubt it would have been so but for one circumstance: Bel not only failed to call on Lucinda at the time appointed but failed even to send word of apology or explanation. An affront whose realization transmuted nobility of spirit into resentment most humanly rancorous.
Lucinda had sacrificed the evening to sense of duty; a true sacrifice, for Lynn was leaving early next morning to spend a fortnight with his company in an Oregon logging camp. So this would have been their last evening together for fourteen livelong days, if Lucinda hadn't promised it to Bellamy, and if Summerlad hadn't mournfully agreed (measurably to Lucinda's disappointment in him) that she could not afford to dishonour her promise. Surely their secret happiness was enough to compensate for that much self-denial, especially when it meant the last of Bellamy....
Losing patience after hours of waiting, Lucinda called the Alexandria on the telephone, and was informed that Mr. Druce had "checked out" early in the morning, saying nothing of an intention to return.
Mystified even more than angry, Lucinda went to bed, but lay wakeful a long time trying to fathom the enigma of such conduct in one whose need of her had brought him all the way across America to beg that very audience which had been granted only to be coolly ignored. The readiest explanation, likewise at first blush the likeliest, was none the less at odds with the premeditation to be read in Bel's leaving his hotel before noon, which wasn't the action of a man whom drink had made forgetful, but rather that of one who repented his haste in suing for something which sober second-thought had satisfied him he didn't really want.
How funny, if so! How very human!