"That's unfair. You know perfectly, nine times out of ten the man isn't to blame. Besides——"
"Say, rather, I have wit enough to know the causes underlying every form of human relationship are obscure past comprehending.... It isn't a question with me of blame or excuse, it's just a feeling that's suddenly come over me, a thought come home I've been refusing to think ever since we fell in love, Lynn, that I've committed my life to the care of a man who can never be wholly mine, whom I must always share with his memories of other sweethearts."
"Well, but what about my feelings? Do you suppose it makes me happy to be all the time reminded that Bellamy Druce——?"
"Please, dear, don't. Forgive me—I couldn't help it. Besides, there's this to be said: if I did love another man before I met you, he was the only one; while you have known so many loves like—like this Marquis girl—not, you know, not quite——"
"Oh, I get you!" Summerlad laughed harshly. "You don't have to be more plain-spoken. And I can't deny you've got some excuse. On the other hand, if you love me, you must love me for what I am, not as I might have been if I'd stuck to pounding the ivories in Winona's leading nickelodeon."
"Pounding the ivories?"
"Playing piano in a moving-picture theatre in a Wisconsin village."
"I thought you told us, one night, you'd never done any work before going into pictures?"
"Wouldn't call that work," Summerlad explained in haste and not too convincingly. "Work is something that puts real money in the old pay envelope. I'd be ashamed to tell you what the nickelodeon handed me Saturday nights. But it was just a sort of a lark for me. The regular orchestra was an old schoolmate of mine and when he went on his vacation I doubled for him, you see. Of course my folks kicked like steers about my taking a common job like that, but I thought it was fun; and watching the screen for music cues put it into my head I could show 'em something if I ever got a chance in pictures...." Here Summerlad was troubled by a dim reminiscence of some statement with which this account, likewise, failed to jibe, and sheered back to his former thread of argument. "Anyway, you're all wrong about Nelly Marquis. She's one that didn't happen, if you've got to know the truth."
"Oh!" Lucinda commented without emotion—"didn't she?"