"I'm sorry. I only wanted you to understand why I felt I had to warn you against Nelly. She's unfortunate, God knows, but she's dangerous, too. They all are, once the stuff gets a hold on them, there's nothing they won't do, no lie they won't tell...."
"And this is what goes on in this earthly paradise!"
"It isn't California, it isn't Hollywood, it's human nature, one sort of human nature. You'll find the same thing going on in every big city; read the newspaper accounts of the campaign against the drug traffic. Only, out here we know more about it, because the studios make it more or less one big village, and it's hard to keep anything quiet, talk will get about...."
They were drawing near the cross-road that led to Summerlad's bungalow. He bent forward and spoke to the driver, and the car held on toward Hollywood.
"I'm taking you home first, Linda. My foot isn't troubling me now to speak of, and.... Well: talking about how rapidly gossip spreads made me think it would be better you shouldn't be seen driving up to my place with me at this time of night."
With a stabbing pain of loneliness and penitence, Lucinda perceived that she had only Lynn's love and consideration to rely upon for salvation from the gins and pitfalls of this outré world in which she lived, self-outlawed from her kind. No one else cared, not another soul in all Los Angeles would lift a hand in her behalf save at the dictates of self-interest.
And in a sudden passion she turned and clung to him again, begging forgiveness for her suspicions and complaints. And Summerlad soothed her, patting gently the head that rested on his shoulder, smiling over it confidentially at the smiling midnight moon.
XXXIII
Lucinda dated from that Saturday the dawn of a fortnight when everything went wrong for her with such regularity that, in the end, the burden of its crosses grew too sore, the woman had been something more than merely mortal whose stores of fortitude and forbearance had not run low.