Inside the barricade, Lucinda halted with a cry of shocked remonstrance.
In the middle of the floor, upon which she was to give the solo dance which she had been weeks rehearsing under a veteran professional, Nolan stood vivaciously lining out tomorrow's proposed campaign for the benefit of a group composed of his first assistant, Mr. Wells, Iturbide and the second cameraman, and Mr. Coakley.
There was nothing else to break the full force of the blow which fate had prepared for Lucinda's expectations.
Of the gay, exquisite scheme upon which she and Coakley had agreed, guided by the novel, there wasn't a sign. The main masses of woodwork were here all a dull, blank black. The panels, which were to have framed baskets of fruit and garlands of flowers, in low poly-chrome relief-work, had yielded place to paintings in the style of French posters, of women in antic postures and clothed only enough to accent their nakedness. The little tables that lined the walls were dressed with cloths checquered staringly in red and white. The imbecile geometry of the Cubists had patterned all the draperies and upholstery materials in weird juxtapositions of colour apparently intended to give away the grisly cosmic secret that there was something rotten in the solar spectrum. And at the far end of the room there was.... Lucinda looked twice to make sure her eyes did not deceive her. But, no; there it was: a bar, a veritable zinc of the common Parisian cabaret.
And while she gaped aghast, hysterically torn by a desire to scream with lunatic laughter and an impulse to weep and dance with rage, Nolan spied her and, deserting his audience, tripped briskly over, beaming happily.
"Well, Miss Lee! how about it, eh? A little slice off the top of the real Bohemia, I'll tell the world. And wait till you see how she screens. O bay-bee! but this glad young set's gonna photograph like a million dollars."
Lucinda choked down the anger with which her lips were tremulous. For an instant she stared hopelessly at Nolan, comprehending that this vile parody of the design she had approved was due wholly to his arbitrary action in contradicting the plans without reference to her wishes. And she could have cried with disappointment and vexation. As a matter of simple fact, her eyes did fill in that bitter moment when she was made poignantly aware of how high her hopes had been and how heartlessly frustrated, and how helpless she was to express a tithe of her indignation without jeopardizing the good of the picture.
If she spoke her mind it were inconceivable that Nolan should consent to continue as director. And grave and well-grounded as was her dissatisfaction with him, Lucinda was not yet ready to believe it would benefit the picture to have it finished by another intelligence than that under whose guidance it had been so ill-begun.
And it is by this that the potential artistic stature of Linda Lee is to be reckoned, that in this the young beginning of her career she had already learned, what many who walk with the great ones of the screen have never learned and are incapable of learning, to think of her work before herself, to esteem her rôle as something less than the story which gave it excuse for being, to hold the welfare of the picture as a picture more important than her own.
While still she faltered, fearing to speak her mind, Coakley came up with the others. To him she turned reproachfully.