"Did you never before suspect you were psychic, Mr. Nolan?"
"And now you openly criticize my judgment about this set and say you won't work on it——"
"You understand me exactly," Lucinda assented.
"You mean that?"
She nodded.
"Well, that—settles—it!" Nolan flung both hands above his head and waggled them insanely. "That settles it! I'm through—I'm finished—done! I'm out! I quit!"
He hesitated a single instant, searching Lucinda's face to see it blench at this awful threat; and in disappointment whirled on a heel and barged out of the set so blindly that he blundered into one of the frames and knocked it flat.
Lucinda nodded quietly to the technical man.
"Please make the changes as soon as you can, Mr. Coakley. It's all right: don't apologize any more. I quite understand it wasn't your fault."
The president of Linda Lee Inc. wasn't in his office, neither was his car in the parking yard; but Nolan evidently knew where to find him, for Lucinda had not been twenty minutes in her rooms at the Hollywood when Lontaine's knuckles rattled on the door. His agitation, when she admitted him, was intense, almost pitiable. One gathered that he considered a tiff between star and director a catastrophe second only to national censorship of pictures. He stammered painfully over his account of Nolan's ultimatum, which had been accompanied by a demand for the balance of his pay in full and at once.