"Great snakes! what's that for? What's the matter?"
For of a sudden Lucinda laughed outright, suddenly the heart-rending tremolo of Nolan's voice as he detailed the awful offense Richards had committed against Nelly in the play tickled irresistibly her sense of the absurd; and her laugh followed naturally, inevitably, uncontrollably.
Now as Nolan with a frantic wave bade the cameraman cease cranking, she made a sign of helpless appeal and, inarticulate with mirth, rested weakly against the door and held her sides.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Nolan," she gasped. "Forgive me, I—I didn't know I was going to laugh till—till—till it struck me as so funny——!"
Her voice rose and broke in another peal of hysterical merriment, her words became unintelligible, while Nolan literally ground his teeth.
"What struck you as so funny?" he exploded. "Show me anything funny about this scene and I—I'll eat my megaphone. What's so damn' funny?"
"Oh, I am sorry!" Lucinda was doing her utmost to sober herself, but still her voice shook and her body rocked with recurrent spasms of idiotic mirth. "You see—when you said that—what you said about Richards being a rotter—all at once it struck me—I'm sure I don't know why—as funny, too awfully funny for words!"
"Well, why?" Nolan insisted, all but dancing with rage. "Hell! Give me a reason. Why's it funny?"
"Because—well, you see—I don't like to criticize, you resent my suggestions so—but really, you know, this is a ridiculous way to expect Nelly to carry on when she hears what she hears. She isn't in love with Richards, she isn't even in love with Dick; and surely"—Lucinda was now rapidly growing serious in her anxiety to justify herself to Nolan's face of a thunderhead—"surely she oughtn't to go all to pieces just because she hears Richards confess, what she's known all along, that he's the sort of a man he is."
"Listen here: who's directing this scene, you'r me? Who wrote the continuity, you'r me? Who knows best what this story's all about, heh, you'r me?"