"You are too kind——"
"I'm not. Don't fool yourself. I'm thinking of nobody but Bellamy Druce. All I'm after is to save my name from being linked up with this rotten business. Think of yourself, as I'm thinking of myself, then. Think whether it's going to be worth the name you'll get, to have the satisfaction of this heroic gesture, this theatrical effect of sticking bravely by the side of your actor lover—so nobly wounded!—this man whose promiscuous amours have made his name a by-word even here, even in Hollywood!... But for the love of God, think quickly!"
He ceased upon a note of impatient admonishment, then, when Lucinda remained silent, changed his tone.
"I treated you badly enough, God knows! but you paid me out properly, you can afford to be magnanimous now. I've done nothing to deserve your active ill-will since you left me. And it isn't as if you could do Summerlad any good by staying. His fate's all up to the surgeons. And you can trust me to see that everything possible is done for him. I'll keep you posted, I'll come to the hotel tonight and tell you what the surgeon says."
He bent with painful effort and lifted her wrap. She took it without a word, swung it round her shoulders, turned and left the room.
Bellamy followed as far as the front door. His car was waiting on the drive, its motor running. The chauffeur, already instructed, held the tonneau door for Lucinda, closed it smartly, smartly climbed into place at the wheel. She looked back as they drew away. Bellamy stood en silhouette against the light, nursing his bandaged arm. A turn in the drive blocked out that picture, the car wheeled sharply into the public street, gathered speed. And Lucinda crouched down in her corner, chilled to her marrow by realization of the loneliness of her lot, from whom Life had stripped away even the forlorn company of her last, most dear illusion....
XL
Amazing to learn, upon authority as sound as that of the clock in the hotel lobby, that the age of the evening was still something short of nine ... preposterous to credit that lapse of time so little could have wrought the transformation of life's kindly countenance at close of day to its present cast, so bleak, forbidding, and implacable....
Yet neither circumstance was a whit less certain or more disputable than the other. And that the hour was what it was, no earlier, no later, gave one good reason for thanksgiving. For now the miscellaneous dinner mob with its components of envious sharp eyes and ungenerous tongues had scattered on its various ways; while the cinemaniacs were not yet due to come trooping home from the neighbouring halls of their addiction. Only the elderlies remained in evidence, that element of the clientele which Fanny had styled the Grumpies in discrimination from the Gaddies; staid, smug bodies in black taffeta, old lace fichus and rocking-chairs, or stiff collars, shapeless trousers and blunt-nosed boots, devoted to solitaire, fancy-work, and gossip of the home-brewed brand that cheers but not inebriates; a species of migratory perennials to whom the cotton-wool climate of Southern California is a sort of gracious prelude to the grave; at once avidly intrigued by and as honestly innocent of that other Hollywood with whose lively denizens they rubbed shoulders daily, as of the other world and its press of equally unquiet souls.