"Not much—a flesh wound in the arm——"
"Thank God it wasn't worse!" Nelly drooped heavily against the wall, with a pathetic smile testifying to her relief of mind. "I'd never have forgiven myself, never...."
Profound fatigue seemed to be overcoming her. The quavering murmurs failed upon her lips, her eyes closed, her head sagged toward one shoulder.
"Are you in love with him, then?" Lucinda demanded inexorably. "Is Bel in love with you?"
Startled, Nelly stood away from the wall, with a hysterical note in the laugh that scorned this notion. "No, no, no, no!" she cried. "He isn't that sort. You ought to know he isn't. I don't know what the trouble was between you two, but I'll tell the world it wasn't on account of any other woman.... It wasn't as if Mr. Druce didn't have his chance, either; any time he'd wanted it he could have had it with me, anytime!"
"Yet you tell me you're not in love with him!"
"You don't have to be in love in the picture business...." The fugitive, twisted smile vanished away, the lustreless eyes stared into space. "Mostly it's better if you aren't. If you are, it's likely to turn out like it did with me and Lynn. If a girl wants to get on, she can't afford to care for anybody, only herself. It hasn't mattered much to me what happened, since Lynn.... But Mr. Druce never as much as held my hand."
"Wouldn't you tell me that anyway?"
"It's God's honest truth."
The statement was made without spirit, as one of simple, provable fact. And for all her memories of Bel's misconduct, Lucinda believed.