"Where were you when he found you?"
"Back home. You see, after Lynn gave me that hundred ... and what happened ... I was afraid to stay in Hollywood, I didn't know what else he might do to me. And besides, I simply couldn't stand seeing you stepping out with him all the time, it made me simply wild. So I went right back to Findlay."
"Findlay?"
"The place in Ohio where my people live."
"And that's where Mr. Druce found you?"
"I'd only just got back when a man came to town, Mr. Roberts he said his name was, and said he'd got me a swell offer to go back to the Coast and act for a new company just starting. I kind of thought there was something fishy about it, because I never was much in pictures; and why should they send somebody all the way to Findlay to get me when they could 've got plenty just as good right here in Hollywood? Anyhow, I was afraid of Lynn, so I said nothing doing. Next I knew, Mr. Druce himself come to see me and said I'd got to go back to Hollywood with him and make pictures and I could write my own contract. Of course, as soon's I heard his name, I tumbled to what it was all about; and I thought if you got to seeing a lot of your husband you'd give Lynn the air ... chuck him, I mean ... and maybe ... Ah! I don't know...."
She was quiet for a moment, in wide-eyed, wondering abstraction. "Somehow I never got over being crazy about Lynn, you know," she said in a quieter tone than she had yet used—"not even when he treated me meanest."
In this pensive mood she mused on: "You know, sometimes I think it's all wrong the way women, like you and me, take everything a man wants to hand out to us, just to hold him. They keep telling you it's the only way; but the way it looks to me, it hardly ever works ... I mean, unless the man's crazy about you, like Mr. Druce....
"Of course, I know it isn't any of my business, Mrs. Druce, but I haven't got any hard feelings towards you on account of Lynn and all, not any more, and I'm perfectly sincere when I say I think you'll be making one big mistake if you don't make it up with Mr. Druce as soon's ever you can now...."
The house telephone came to Lucinda's rescue: Mr. Druce was calling, if Miss Lee would be kind enough to overlook the lateness of the hour....