"If you know of none, Linda—no."
"I know of nothing that counterweighs the persecution you've been subjecting me to, ever since you found out where I was hiding from you—persecution that ended last night in a tragedy. I can't forget that, if you hadn't bribed that unfortunate girl to come back——"
"If I hadn't!" Bel interrupted—"and God knows I regret what came of that as bitterly as anybody!—if I hadn't brought Nelly back here, you might still be playing fast and loose with Summerlad's ambition to make you his mistress. Got anything to say to that? You know now, at least, he never intended anything else. And yet, if looks could kill, you'd strike me dead where I stand for having presumed to be as wise in advance as you've been made by the event! And because I made the mistake of trying to stage-manage things so you would presently find out for yourself what a rotter you were throwing yourself away on, instead of chancing your deeper hatred by telling you outright what every other soul in Hollywood knew—running the risk of seeing you go straight to his arms to prove your indifference to me—because of that error of judgment you'll see me damned before you'll give up a mode of life for which you're about as well fitted as—as I am for that of the Kingdom of Heaven!"
"You forget, what I don't, Bel," Lucinda said slowly, "that it was you who made the mode of life with which I was content impossible for me. If this life I've taken up here is in some sense a makeshift, it's all I've got to take the place of all I had. And now you'd rob me even of it! And one thing more you forget: If I should give in to your wishes and leave Hollywood today, I would only be doing what you say you want to prevent, confessing by flight that my only real interest in my picture work was my greater interest in Lynn Summerlad. For that reason alone—and not, as you believe, to spite you—I've got to and I'm going to go on to the end of this present production at least. After that ... I don't know...."
Discountenanced, "I hadn't thought of that," Bel owned squarely. "You may be right...."
"I am; but even if I weren't, it wouldn't be any use your trying to force me to forego my chance at a career in pictures just to get rid of you. Believe me, Bel, it's no good. Give it up, give up this producing blind—I know it's only a blind—and go back where you belong. And leave me to do my best with what I have—with what you've left of my happiness. And remember you have my faithful promise to set you free as soon as the courts will grant me a divorce."
"That's your last word, Linda?"
"My last word to you, Bel—I hope."
He hesitated, the muscles of his face working beneath its day-old stubble; and for a moment, reading truly or mistakenly the look in his eyes, from which all anger had died out, Lucinda was in deadly fear lest he were on the verge of making one last appeal in another key, one which she was, in that time of emotions, ill-prepared to deal with.
Then flinging out his hand in the salute of the vanquished, Bel bowed and, whirling on a heel, left her—left Lucinda for once at a loss, intuition inextricably hobbled by a mat of doubts.