Today she called it strange....
Twice she heard from Summerlad: on the day following Bellamy's departure, a pencilled scrawl, informing her that he was now permitted to receive callers and protesting his impatience for the visit which he knew her charity would not permit her to deny him; and four days later another letter and a longer, bringing proof of steady improvement in less infirm penmanship and phrases turned more carefully, repeating all the first had said and calling attention to the venerable saw about the ill wind; on the writer's side at least every impediment to their marriage had been abolished....
In the upshot Lucinda acknowledged receipt of neither, but for two mornings her waste-basket, with its deep drifts of note-paper minutely scrapped, bore witness to her endeavors to frame a reply at once final and not too cruel.
Better (she decided) send no word at all than a letter which could only hurt his pride ... if Lynn still believed he loved her ... if he had ever!...
The talk of the studio kept her advised concerning the good progress of his convalescence. She knew no doubt at all but that he would as speedily get well of his disappointment in her.
For her part, the thing was dead and done and finished and as something that had never been; the only wonder was, it ever had....
One evening, as she was leaving the studio, she met Wallace Day on the steps of the administration building, and learned from him that, making fair allowance for every imaginable delay, he counted on making an end to camera-work in two days more.
Accordingly, instead of going directly home to the Hollywood, Lucinda motored to Los Angeles and booked reservations for Reno by the night train of the second day following, a slow train but the first that she could feel sure of catching.
She had meant to keep her purpose secret, holding it of no consequence to anybody but herself what she might elect to do, once her work was finished, and bearing in mind the possibility that, if news of her intention should by any chance leak out at the studio, it would find its way to the ears of Summerlad. She understood that he was now far enough forward on the road to recovery to spend part of each day in an invalid chair, and thought it wise to run no risk of finding out that his improvement had been understated.
Conscience nevertheless reproached her when she thought of Fanny, and on the way back to the Hollywood she instructed her chauffeur to make a détour and stop at Fanny's hotel.