Her lip curled: "Explain!"

"I've been doing my best," Summerlad argued resentfully. "When I saw how it was going to be with you and me, and found out Nelly'd come back to Hollywood, I went to her and had things out--gave her some money and promised her more, on the strength of her promise to go back home and get a divorce on the dead quiet."

"And did you hope to keep that a secret from me?"

"My name isn't Summerlad, anymore than hers is Marquis--or yours Lee. I thought I'd.... I thought everything was going to be all right till she turned up again with your officious husband."

"You think Bel had something to do----"

"I think he hunted Nelly up, if you want to know, and induced her to come back here, in violation of her agreement."

"But Bel.... I don't quite see...."

"He wanted Nelly on the spot as a sort of club over my head. He hasn't given you up yet"--Summerlad laughed shortly--"not by a long sight."

"A club over your head? I don't understand."

"Not meaning to use it as long as we behaved ourselves."

"Behaved ourselves! Lynn!"

"Oh, forgive me! I didn't mean to say that."

Summerlad's look mirrored a real and poignant contrition as he saw her colouring with affronted sensibility, drawing back from him, momentarily slipping farther beyond his reach. "Linda!" he implored--"don't look at me that way. I can't help what your husband thinks, can I? I didn't ask him to come out here and be the pest he is, did I? After all, what have I done? I lied about Nelly--yes--but only to spare your feelings. I didn't want you to think people might be talking about you, stepping out with a married man. If you'd thought that, you'd have given me my walking papers and ... and I couldn't do without you, dear--I can't! The others never mattered much, they sort of came and went, mostly I didn't care which they did. But you're so different, you're so wonderful, everything a fellow dreams about. I've never known anybody like you, never will again. If I lost you I'd--I'd--I think I'd go out of my mind!"

And suddenly, before she could stir to escape, he caught her to him and held her fast.

"Linda, sweetheart; don't be angry with me. I've tried so hard to be good enough for you. And you--you've loved me, too! Don't let this rotten accident spoil everything for us. If you love me--and you know I love you--what does anything matter? What if we are both married? What difference need that make? Love can still be sweet...."

She made no show of opposition, only drew back her head to cheat his lips; but when she tried to brave his eyes, thinking to read therein his heart and mind, she winced from recognition of the hunger that informed them, hunger that she wittingly had whetted, hunger such as she herself had too often known of late, like warm wine running in one's veins....

But always ere now she had fortified and shriven her conscience with the belief that they were of one mind, it must and would be Reno first....

Now Reno no longer held forth any promise of salvation, of the law's sanction, the church's countenance. Even though she were to find there her own freedom, Lynn would still be bound. It wasn't in reason to hope that the woman who had rejected his money would listen to other arguments. Today and henceforward it must be all for love or ...

nothing ... a break final and irreparable....

And for all the shock she had suffered, for all the wrong Lynn had done and the pain of which his ill-faith had been the cause, the love she had given the man still was dear, dangerously sweet and disarming. Already she was aware of anxiety to grasp at excuses for him, to comfort the ache in her heart with the thought that she was according charity to a dear transgressor, already she felt her strength to resist being sapped, flesh and spirit succ.u.mbing anew to the spell he knew too well how to weave.

She wrestled with a weakness stronger than all her strength. They couldn't go on like this.... Lynn hadn't said it, but they both knew it ... without going farther.... Even Reno couldn't save her now, only the instinct of self-preservation latent in her, not even that if she failed to find in herself the will to hear and be guided by its admonishments. It was make or break....

The scales hung long in trembling. They turned only when Summerlad unwisely, losing patience, sought to take by storm the lips she had not yet made up her mind to surrender, and thus aroused resistance till then dormant.

With an ease that in a queer, detached way she found surprising, she managed to break his embrace. Nevertheless the effort left her faint.

She faltered to the fireplace and rested a hand on the mantel, her forehead upon the hand. Lynn followed, stood by her side, not touching her but keeping her enveloped in the lethargizing knowledge of his nearness, his strength, his pa.s.sion. Over and over he murmured gently: "Linda, Linda, Linda...." Shaking from head to feet, she made a feeble sign of appeal. He disregarded this entirely, his arms again stole round her and would have drawn her to him but that, of a sudden, her mind caught at a straw of memory, she drew away, with a hand upon his bosom put him firmly from her, eyes that were melting none the less denying him, lips that were a-quiver with "Yes" resolutely p.r.o.nouncing "No!"

"You are cruel...."

"No, Lynn. Wait. Tell me something.... You say she--your wife agreed to divorce you?"

"I made her promise," Summerlad a.s.serted grimly.

"When was that? The day she disappeared? The day I found her lying senseless in her room?"

"I suppose so. Does it matter? Well, then--yes."

"You'd just left her when I found her?"

"I daresay--approximately."

"Tell me what you said to persuade her."

"See here: what is all this? What are you driving at?"

"I want to know.... Did you have much of a scene?"

"I'll say it was some stormy young session."

"Is that why you found it necessary to strike her?"

Summerlad started. "What! Strike her! What do you mean?"

But his eyes winced from hers.

"She--Nelly had a bruise on her cheek, that afternoon; and it wasn't an old bruise. Lynn: you struck her!"

"Perhaps. Maybe I did forget myself, I don't remember. What if I did?

She asked for it, didn't she? Do you think I've got the patience of Job, to let her get away with insisting on standing between you and me? I'd have half-killed her if she'd stuck to her refusal to go back East!"

Realizing that his tongue was again running away with his discretion, he curbed it sharply, on the verge, perhaps, of admissions yet more damaging, and in panic essayed to win back lost ground.

"But what of that? It's ancient history, Linda."

She started back in repulsion, but he overtook her in the middle of the room and again crushed her to him.

"Linda, Linda! what do these things matter? I love you, dearest, you love me, nothing else matters, nothing can possibly matter but our need for each other. For G.o.d's sake be kind to me! forget----"

The fury of her antagonism found him unprepared. Once more his arms were empty. And this time when he started in pursuit, something he couldn't see struck him brutally in the chest and bodily threw him back. In the same instant he heard a heavy, crashing noise he couldn't account for.

An inhuman sound. It shook the room, beat deafeningly upon one's ears.

As if someone had overturned a heavy piece of furniture. Only, no one had. Certainly he hadn't, certainly Lucinda hadn't. She was flattened against the farther wall, watching him with a face of horror, blanched and gaping.

Enraged, he put forth all his strength to recover from that inexplicable blow. And instantly it was repeated. And again. Each time accompanied by that savage, crashing noise. Like thunder cut off short. And each time he reeled under the impact, and sickening pains shot through him, like knives white-hot. He felt himself sinking....

In expiring flashes of consciousness he saw Lucinda, still flat against the wall, staring not at him but at a French window nearby. Between its curtains a woman's arm was thrust, the hand grasping an automatic pistol with muzzle faintly fuming. There was a face of shadowed pallor dimly visible beyond the curtains, a face with wild, exultant eyes ...

Nelly's....

x.x.xIX