That,he said,had already been arranged,though he did not feel at liberty to name his client.But he wanted to assure her that everything was being done that could be done.
She herself had seen her father.She shrank within herself and tried not to think of that horrible meeting.
Her soul writhed under the tormenting memory of how she had seen him.She had not been able to talk to him at all,scarcely.The words would not come.She had said that she and Lite were on their way to Los Angeles,and would be there all winter.He had patted her shoulder with a tragic apathy in his manner,and had said that the change would do her good.And that was all she could remember that they had talked about.
And then the guard came,and--
That is what she was thinking about while the big,purple machine slid smoothly through the tunnel,negotiated a rough stretch where the street-pavers were at work,and sped purring out upon the boulevard that stretched away to Hollywood and the hills.That was what she kept hidden behind the "eternal calm"that so irritated Robert Grant Burns and so delighted Dewitt and so interested Jim Gates,who studied her for what "copy"there was in her personality.
It was the same when,the next day,Dewitt himself took her over to the big plant which he spoke of as the studio.It was immense,and yet Jean seemed unimpressed.She was gladder to see Pard and Lite again than she was to meet the six-hundred-a-week star whose popularity she seemed in a fair way to outrival.Men and women who were "in stock,"and therefore within the social pale,were introduced to her and said nice,hackneyed things about how they admired her work and were glad to welcome her.She felt the warm air of good-fellowship that followed her everywhere.All of these people seemed to accept her at once as one of themselves.When she noticed it,she was amused at the way the "extras"stood back and looked at her and whispered together.More than once she overheard what seemed almost to have become a catch-phrase out here;"Jean of the lazy A"was the phrase.
Jean was not made of wood,understand.In a manner she recognized all these little tributes,and to a certain degree she appreciated them.She was glad that she had made such a success of it,but she was glad because it would help her to take her dad away from that horrible,ghastly place and that horrible,ghastly death-in-life under which he lived.In three years he had grown old and stooped--her dad!
And Burns twitted her ironically because she could not simper and lose her head over the attentions these people were loading upon her!Save for the fact that in this way she could earn a good deal of money,and could pay that lawyer Rossman,and trace Art Osgood,she would not have stayed;she could not have endured the staying.For the easier they made life for her,the greater contrast did they make between her and her dad.
Gil brought her a great bunch of roses,unbelievably beautiful and fragrant,and laughed and told her they didn't look much like those snowdrifts she waded through the last day they worked on the Lazy A serial.