Compound predicates can sometimes take, and indeed really must have for correct understanding, a comma separating them even though no new clause is begun.
Examples from Tolkien:
- Its explanation lies in the history of the Ring, as it was set out in the chronicles of the Red Book of Westmarch, and is now told in The Lord of the Rings. * He had decided that he was not quite his sort, and wanted him to go away.
- ‘Come along in, and have some tea!’ he managed to say after taking a deep breath.
- Then they went back, and found Thorin with his feet on the fender smoking a pipe.
- The few of us that were well outside sat and wept in hiding, and cursed Smaug; and there we were unexpectedly joined by my father and my grandfather with singed beards.
- People would see if he would stand being kicked, and driven into a hole and then robbed.
- When he was found he had already been there long, and was on his way back.
- Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so.
- At first Frodo was a good deal disturbed, and wondered often what Gandalf could have heard; but his uneasiness wore off, and in the fine weather he forgot his troubles for a while.
- Merry took charge of this, and drove off with Fatty (that is Fredegar Bolger).
- After a rest they had a good lunch, and then more rest.
- ‘Yes, it is all very dim, and stuffy, in here,’ said Pippin.
- Holding the hobbits gently but firmly, one in the crook of each arm, Treebeard lifted up first one large foot and then the other, and moved them to the edge of the shelf.
- Merry and Pippin climbed up the path that came in from the west, and looked through the opening in the great h edge.