e of those moving
tragedies not unfamiliar to the screen enthusiast. The beautiful but
misguided wife had been saying good-by to her little one and was leaving
her beautiful home at the solicitation of the false friend in evening
dress--forgetting all in one mad moment. The watcher was a tried expert,
and like the trained faunal naturalist could determine a species from
the shrewd examination of one bone of a photoplay. He knew that the wife
had been ignored by a husband who permitted his vast business interests
to engross his whole attention, leaving the wife to seek solace in
questionable quarters. He knew that the shocked but faithful nurse
would presently discover the little one to be suffering from a dangerous
fever; that a hastily summoned physician would shake his head and
declare in legible words, "Naught but a mother's love can win that tiny
soul back from the brink of Eternity." The father would overhear this,
and would see it all then: how his selfish absorption in Wall Street had
driven his wife to another. He would pursue her, would find her ere yet
it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already
prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They
would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little
one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would
face an untroubled future.

This was all thrilling to Merton Gill; but Beulah Baxter was not here,
her plays being clean and wholesome things of the great outdoors. Far
down the great enclosure was another wall of canvas backing, a flood of
light above it and animated voices from within. He stood again to watch.
But this drama seemed to have been suspended. The room exposed was a
bedroom with an open window facing an open door; the actors and the
mechanical staff as well were busily hurling knives at various walls.
They were earnest and absorbed in this curious pursuit. Sometimes
they made the knife penetrate the wall, oftener it merely struck and
clattered to the floor. Five knives at once were being hurled by five
enthusiasts, while a harried-looking director watched and criticised.

"You're a clumsy bunch," he announced at last. "It's a simple thing to
do, isn't it?" The knife-throwers redoubled, their efforts, but they did
not find it a simple thing to do.

"Let me try it, Mr. Burke." It was the Montague girl still in her gipsy
costume. She had been standing quietly in the shadow obs