rs.
"That's it--shoot it, Paul, just a flash."

The camera was being wheeled toward them. The Montague girl, with her
hand still on his arm, continued her wheedling, though now she spoke.

"Why, look who's here. Kid, I didn't know you in your stepping-out
clothes. Say, listen, why do you always upstage me? I never done a thing
to you, did I? Go on, now, give me the fishy eye again. How'd you ace
yourself into this first row, anyway? Did you have to fight for it? Say,
your friend'll be mad at me putting her out of here, won't she? Well,
blame it on the gelatin master. I never suggested it. Say, you got
Henshaw going. He likes that blighted look of yours."

He made no reply to this chatter. He must keep in the picture. He merely
favoured her with a glance of fatigued indifference. The camera was
focused.

"All ready, you people. Do like I said, now. Lights, camera!"

Merton Gill drew upon his cigarette with the utmost disrelish, raised
the cold eyes of a disillusioned man to the face of the leering Montague
girl, turned aside from her with every sign of apathy, and wearily
exhaled the smoke. There seemed to be but this one pleasure left to him.

"Cut!" said Henshaw, and somewhere lights jarred off. "Just stick there
a bit, Miss Montague. We'll have a couple more shots when the dancing
begins."

Merton resented this change. He preferred the other girl. She lured him
but not in so pronounced, so flagrant a manner. The blight of Broadway
became more apparent than ever upon his face. The girl's hand still
fluttered upon his sleeve as the music came and dancers shuffled by
them.

"Say, you're the actin' kid, all right." She was tapping the floor
with the heel of a satin slipper. He wished above all things that she
wouldn't call him "Kid." He meditated putting a little of Broadway's
blight upon her by saying in a dignified way that his real name was
Clifford Armytage. Still, this might not blight her--you couldn't tell
about the girl.

"You certainly are the actin'est kid on this set, I'll tell the lot
that. Of course these close-ups won't mean much, just about one second,
or half that maybe. Or some hick in the cuttin' room may kill 'em dead.
Come on, give me the fish-eye again. That's it. Say, I'm glad I didn't
have to smoke cigarettes in this scene. They wouldn't do for my type,
standin' where the brook and river meet up. I hate a cigarette worse'n
anything. You--I bet you'd give up food first."

"I hate 'em, to