w that the motion-picture
business was on the rocks. Unaffected by the optimists who wrote in
the picture magazines, they saw no future for it. More than one of them
threatened to desert the industry and return to previous callings. As
they were likely to put it, they were going to leave the pictures flat
and go back to type-writing or selling standard art-works or waiting on
table or something where you could count on your little bit every week.

Under the eucalyptus tree one morning Merton Gill, making some
appetizing changes in the fifth reel of Eating at Gashwiler's, was
accosted by a youngish woman whom he could not at first recall. She had
come from the casting office and paused when she saw him.

"Hello, I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure in them clothes. How
they coming?"

He stared blankly, startled at the sudden transposition he had been
compelled to make, for the gleaming knife of Gashwiler, standing up to
carve, had just then hovered above the well-browned roast of beef. Then
he placed the speaker by reason of her eyes. It was the Spanish girl,
his companion of the gilded cabaret, later encountered in the palatial
gambling hell that ate like a cancer at the heart of New York--probably
at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

He arose and shook hands cordially. He had supposed, when he thought
of the girl at all, that she would always be rather Spanish, an exotic
creature rather garishly dressed, nervously eager, craving excitement
such as may be had in cabarets on Broadway, with a marked inclination
for the lighter life of pleasure. But she wore not so much as a rose in
her smoothly combed hair. She was not only not excited but she was
not exciting. She was plainly dressed in skirt and shirtwaist of no
distinction, her foot-gear was of the most ordinary, and well worn, and
her face under a hat of no allure was without make-up, a commonplace,
somewhat anxious face with lines about the eyes. But her voice as well
as her eyes helped him to recall her.

She spoke with an effort at jauntiness after Merton had greeted her.
"That's one great slogan, 'Business as Usual!' ain't it? Well, it's
business as usual here, so I just found out from the Countess--as usual,
rotten. I ain't had but three days since I seen you last."

"I haven't had even one," he told her.

"No? Say, that's tough. You're registered with the Service Bureau, ain't
you?"

"Well, I didn't do that, because they might send me any pla