g frock, though of course the blonde
curls had not been true.

Then the days passed until eating merely at a drug-store lunch counter
became not the only matter of concern. There was the item of room rent.
Mrs. Patterson, the Los Angeles society woman, had, upon the occasion
of their first interview, made it all too clear that the money, trifling
though it must seem for a well-furnished room with the privilege
of electric iron in the kitchen, must be paid each week in advance.
Strictly in advance. Her eye had held a cold light as she dwelt upon
this.

There had been times lately when, upon his tree bench, he would try
to dramatize Mrs. Patterson as a woman with a soft heart under that
polished society exterior, chilled by daily contact with other society
people at the Iowa or Kansas or other society picnics, yet ready to melt
at the true human touch. But he had never quite succeeded in this bit
of character work. Something told him that she was cold all through, a
society woman without a flaw in her armour. He could not make her seem
to listen patiently while he explained that only one company was now
shooting on the lot, but that big things were expected to be on in
another week or so. A certain skeptic hardness was in her gaze as he
visioned it.

He decided, indeed, that he could never bring himself even to attempt
this scene with the woman, so remote was he from seeing her eye soften
and her voice warm with the assurance that a few weeks more or less
need not matter. The room rent, he was confident, would have to be paid
strictly in advance so long as their relations continued. She was the
kind who would insist upon this formality even after he began to play,
at an enormous salary, a certain outstanding part in the Hazards of
Hortense. The exigencies, even the adversities, of art would never make
the slightest appeal to this hardened soul. So much for that. And daily
the hoard waned.

Yet his was not the only tragedy. In the waiting room, where he now
spent more of his time, he listened one day to the Montague girl chat
through the window with the woman she called Countess.

"Yeah, Pa was double-crossed over at the Bigart. He raised that lovely
set of whiskers for Camillia of the Cumberlands and what did he get for
it?--just two weeks. Fact! What do you know about that? Hugo has him
killed off in the second spool with a squirrel rifle from ambush, and Pa
thinking he would draw pay for at least another three wee