verthrow. Another paroxysm of shivering perhaps averted
this humiliation. The girl dropped his wrist, turned, stooped, and did
something. He recalled the scene in the gambling hell, only this time
she fronted away from the camera. When she faced him again he was not
surprised to see bills in her hand. It could only have been the chill he
suffered that kept him from blushing. She forced the bills into his
numb fingers and he stared at them blankly. "I can't take these," he
muttered.

"There, now, there, now! Be easy. Naturally I know you're all right or
I wouldn't give up this way. You're just having a run of hard luck. The
Lord knows, I've been helped out often enough in my time. Say, listen,
I'll never forget when I went out as a kid with Her First False
Step-they had lions in that show. It was a frost from the start. No
salaries, no nothing. I got a big laugh one day when I was late at
rehearsal. The manager says: 'You're fined two dollars, Miss Montague.'
I says, 'All right, Mr. Gratz, but you'll have to wait till I can write
home for the money.' Even Gratz had to laugh. Anyway, the show went bust
and I never would 'a' got any place if two or three parties hadn't of
helped me out here and there, just the same as I'm doing with you this
minute. So don't be foolish."

"Well-you see-I don't--" He broke off from nervous weakness. In his mind
was a jumble of incongruous sentences and he seemed unable to manage any
of them.

The girl now sent a clean shot through his armour. "When'd you eat
last?"

He looked at the ground again in painful embarrassment. Even in the
chill air he was beginning to feel hot. "I don't remember," he said at
last quite honestly.

"That's what I thought. You go eat. Go to Mother Haggin's, that
cafeteria just outside the gate. She has better breakfast things than
the place on the lot." Against his will the vision of a breakfast
enthralled him, yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the
wariest caution survived.

"I'll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to the other one
I couldn't get in again."

She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. "Well, of all
things! You want to get in again, do you? Say, wouldn't that beat the
hot place a mile? You want to get in again? All right, Old-timer, I'll
go out with you and after you've fed I'll cue you on to the lot again."

"Well-if it ain't taking you out of your way." He knew that the girl
was somehow humouring him,