this finale. He had known
that the cross-eyed man was playing the part of hotel clerk at the
neighbouring resort, but he had watched few scenes in which the poor
fellow acted; and he surely had not known that this man was the little
sister's future husband. It was with real dismay that he averted his
gaze from the embrace that occurred between these two, as the clerk
entered the now happy home.

One other detail had puzzled him. This was the bundle to which he had
clung as he blindly plunged through the storm. He had still fiercely
clutched it after entering the little room, clasping it to his breast
even as he sank at his mother's feet in physical exhaustion and mental
anguish, to implore her forgiveness. Later the bundle was placed beside
him as he lay, pale and wan, on the couch.

He supposed this bundle to contain one of his patents; a question to
Baird when the scene was over proved him to be correct. "Sure," said
Baird, "that's one of your patents." Yet he still wished the little
sister had not been made to marry the cross-eyed hotel clerk.

And another detail lingered in his memory to bother him. The actress
playing his mother was wont to smoke cigarettes when not engaged in
acting. He had long known it. But he now seemed to recall, in that
touching last scene of reconciliation, that she had smoked one while
the camera actually turned. He hoped this was not so. It would mean
a mistake. And Baird would be justly annoyed by the old mother's
carelessness.

CHAPTER XVI. OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE

They were six long weeks doing the new piece. The weeks seemed long to
Merton Gill because there were so many hours, even days, of enforced
idleness. To pass an entire day, his face stiff with the make-up,
without once confronting a camera in action, seemed to him a waste of
his own time and a waste of Baird's money. Yet this appeared to be one
of the unavoidable penalties incurred by those who engaged in the art of
photodrama. Time was needed to create that world of painted shadows,
so swift, so nicely consecutive when revealed, but so incoherent, so
brokenly inconsequent, so meaningless in the recording.

How little an audience could suspect the vexatious delays ensuing
between, say, a knock at a door and the admission of a visitor to a neat
little home where a fond old mother was trying to pay off a mortgage
with the help of her little ones. How could an audience divine that a
wait of two hours had been cau