t to say anything the other day, with you pretending to know so much
about contracts and all that--I just thought I'd let you go on, seeing
you were so smart--and I signed what you told me to. But I know I should
have held off--with this Bamberger coming over from the Bigart when
I was hardly out of bed, and says will three hundred and fifty a week
interest me and promising he'll give me a chance to do that spur act
again that was the hit of the piece--"

He broke off, conscious suddenly that the girl had for some time
been holding a most peculiar stare rigidly upon him. She had at first
narrowed her right eye at a calculating angle as she listened; but for
a long time now the eyes had been widened to this inexplicable stare
eloquent of many hidden things.

As he stopped his speech, made ill at ease by the incessant pressing of
the look, he was caught and held by it to a longer silence than he
had meant to permit. He could now read meanings. That unflinching
look incurred by his smooth bluster was a telling blend of pity and of
wonder.

"So you know, do you," she demanded, "that you look just enough too much
like Harold Parmalee so that you're funny? I mean." she amended, seeing
him wince, "that you look the way Parmalee would look if he had brains?"

He faltered but made a desperate effort to recover his balance.

"And besides, what difference does it make? If we did good pictures we'd
have to sell 'em to a mob. And what's a mob? It's fifteen years old and
nothing but admirers, or something like that, like Muriel Mercer that
wouldn't know how much are two times two if the neighbours didn't get it
to her--"

Again he had run down under her level look. As he stopped, the girl on
the couch who had lain with the blankets to her neck suddenly threw them
aside and sat up. Surprisingly she was not garbed in sick-bed apparel.
She seemed to be fully dressed.

A long moment she sat thus, regarding him still with that slow look,
unbelieving yet cherishing. His eyes fell at last.

"Merton!" he heard her say. He looked up but she did not speak. She
merely gave a little knowing nod of the head and opened her arms to him.
Quickly he knelt beside her while the mothering arms enfolded him. A
hand pulled his head to her breast and held it there. Thus she rocked
gently, the hand gliding up to smooth his hair. Without words she
cherished him thus a long time. The gentle rocking back and forth
continued.

"It's--it's like that o