s!

Mrs. Gill watched this scene with tense absorption. When the mother's
iron heart had relented she turned to her husband. "You dear thing, that
was a beautiful piece of work. You're set now. That cinches your future.
Only, dearest, never, never, never let it show on your face that you
think it's funny. That's all you'll ever have to be afraid of in your
work."

"I won't," he said stoutly.

He shivered--or did he shudder?--and quickly reached to take her hand.
It was a simple, direct gesture, yet somehow it richly had the quality
of pleading.

"Mother understands," she whispered. "Only remember, you mustn't seem to
think it's funny."

"I won't," he said again. But in his torn heart he stubbornly cried, "I
don't, I don't!"

* * * * * * *

Some six months later that representative magazine, Silver Screenings,
emblazoned upon its front cover a promise that in the succeeding number
would appear a profusely illustrated interview by Augusta Blivens with
that rising young screen actor, Merton Gill.

The promise was kept. The interview wandered amid photographic
reproductions of the luxurious Hollywood bungalow, set among palms and
climbing roses, the actor and his wife in their high-powered roadster
(Mrs. Gill at the wheel); the actor in his costume of chaps and
sombrero, rolling a cigarette; the actor in evening dress, the actor
in his famous scene of the Christmas eve return in Brewing Trouble; the
actor regaining his feet in his equally famous scene of the malignant
spurs; the actor and his young wife, on the lawn before the bungalow,
and the young wife aproned, in her kitchen, earnestly busy with spoon
and mixing bowl.

"It is perhaps not generally known," wrote Miss Blivens, "that the
honour of having discovered this latest luminary in the stellar
firmament should be credited to Director Howard Henshaw of the Victor
forces. Indeed, I had not known this myself until the day I casually
mentioned the Gills in his presence. I lingered on a set of Island Love,
at present being filmed by this master of the unspoken drama, having but
a moment since left that dainty little reigning queen of the celluloid
dynasty, Muriel Mercer. Seated with her in the tiny bijou boudoir of her
bungalow dressing room on the great Holden lot, its walls lined with the
works of her favourite authors--for one never finds this soulful little
girl far from the books that have developed her mentally as the art of
the screen has developed he