urn them over, heft them;
actually hold within his grasp the film wraith of Beulah Baxter in a
terrific installment of The Hazards of Hortense. Those metal containers
imprisoned so much of beauty, of daring, of young love striving against
adverse currents--held the triumphant fruiting of Miss Baxter's toil and
struggle and sacrifice to give the public something better and finer.
Often he had caressed the crude metal with a reverent hand, as if his
wonder woman herself stood there to receive his homage.

That was actuality, in a way. But here it was in full measure, without
mental subterfuge or vain imaginings. Had he not beheld from this
post--he was pretty sure he had--Miss Baxter herself, swathed in costly
furs, drive a robin's-egg-blue roadster through the gate without even
a nod to the warder? Indeed, that one glimpse of reality had been worth
his ten days of waiting--worth all his watching of the gate and its
keeper until he knew every dent in the keeper's derby hat, every bristle
in his unkempt mustache, every wrinkle of his inferior raiment, and
every pocket from which throughout the day he would vainly draw matches
to relight an apparently fireproof cigar. Surely waiting thus rewarded
could not be called barren. When he grew tired of standing he could
cross the street and rest on a low bench that encircled one of the
eucalyptus trees. Here were other waiters without the pale, usually men
of strongly marked features, with a tendency to extremes in stature or
hair or beards or noses, and not conspicuously neat in attire. These,
he discovered, were extras awaiting employment, many of them Mexicans or
strange-appearing mongrels, with a sprinkling of Negroes. Often he could
have recruited there a band of outlaws for desperate deeds over the
border. He did not fraternize with these waifs, feeling that his was
another plane.

He had spent three days thus about the studio gate when he learned of
the existence of another entrance. This was a door almost opposite the
bench. He ventured through it and discovered a bare room with a wooden
seat running about its sides. In a partition opposite the entrance was
a small window and over it the words "Casting Director." One of the two
other doors led to the interior, and through this he observed pass many
of the chosen. Another door led to the office of the casting director,
glimpses of which could be obtained through the little window.

The waiting room itself was not only bar