ple for a
diplomatic reception in Washington. She must have a Bulgarian general,
a Serbian diplomat, two French colonels, and a Belgian captain, all in
uniform and all good types. She didn't want just anybody, but types that
would stand out. Holden studios on Stage Number Two. Before noon, if
possible. All right, then. Another bell rang, almost before she had hung
up. "Hello, Grace. Nothing to-day, dear. They're out on location, down
toward Venice, getting some desert stuff. Yes, I'll let you know."

Merton Gill had now to make way at the window for a youngish,
weary-looking woman who had once been prettier, who led an elaborately
dressed little girl of five. She lifted the child to the window. "Say
good-morning to the beautiful lady, Toots. Good-morning, Countess.
I'm sure you got something for Toots and me to-day because it's our
birthday--both born on the same day--what do you think of that? Any
little thing will help us out a lot--how about it?"

He went outside before the end of this colloquy, but presently saw the
woman and her child emerge and walk on disconsolately toward the next
studio. Thus began another period of waiting from which much of the
glamour had gone. It was not so easy now to be excited by those glimpses
of the street beyond the gate. A certain haze had vanished, leaving all
too apparent the circumstance that others were working beyond the gate
while Merton Gill loitered outside, his talent, his training, ignored.
His early air of careless confidence had changed to one not at all
careless or confident. He was looking rather desperate and rather
unbelieving. And it daily grew easier to count his savings. He made
no mistakes now. His hoard no longer enjoyed the addition of fifteen
dollars a week. Only subtractions were made.

There came a morning when but one bill remained. It was a ten-dollar
bill, bearing at its centre a steel-engraved portrait of Andrew Jackson.
He studied it in consternation, though still permitting himself to
notice that Jackson would have made a good motion-picture type--the
long, narrow, severe face, the stiff uncomprising mane of gray hair;
probably they would have cast him for a feuding mountaineer, deadly
with his rifle, or perhaps as an inventor whose device was stolen on his
death-bed by his wicked Wall Street partner, thus leaving his motherless
daughter at the mercy of Society's wolves.

But this was not the part that Jackson played in the gripping drama of
Merton