again to-day, right out before the white folks. Well,
so far so good. But say, I'm glad all that roulette and stuff was for
the up-and-down stage and not on the level. I'd certainly have lost
everything but my make-up. So long, Kid!" She danced off to join a group
of other women who were leaving. He felt a kindly pity for the child.
There could be little future in this difficult art for one who took it
so lightly; who talked so frankly to strangers without being introduced.

At luncheon in the cafeteria he waited a long time in the hope of
encountering Henshaw, who would perhaps command his further services
in the cause of creative screen art. He meant to be animated at this
meeting, to show the director that he could be something more than an
actor who had probed the shams of Broadway. But he lingered in vain. He
thought Henshaw would perhaps be doing without food in order to work on
the scenario for Robinson Crusoe, Junior.

He again stopped to thank his friend, the casting director, for securing
him his first chance. She accepted his thanks smilingly, and asked him
to drop around often. "Mind, you don't forget our number," she said.

He was on the point of making her understand once for all that he would
not forget the number, that he would never forget Gashwiler's address,
that he had been coming to this studio too often to forget its location.
But someone engaged her at the window, so he was obliged to go on
without enlightening the woman. She seemed to be curiously dense.

CHAPTER VII. "NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!"

The savings had been opportunely replenished. In two days he had
accumulated a sum for which, back in Simsbury, he would have had to toil
a week. Yet there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that
it steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, pittance
though it might be, while the art of the silver screen was capricious
in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for weeks at a stretch, had
Gashwiler said with a tired smile, "Nothing to-day--sorry!" He might
have been a grouch and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there
was always a very definite something to-day which he would specify,
in short words if the occasion seemed to demand. There was not only a
definite something every day but a definite if not considerable sum of
money to be paid over every Saturday night, and in the meantime three
very definite and quite satisfying meals to be freely partaken of at