sed because a polished city villain had
forgotten his spats? Or that other long waits had been caused by other
forgotten trifles, while an expensive company of artists lounged about
in bored apathy, or smoked, gossiped, bantered?

Yet no one ever seemed to express concern about these waits. Rarely were
their causes known, except by some frenzied assistant director, and he,
after a little, would cease to be frenzied and fall to loafing
calmly with the others. Merton Gill's education in his chosen art was
progressing. He came to loaf with the unconcern, the vacuous boredom,
the practised nonchalance, of more seasoned artists.

Sometimes when exteriors were being taken the sky would overcloud and
the sun be denied them for a whole day. The Montague girl would then
ask Merton how he liked Sunny Cafeteria. He knew this was a jesting term
that would stand for sunny California, and never failed to laugh.

The girl kept rather closely by him during these periods of waiting. She
seemed to show little interest in other members of the company, and her
association with them, Merton noted, was marked by a certain restraint.
With them she seemed no longer to be the girl of free ways and speech.
She might occasionally join a group of the men who indulged in athletic
sports on the grass before the little farmhouse--for the actors of Mr.
Baird's company would all betray acrobatic tendencies in their idle
moments--and he watched one day while the simple little country sister
turned a series of hand-springs and cart-wheels that evoked sincere
applause from the four New York villains who had been thus solacing
their ennui.

But oftener she would sit with Merton on the back seat of one of the
waiting automobiles. She not only kept herself rather aloof from other
members of the company, but she curiously seemed to bring it about that
Merton himself would have little contact with them. Especially did she
seem to hover between him and the company's feminine members. Among
those impersonating guests at the hotel were several young women of rare
beauty with whom he would have been not unwilling to fraternize in that
easy comradeship which seemed to mark studio life. These were far
more alluring than the New York society girl who wooed him and who
had secured the part solely through Baird's sympathy for her family
misfortunes.

They were richly arrayed and charmingly mannered in the scenes he
watched; moreover, they not too subtly betrayed a