d
blinking at her from between her cupped palms. But she looked at him
curiously, with an impulse to ask questions about what he was doing
with that queer-looking camera, and how he could inject motion into
photography. While she watched, he drew out a narrow, gray strip of
film and made mysterious markings upon it with the pencil, which he
afterwards thrust absent-mindedly behind his ear. He closed a small
door in the side of the camera, placed his palm over the lens and
turned the little crank several times around. Then he looked at Jean,
and from her to the director.

Robert Grant Burns gave a sweeping, downward gesture with both
hands,--a gesture which his company knew well,--and came toward Jean.

"You may not know it," he began in a repressed tone, "but we're in a
hurry. We've got work to do. We ain't here on any pleasure excursion,
and you'll be doing me a favor by getting out of the scene so we can go
on with our work."

Jean sat still upon the bench and looked at him. "I suppose so; but why
should I be doing you favors? You haven't seemed to appreciate them, so
far. Of course, I dislike to seem disobliging, or anything like that,
but your tone and manner would not make any one very enthusiastic about
pleasing you, Mr. Burns. In fact, I don't see why you aren't
apologizing for being here, instead of ordering me about as if I worked
for you. This bench--is my bench. This ranch--is where I have lived
nearly all my life. I hate to seem vain, Mr. Burns, but at the same
time I think it is perfectly lovely of me to explain that I have a
right here; and I consider myself an angel of patience and graciousness
and many other rare virtues, because I have not even hinted that you
are once more taking liberties with other people's property." She
looked at him with a smile at the corners of her eyes and just easing
the firmness of her lips, as if the humor of the situation was
beginning to appeal to her.

"If you would stop dancing about, and let your naturally sweet
disposition have a chance, and would explain just why you are here and
what you want to do, and would ask me nicely,--it might help you more
than to get apoplexy over it."

The two women exclaimed under their breaths to each other and moved
farther away, as if from an impending explosion. The assistant camera
man gurgled and turned his back abruptly. Lee Milligan, wandering up
from the stables, stopped and stared. No one, within the knowledge