the red blotch on his temple
and the trickle that ran down his cheek. She laid his head down with a
gentleness wholly unconscious, and looked again at Burns. "I've killed
him," she said in a small, dry, flat voice. She put out her hands
gropingly and fell forward across Gil's inert body. It was the first
time in her life that Jean had ever fainted.

"Stop the camera!" Burns croaked tardily, and Pete stopped turning.
Pete had that little, twisted grin on his face, and he was perfectly
calm and self-possessed.

"You sure got the punch that time, Burns," he remarked unfeelingly,
while he held his palm over the lens and gave the crank another turn or
two to divide that scene from the next.

"She's fainted! She's hit him!" cried Burns, and waddled over to where
the two of them lay. The two women drew farther away, clinging to each
other with excited exclamations.

And then Gil Huntley lifted himself carefully so as not to push Jean
upon the ground, and when he was sitting up, he took her in his arms
with some remorse and a good deal of tenderness.

"How was that for a punch?" he inquired of his director. "I didn't
tell her I was going to furnish the blood-sponge; I thought it might
rattle her. I never thought she'd take it so hard--"

Robert Grant Burns stopped and looked at him in heavy silence. "Good
Lord!" he snapped out at last. "I dunno whether to fire you off the
job--or raise your salary! You got the punch, all right. And the
chances are you've ruined her nerve for shooting, into the bargain."
He stood looking down perturbedly at Gil, who was smoothing Jean's hair
back from her forehead after the manner of men who feel tenderly toward
the woman who cries or faints in their presence. "I'm after the punch
every time," Burns went on ruefully, "but there's no use being a hog
about it. Where's that water-bag, Lee? Go get it out of the machine.
Say! Can't you women do something besides stand there and howl?
Nobody's hurt, or going to be."

While Muriel and Gil Huntley did what they could to bring Jean back to
consciousness and composure, Robert Grant Burns paced up and down and
debated within himself a subject which might have been called "punch
versus prestige." Should he let that scene stand, or should he order a
"re-take" because Jean had, after all, done the dramatic part, the
"remorse stuff"? Of course, when Pete sent the film in, the trimmers
could cut the scene; they probably would cut the sc