cattered here and there along the walls of the
long, cool-looking lobby. Every single one of them was marked: "Jean,
of the Lazy A." Just that.

On a bulletin board in the middle of the entrance, just before the
marble box-office, it was lettered again in dignified black type:
"JEAN OF THE LAZY A." Below was one word: "To-day."

"It looks awfully queer," said Jean to Mr. Dewitt, who wanted to know
what she thought of it all; "they don't explain what it's all about, or
anything."

"No, they don't." Dewitt pulled his mustache and piloted her back to
the machine. "They don't have to."

"No," echoed Robert Grant Burns, with the fat chuckle of utter content
in the knowledge of having achieved something. "From the looks of
things, they don't have to." He looked at Jean so intently that she
stared back at him, wondering what was the matter; and when he saw that
she was wondering, he gave a snort.

"Good Lord!" he said to himself, just above a whisper, and looked away,
despairing of ever reading the riddle of Jean's unshakable composure.
Was it pose Was the girl phlegmatic,--with that face which was so alive
with the thoughts that shuttled back and forth behind those steady,
talking eyes of hers? She was not stupid; Robert Grant Burns knew to
his own discomfiture that she was not stupid. Nor was she one to pose;
the absolute sincerity of her terrific frankness was what had worried
Robert Grant Burns most. She must know that she had jumped into the
front rank of popular actresses, and stood out before them all,--for
the time being, at least. And,--he stole a measuring sidelong glance
at her, just as he had done thousands of times in the past four
months,--here she was in the private machine of the President of the
Great Western Film Company, with that great man himself talking to her
as to his honored guest. She had seen herself featured alone at one of
the biggest motion-picture theaters in Los Angeles; so well known that
"Jean, of the Lazy A" was deemed all-sufficient as information and
advertisement. She had reached what seemed to Robert Grant Burns the
final heights. And the girl sat there, calm, abstracted, actually not
listening to Dewitt when he talked! She was not even thinking about
him! Robert Grant Burns gave her another quick, resentful glance, and
wondered what under heaven the girl WAS thinking about.

As a matter of fact, having accepted the fact that she seemed to have
made a success of he