pparently been killed by one devastating blast of high explosive, he
assumes command and leads dauntless charge of the heavy artillery
through the Hindenburg Line. Is made a colonel on the spot. Rides up
Fifth Avenue alongside of Pershing in grand triumphant parade of
home-coming First Division, carrying a large flag and occasionally
chatting pleasantly with Pershing. On eve of marriage to childhood's
sweetheart, who remains faithful, he goes to lonely spot where Lolita
lies buried and places upon the silent mound her favorite flower, a
single long-stemmed tiger lily. Fade out--finish!

Artistically, picturesquely, from the standpoint of timeliness, from the
standpoint of vampirishness, from any standpoint at all, it satisfied
fully every demand. It was one succession of thrilling, gripping,
heart-lifting scenes set amid vividly contrasting surroundings--the
lowest dive in all Paris; the citadel at Verdun; grand ballroom of the
Schuyler mansion at Newport; the Place Vendome on a day when it was
entirely unoccupied except by moving-picture actors; Fifth Avenue on its
most gala occasion--these were but a few samples. The subtitles fairly
hissed to the sibilant swishing of such words as traitress, temptress,
tigress and sorceress. And the name of it--you'd never guess--the name
of it was The She-Demon's Doom! When Mr. Lobel spoke those words
inspired he literally took them up in his arms and fondled them and
kissed them on the temples. And why not? They were his own brain
children.

He had kept his paralyzed word and he could prove it. For because this
Vida Monte was one of those mimetic pieces of flesh which, without any
special mental cooperation, may alter the body, the face, the muscles,
the expression, the very look out of the eyes, to suit the demands of
prompters and teachers; because of the plan of direction so powerfully
engineered by the master mind of Lobel and, under Lobel, the lesser mind
of Colfax, born Sims; because of the very nature of the role of Lolita
the abandoned, this picture was more daring, more sensual, more filled
up with voluptuous suggestion, with coiling, clinging, writhing
snakiness, with rampant, naked sexuality--in short and in fine was more
vampirishly vampiratious than this, the greatest of all modern mediums
for the education, the moral uplift and the entertainment of the masses,
had ever known.

And then one week to the day after Mr. Lobel shot the last scene she up
and died on him.