d.

There were women there, too, looking a little more human in their
makeups under the horrible bluish glare. Camera men were busy; a
cadaverous and profane director, with his shabby coat-collar turned
up, was talking loudly in a Broadway voice and jargon to a bewildered
girl wearing a ball gown.

As Puma led Palla through the corridor from partition to partition,
disclosing each set with its own scene and people--the whole studio
full of blatant noise and ghastly faces or painted ones, Palla thought
she had never before beheld such a concentration of every type of
commonness in her entire existence. Faces, shapes, voices, language,
all were essentially the properties of congenital vulgarity. The
language, too, had to be sharply rebuked by Puma once or twice amid
the wrangling of director, camera man and petty subordinates.

"So intense are the emotions evoked by a fanatic devotion to art," he
explained to Palla, "that, at moments, the old, direct and vigorous
Anglo-Saxon tongue is heard here, unashamed. What will you? It is art!
It is the fervour that forgets itself in blind devotion--in rapturous
self-dedication to the god of Truth and Beauty!"

As she turned away, she heard from a neighbouring partition the hoarse
expostulations of one of Art's blind acolytes: "Say, f'r Christ's
sake, Delmour, what the hell's loose in your bean! Yeh done it wrong
an' yeh know damn well yeh done it wrong----"

Puma opened another door: "One of our projection rooms, Miss Dumont.
If it is your pleasure to see a few reels run off----"

"Thank you, but I really must go----"

The office door stood open and she went out that way. Mr. Puma
confronted her, moistly brilliant of eye:

"For me, Miss Dumont, I am frank like there never was a child in arms!
Yes. I am all art; all heart. For me, beauty is God!--" he kissed his
fat fingers and wafted the caress toward the dirty ceiling.

"Please excuse," he said with his powerful smile, "but have you ever,
perhaps, thought, Miss Dumont, of the screen as a career?"

"I?" asked Palla, surprised and amused. "No, Mr. Puma, I haven't."

"A test! Possibly, in you, latent, sleeps the exquisite apotheosis of
Art incarnate! Who can tell? You have youth, beauty, a mind! Yes. Who
knows if, also, happily, genius slumbers within? Yes?"

"I'm very sure it doesn't," replied Palla, laughing.

"Ah! Who can be sure of anything--even of heaven!" cried Puma.

"Very true," said Palla, trying to speak se