Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, April 1, 1923, Page 19

SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 1923 Tais child had been constrained to the hallway from the drawingroom weup in a game of pretense and per-| haps a m'lilon people would weep be- | cause he went, a million pepple would of childhood and tho! ‘dren wou'd be better c Terry Dack. “He who would make others weep | raust first have wept himself.” And) Terry had learned gentle art of altruistic tears. His hear had en- jarged its education, To his techni- cal equipment a great weapon had been added. In a later scene he had to cry again and now !t was he that pleaded with ‘more in his anxiety for perfec- “I'll ery atl you want if you'll on'y Obedient!y Claymore called him an alley cat and even a gutter snipe; and he caterwauled magnificently with neatness and d'spatch. And so many layers his Iitt!e soul worked, striving to present a faithful transeript of child life, child com- edy, child tragedy, in order to buy his mother pretty things and to save her back from the torture of the tub, nd to buy himself learning, power, th, famo, and a future of bound- less feope. ‘There was a divinity about it. Terry was a veteran indeed now. He had been under fire. He had played a big scene, had shed and inspired salt water, or as the technical term was, he had “got the tear. Yet, superior as he felt to his junior /’—the infant that had played with the pistol—he was himself a novice to a veteran who gave him much useftfl advice and comfort—a girl of 12, an old actress in a young art. Poliy Thorne had been a moving-ple- turo-actress since she was 5, She belonged to a stepladder family of children, all of them on the screen, all of them wholesome, handsome, happy people, like the'r parents, also filmers, Polly was a figure of national {m- portance. She had created a role in a long series of pictures of childhood. But Polly, a’as! had been doomed +o play the little minx and tattletalo who always told on her brother. Fa- mous little Polly and her mother had been sent on a long cross - continental tour of personal appearan: at mov- ing-picture theaters. She hal returned in tlme to work in Claymore's cast. But there was sorrow in her heart. She had found that because of her brilfant tmpersonation of the spite- ful little wretch, the stup!d public confused her character with her char- acterization, In Minneapolis she had overheard @ press agent say that he would not even escort her to the theater because she was such a vixen. She loved her public, and it was a bitterness to have it persauded that she was unlovable. Her eternal plea was now for some scene that would redeem her reputa- tion. She longed to show before the camera the kindly spirit she revealed it, away from But most of all she Jonged for what all actresses long for—a crying scene. Two things the normal desires above all things: to weep and to be mur- dered coram populo—as every actor wants most of all to play Hamlet, debate suicide, and be slain with a poisoned rapier. Polly entreated Claymore incess- antly: “Oh, please, dear good Mr. Clay- more, won't you — wouldn't you— couldn't you kindly please put in a little scene where I can cry" “I don't see how I can in this pic- ture, Pollykine,"” Claymore protest: ed. “I'll have the next picture writ- ten so that you can drown in your own tears." “Oh, but the next one may never come!” Polly urged. “I'm getting too big to play little girts, and I won't be blg enough to play onjanoos for two or three years. I may have to leave the screen for a while, Couldn't ‘ou fust slip in a little bit? You now, when Miss Steddon is sick— why couldn't I go to her and pet her @ little and cry over her? “I'M see the author,” sald Clay- more, “or maybe you'd better.” Polly turned the witchery of her shining ayes on the author, wheed!ed him, flattered him, courted him, all for the boon of a little brine. And finatly she coaxed a promise from him that he would interpolate a scene with Miss Steddon and give Polly a good cry. ‘The news was glorious. She darted to her mother squealing with delight. She ran back and kissed the confused seribe, who would one day boast that the great Polly Thorne had honored him with such a seal of approva!. Polly dashed to Mem and sat upon ber lap, tremulous with the rapture ef her promotion to the dignity of a priestess of grief. Mem understood the ¢hrill. She was looking back al- ready from an increasing remoteness upon the excitement of her own novi te. Strange people, these actors, who plead for suffering! Yet what esa do the rest of us but cultivate mis- ery, hug it to our hearts, run to em: brace assured regret, make a habit of renewed remorse, resent all warn: ings and sign hosts, and store up repentance in lavender, in old at- ties, in revisited scenes and haunted night thoughts? S'nce we cannot always find griet enough at home or in the misbe- havior of our neighbors, we have a kory newspaper dropped at our doors every morning. We enatch at ex: tras, the bidodier the better. We buy magazines and books dripping with assorted woes for every taste; we have story-te'lers, songsters. fiddlers poets, painters, players to make us We put ‘tragic art at the writhe, top of the heap and pay him or her ana most money who wrinsis the most the most homage, usually the drops cut of our twisted hearts. ‘The moving picture made {ts instant appeal because it brought the most ‘agony within the reach of the masses at tho greatest convenience with the least expense. CHAPTER XXXIX Have a job and get a job. To him) that hath- Remember Steddon's first picture was approaching its finish by a 2'g- zag path, the scenes being shot ac: coming to thelr geography ‘rather than chronology. In che episode Mem was photo- graphed steal’ng in through a front door and crossing a hall into a draw- ing-room. When this wae rehearsed and taken several times, she was im eturn across mediately required to | Several miles away. and carry with her the memory and the influence of what had taken place in the drawingroom. But, as a matter of fact, the art r-| director and his crew af carpenters the brief martrydom of] and decorators bad not yet construct- {ed the drawingroom, It Was still building on another stage, 200 yards away, and the scene could not bo) taken for a week, Furthermore ‘the preceding scene in the street had not been taken. It) wou'd be shot on location in a street! The actress ha:\, therefore, to re- call what she had done long before she did it. This was one of the inescapable dif- ficulties of the technic. Every art has its absurdities and contradictions and the moving-picture actor must perform incessant Irish bulls of se- quence. But all of Mem's anxieties concern- ing makeup and costume and inter- pretation were overwhelmed in the anxtety as to her future. She dread- ed any hiatus in her career, another fretful hunting for more work. She had been already acquiring a Uttle name. Gossip of every sort was rife, and some of it was flattering. ‘The word floated about that “Sted- don was making good at Bermond's.” Other directors began to speak to} her on the lot and at the ‘uncheon table. The matron in charge of the dressing rooms told her that she bad heard several people speak of Miss Steddons’ fino work. The man in charge of @ projection machine told her one day, ‘Very nice, Miss Sted- dont’ that was pra'se from a jaded expert. Some of the other actresses on the set had confessed that she had made them cry and choke up. She had the “stuff.” She was deliv- ering the goods. Her soul was get- ting over. At home she found a note now and then asking her to call at another studio. Agents sent her protfers of their good offices and promised to enhance her opportunities and her earnings. But the Bermond company had an option on her services. This Includ- el the right to farm her out ‘for Single pictures to other companies. It was a flattering kind of slavery. Still mcre flattering was Bermond's reluctance to lend her to a revival. Eventually, Bermond agreed to rent Mem to a new company that was to make Tom Holby a star. He hat earned the elevation, and this meant that he and Robina Teele would part company—at least on the screen. When Mem read of this plan on the motion-picture page of an evening paper her heart gave a hop, as if a fat frog had leaped in her bosom. She was not sure just what the ex- citement meant within her there. She did not want Tom Holby for herself. yet she did not want to see any other woman land him. Claymore obtruded upon her metit- ations. She was under the obligation imposed by Mis devotion. It was certain that he and Mem must sever the relations they had es: tablished as director and directed, but a deop friendship something deeper thon friendstip had developed during their communten. He had found her Increasingly, ir- resistibly fascinating as he ransacked, odd corners of her heart for emotional matarial; as ke studied her expres: sions and postures; as he thought of her in her absence Before him, she moved about to music, and that lift- ed them to another planet somehow. He tried to be particularly aloo: professional. anf directorial in conduct with Mem, lest the company discover his infatuation. But his love was less nid less content with courtesy alone. The very effort em- phasized what he scusht to hide, and the whisper went about that Clay- more and Steddon were thicker than thieves They jave the impression of a bride and groom pretending to be old married reorie and only ad- vertising their infatuetion by thelr aggravated indifference. Mem was not blind ty the look in his eves, nor deaf to the overtones in his voice. She wondered for a while thet so powerful a man should have selected so humble an appren- tice and let the star glide by unwor- shiped. Her heart was molléwed with a kind of upward pity for the great man that she was dragging down to her own meck level. But it was pleas- ant to be adored. ‘All day they Inbored over the mim- lery ot love and woe, and yet they ga’ned no private immunity from its fever. ‘When he called of evenings, Clay- more would make excuses to step out into the patio with Mem to show her a very remarkable moon, He persauded her now and then to stroll—anything to get her away from the eyes and ears of her mother and her housemates. He nover said anything, however, that he might not have said before a crowd. He never tried to hold her hand or snatch a kiss or fileh an embrace. Mem was constantly set quivering with expectancy that he would make some advance, some gee ture of endearment, yet always un- able to decide just what she would do if he did. But he didn’t. She wondered at his curious shy- ness. For a man of such autocracy and such a habit of ordering her about before people, to be afraid to speak to her in solitude—it was funny. Bhe did not realize that his chief battle was with himself. He knew the perils a director who lets himself flirt with or favor one of his com- pany. [ven to deliver himself to ban- died jokes was unbearable, He fought his love for the sake of his pride of office. So he did not speak, but he ached, and he communicated his anguish to the very air, The picture and its final retakes were finished on a Saturday after noon. There was an evening's {dl ness ahead, Claymore asked Mem to take a drive in his car, a lohg, fare- wel! flight about the familiar and the unvisited ronda. She accepted meek- ly. Someth'ng told her that this drive was important to her fate, Something was always telling her something, Nine times out of ten it was false, but she forgot tho failures and recalled the coincidences, CHAPTER XL. Nobody had yet asked Mem for her self-respect as an !nitiation feo or an initiation rite. She was paid a week-| ly wage based upan her ability, her experience, and her usefulness. She was paid in coin of the realm. Her price would rise and fall ac- cording to the genera! market for mov-ng pictures and her specific value. Her emotion and her beauty Were commodities, and Steddon stock would be quoted on the Soul Ex- change ag the demand for it rose and fell, as the bidders for it in- creased or diminished, She could not add to her artistic as- sets by incurring moral liab lities. If her sins were dlscrect or picturesque théy would not effect the public es- teem. . If they were unlucky sins, she might find herself suddenly bank- rupt, closed out, shut down. Up to now she had met no more of thoze compliments which are called “insutte” than any girl is I:ke- ly to meet with as she goes her way through any community. Her mother tad been with her a’most all the time when she was not on the lot, and tho lot was full of mothers of Uttle children and young stars. Claymore had been chaperoned by the company and his own reverence for discipline. But now she was out- side h's authority. Both were out- side the Bermond inclosure. The picture was finished. Clay: more could offer her no more scenes, no more advantages, no more roles, not even the little tributes of spe- clal cktse-uns or flattering Ughtings or the tender privilege of being ‘shot through gauze” or out of focus. And now they were as helpless to- gether as any other twain whom nothing restrains or separates In the undertow of passion, They were two emotional people without a barrier. Among the countless things writ- ten and said about the hows and whys of women’s surrenders one mo- tive seems to have been too much ignored, though it must have exerted a vast influence on countless women, must exert an Increasing influence as women go mdro and more into the worlds of business, of art, and of free- dom with only themselves for their guardians. Good sportsmanship, a hatred of smuggery, 2 contempt for too careful self-protection, a disgust for a holier- than-thou self esteem—these are amiablo attitudes of mind that make for popularity. To be a miser of one’s graces, a hypochondriacal cod- ler of one’s virtues, is to be unloved and untowable. So many a man will gamble, break a law, risk his career, his bealth, his life, get drunk, steal, slay, and play the fool rather than face the re- proach that he is @ moilycoddie, a Puritan, a prig, a Miss Nancy, a cow- ard, a Pharisee. An¢, many a woman who would not yield for passion or for luxury, must have consented for fear of seeming to be overproud, stingy, cold, prudish, isoblig:ng, superhuman, subnormal, unsportswomanly. Mem had been swept once beyond the moorings by a summer storm of devotion to young Farnaby, her first love. Now she was to feel her an chors cut adrift by the gracious ges- ture uf good fellowship with a col- league. y Claymore called hig last “cut!” at 4 o'clock that Saturday afternoon. The last shots had taken less time than had been foreseen. Mem had told her mother that she might be/ kept at the studio ti] late in the! evening. The members of the company bade one another farewell as after a pleas: ant voyage. Mem burried to remove her makeup and put on civilian clothes. } As she came ¢ewn the steps from the long gallery of dressing rooms she saw Claymore coming from his| office on the ground floor. He smiled. “Othello's occupation’s gone. I've got an {dle afternoon on my hands. Why don't we take a little motor ride and get a bit of fresh air?” ‘Vd better go home,” Mem faltered invitingly. “Ah, you can always go home. School's over. Let's play hooky.” “All right," she cried, with a child- ish eagerness for mischief. She went wth him to h{s ar where it was parked cutside the lot. He helped her in with a manner of possession, of capture. He sent the! car spinning out along Washington boulevard toward Venice. By wind- ing ways they reached the vast amusement huddle anc, passing the canals that gave {t {ts name, pushed on to the pleasure streets of cheap and noisy merriment. They loltered awhite on the sand, but it seemed a little late for a swim, and Claymore casily persuaded her to drive farther along the sea rcad after an early dinner at the Sunset Inn. When they had finished thelr cof- fee the sun was low and huge. It blazed Uke a caldron simmering with molten gold, searing the eyes and inflaming the sky about it. The Santa Monica mountains marching down to the sea grew lav- n@er with the twilight. The Ocean Drive stretched along a forest of patms Ike huge coconuta dark against the gaudy west. Then the road drupped in a long U down San- ta Monica canyon and out again—a canyon ivided betweer strange, neighbors, a Metholist camp-meeting sround and the paradise where the Uplifters club gives ics outdoor fes- tivals, pageants of rare beauty, the forest deepa uncannily illumined w:th fuming mists of many-cciored smokk. As they turned out again at the ocean’s edge the sun fell into the wie sea and was quenched, leaving aking tho west only a glow of powd- ered geranium pifula, though She wet sands were a burnished kettle color where the mppies Ieved and smoothel thera. The aritormobi'cs of every make were so muny shat they were almost one long automobile, or at least a chain on which they slid as black beads. Their lights were ccming out now like early stars pricking a a twilight sky, é The waters grow dull, lignid piate. with patches of lapis lasull. The light went out/of the world.as if it were a moisture withdrawn from flowers that drooped and shriveled, The lavender mountains were a dull mauve, growing (im and lstless, ‘The roai sidled along hish cliffs with little canyons folding them into iong| wrink! Here and there on the beach knots of people gathered about darkling fires cooking dinner in a gypsy mood. 3 Another, more solemn community was established here: a cluster of! Japaness fisherfolkk—oarnest Uttle people crowded ont of thelr own islands and finding no weleome tn California, , But they tolled on, ig- Casper Sunday Gorning Cribune norant of the articles, stories, els, orations devoted to their Cenun- but feel a little disappointed. cation as a menace and a promise ‘Thousands af years of ancestry had of war. put it in her heart to enjoy being The car rounded headland after overpowered. overpersuaded, cap- headland, finding always another be- tured. Women had been earning yond. On one of these stood alight-, their own livings in various ways house with a patch of bright sky | from most ancient antiquity and had| shining through. When they reach- never yet overcome their eternal, ed it it was a moving-picture fish- tendency to play their part in the| ing vilage—Inceville once, now the !mmortal duet. | R. C. Ranch studio, an odd jumble} If Mr. Claymore should propose of hollow shells, English huts, west-| marriage, that would make his ca-| ern blockhouses, a church, a strip resses acceptable—according to some of casteliated walls—all sarts of canons, though not to all. She did structures that a nimble camera not want to marry anybody just now. could present as part of great wholes.|She was a free woman in a free The road fared on, cutting off the! country. tip of one ridge and leaving a cone, She was not free, however, from} the color of a vast chocolate drop|the witchery of this night, this dream, | set up at the ocean's rim. the vast yearning of this mountainoua| The next headland ended in a bit| beauty. She was not free of the dis-| of sand where a few palm trees had/| aster of desire, the hunger to be em- been installed to represent a South| braced and kissed and whispered to,| Sea {sland vista. The very mdun-|the need to be kept warm in the tains in silhouette were like a strip| colt loneliness of the world. | of scenery. But her training kept tolling her Twilight was smothering the long} that only a wicked man of wicked and twisted gorge of the Topanga/a'ms could have brought here here for when Mem and Claymore turned their| the damnation of her soul, the temp- backs on the last glimmers of the|tation of her flesh, and all the in- ocean. ternal risks Involved. Four miles and miles the highway] still, she could not hate him even mounted and writhed along the steeps|{n her imaginaticn, though she tried. of precipices, hugging the rocks to|She could not denounce him for let pass car after car with lamps|what he had not yet attempted, and| Washing In frént af blurred pas-|she could not quite despise herself sengers. for not be'ng unwilling that he The road had been slashe@ through| should show a little courage. walls of stone or of heaped conglom-| Besides what a hypocrite she would erate like enormous piles of canon| be to protest and rebuke him for sul halis. The slopes, of increasing depth! lying her honor when she had noni and majesty, were clothed with sage| Who was she to be indignant be- and stunted trees. Mere and there| cause a man asked her for a kiss?) stvol the tall white spikes of the| How could she honestly deceive him ‘candles of Gad," the yuecas de|by pretending) innocence How Dios, now in bloom. They had al cou'd she undeceive him by confess | ghostly glimmer where they hoarded| ing her wicked past? | the Inst rays of waning day. Her thoughts spun gidaily in her| Mem's heart was stabbed with ter-| mind, all entangled with a skein of| ror at every sharp swerve aroun¢ a| romantic threads. She was young and beetling ledge, for the headlight| pretty and time waa wasting her swung off down the cliff, revealing| flowery graces. Some one ought to | | rather the danger to be feared than| cull them while they bloomed. the road to he followed. While she debatg! with herself, In almost every bay where there|as doubtless innumerable women was a bit of space a motor had! stoppel and drawn ciose to the clift- side in the dark. It wns easy to Imagine the purpose of these halts. Each car was a wheeled solitude, a love boat at anchor in a stream of ears ignoring and {gnored. All over the world it was the cus- tom of the time to take advantage of such little eutitudes. There was a vast outery in pulpits and in editorial | columns against the evil, and evil| was undoubtedly achieved in immense | quantity. It was no new evil, how-| ever, but the ancient, eternal activ-| ity that has never failed to find its! opportunity in desert and in garden, in hut and palace, on porch and deck, in graveyard and cloisture, in cave! were the first lips he had ever kissed and on hillside, in chariot, palan-|_as if he had just invented kiss- quin, sedan, stagecoach, bugry, Vit-|ing. Then in a frenzy of wonder he torla, or donkey chaise as well as in| closed her in his arms with all his puto. jPower, He did not know that the It Is an equally old evil to accuse! wheel bruised her side, and. neither the tmplement of creating the power |aid she. But she forgot to debate her that makes uso of jt, and woulc| duty or to think of her soul. She use another weapon if need were. thought only of the rapture of this There was a strange influence in| communion, and her arms. atole this recurrent mystery. Everywhere! round his neck and clenched him lovers were hiding themselves in con-| with all the power of her arms. sp'cuous concealment. Mem felt dis-| As fire drives out fire, so evil evil. gust at the first dozen, amusement)| There was an evil flourishing then or contempt-—for the-next fifty,toler-| with an unheard-of fury—a wave, & ance for the next, and— tical wave of crime, cf murder, theft, Claymore did not speak of them| violence of every sort. cr of anything, else. He was too| ‘The highways and the houses of busy twirling the wheel and gauging| tho world were gone mad with the the little distances between the edge) enterprises of robbery. Nobody was have debated with themselves in like plights, Claymore'’s own mind was a chaos of equally ancient piatituces cf a man's philegophy. At length he found the courage or the cruelty to slip his arm about Mem's wa'st and to draw her close to him. He was almost more alarmed than delighted to find that she hardly resisted at all. He tock her hands in his and whis- pered, “Your poor little hands are cold!" Then he kissed them with cold Nps that he lifted at once to hers and found them warm and strangely like a rose against his mouth. He was as much amazed as if bers }of the cliff and the cars that! safe at home or abroad, in palace or whizzed past. hovel, shop or mail car. Millions on Halfway up the canyon his heat millions of treasure were being car- light ransacked a black cove between two headlands and found no motor in possessicn of the estuary of night. And here, to Mem's dumb astonish- ment, he abruptly checked his car, swung in off the road against the wali of rubble, and stopped short with a sigh of exaggerated fatigu “Well,” he groaned, ‘this is a drive! I'll rest a bit {f you don’t mind. Pretty here, eh?” From their cavern of gtoom they looked across a fathomless ravine to a mountain on which the risen moon poured a silent Niagara. In ried off by thieves. ‘Theft was ubi- quitous. On one of the roads of Los Angeles, a month or two before, a couple locked in each other's arms had been challenged by a thug with a gun. He had robbed both man and girl, then carried the girl off in his car and later flung her outraged body down at the side of the road and left her. When the police had traced him and jailed him he had fought with such fury that they had to Kill hint efter he had killed one guard and wounded another. It was a sorry time when thieves donic now; the majesty was a Broc- Xen ribaldry; the dim yuccas sarcas:| tic'candies of a black Sabbath. ‘The sea walted for the road wrig sling toward it refuctantly, in an in- finite laughter of contemp: Claymore epoke wavn the silence became unbearable: “I tried to see something in that dog's eyes or his manner that I could identify him by, but I couldn't.” “Were you thinking of describing him to the police?” “God, not I just want to beat him to death privately. Wo can’t af-| ford to start explaining how we hap-| med to be there.” It was a little too crass to word. Mem blushed in the dark. It was shameful to have gone on such an| errand. It was somehow a little! mcre shameful to have been twarted and frustrated. A perverse remorse filled their souls with confusion; a remorse because of a wrong remorse, a disgust for an accepted temptation and for being! so temptable. CHAPTER XLIT A woman never quite forgives = man for not dying for her at the! first. opportunity. She probably never quite forgives him for dying, either. So the clever man evides the sit- uation where a choice is required, as the virtuous man evades temptation while it yet afar off. For weeks afterward Mem ehud- Cered at the picture of what would havo happened if Claymore had at- tacked the footpad and been shot to death, She would have been left alche in the titanic labyrinth of To- Panga canyon with a dead body to explain and her presence there to excuse. Yet it was not quite satis- factory that he should survive after surrender. She was acquiring a habit of trans- lating Ife into scenarios and contin- uities of ingenious complication and more or less thril!, and she spent days and nights juggling with poss!-| ble conclusisns to this adventure. She had been dizzy with the swirl of Claymore's lovestorm and his in- articulate demands, when the gruft demand of the thug shivered her whole being as a boat that scuds be- fore a gale and rounds a headland is smitten with an opposite blast. ‘The road, returning along the sea, was more populous than before with dark cars stranded in shadow. In the distance Venice with its countless Hghts Iny Uke a constellation fallen in a heap upon the ocean's edgo. When they reached it it was a cheap tinsel affair Curkly crowded. They left it and turned into Washing- ton boulevard, winding toward Los Angeles. Vast stretches of dark field were broken by brilliantly lighted sheds where fruits and melons were for sale, now and then a roadside tavern, now and then a moving-pic- ture studio. ‘The Green Mill was eerie with green wheels studded with green bulbs. Dancing was the chief industry there. Insite the classic portico of the Goldwyn studio work was evidently gontg on, for the huge lot was alight. The Virginian mansion of the Ince studio dreamed in snowy beauty. A little farther rose the curious whimsy of the Willat studio with its fantastic architecture; next were the long buildings where Harold Lloyd made his comedies. They crussed Wilshire into Holly- wood through a dark forest of oil derricks invading tho very heart of the thronged bungalows. Claymore, brooding Ceeply in his earnest soul, felt that he owed Mem some atonement. He meant it nobly, but it sounded crude when he checked the car in front of her little home and took her hand and sald: “If you will let me marry you, I'll seo that my wife divorces me.” ‘These divorces of convenfence marked the new-fashioned way of ac- complishing an old-fashioned right- eousness. He wanted to make her “an honest woman." But the times had passed for that. Woman had come into the right to lose her own soul on her own respon- sibitity. No man can make her an the dozing radiance a creamy shaft of yucca stood, a candie blown out] illicit love was not safe from criminal in a deserted cathedral. interference, The night air was of a strange| Mem, swooning she knew not gentleness, and the cars that shot|where or whither, was awakened past threw no light into their re-| from her mad rapture by a low voice treat. across her shoulder: There was a long. long silence that] “Sorry to interrupt’ you, folks, but filed Mem with u terror sho could; I need your money.” not fall to enjey. She could not tell] Sho turned and found herself blind- whether she heard her own heart-| ed by the glare from a motor halted beats or his, but excltemeht was|at a Iittle distance. Dazzied as she athrob In the Ittte coach that had| was, she could see the gaunt hand brought them so swiftly to this re-|that held before her a black pistol mote ssclusion. with a gfint outlining its ugly muz- Claymore was dumb so long that| zle. Mem had time to cease to be afraid of] She whirled and stared into the what he would say, and to begin to| staring eyes of Claymore. It was not wish that he would get {t said, so|fear, but an infinite ,disgust, that that she could know what her an-|she saw there, as his irms left oft, swer would be. embracing her and rose slowly into She felt a baffling uncertainty of| the shameful posture of abject sur- herself. She could not imagine what | render. she might do or say. She had not haA much experience of men, but enough to know that before long he would initiate the immemorial pro- cedure that starts with an arm ad: venturing about a waist and a voy: age after a kiss. She told herself that the only right and proper thing to do would be to resist, protest, forbid, and prevent at any cost the profanation of her sa- cred integrity. If necessary, she must fight, scratch, scream, escape, run away, appeal for help to any passer-by, or, as a last resort, leap over the cliff and dle for honor’a wake. ‘But what was that She and who did not respect thieves and when even CHAPTER XLI Claymore was sane enough to at- tempt no resistance, though he al- most perished of chagrin, He en- dured the insclence of the maskec stranger who thrust his free hand into every pocket, twisted the watch from the chain, stole the chain and a wallet and the loose silver, and curs- ed because there was no more to steal. Claymore had next to witness the rifling of Mem's person, the clutching for earrings that were not there, the groping about her bosam for a brooch, the wrenching of her one poor per- jurous wedding ring from her finger, the snatching of her wrist bag from was that Hereelf shat told each othet| her arm. fo many things? The bdlackkguard had the venom to Herself told She that Mr, Claymore] say: could not be treated as an ordinary ruffian, an insolent, outrageous knave, a fiend. He had treated her with most delicate courtesy from the ‘first, he had given her opportunity far fame and money; he had tanght her his art, ho had given her his admir- ation, his praise, his devotion, his mute but evident affection. It ho loved her and revealed his love, she could hardly reward his pa-| tient chivalry with prompt ingrat!- “Td ought to bean yous both for not havin’ mdmethin' fit to pinch. You ain't worth the wear and tear on me conselence, Be hela his clubbed pistol over Claymore'a hea“ a moment, then fore bore to strike, and dropped from the step with a Inst warning, “Bit pretty now and keep ‘em up tm I git goin’ or I'n— Fils car shot round the curve, but) | they wat petrified for a time. In tudo and viotence and fear, That| the black dark ho might be lurking would make her the insulter, not] atill. ¢ him But at length Claymore brought She must be very mentle with|down hie aching armas, They were too him and ask him kindly to forbear And not to ep<fl the pleasant friend. ship that sho had prized But ff he still persiatea? sure to be gentle at worst much ashamed of themselves to re- turn to thetr late post about Mem’‘s shouMers, Me wns Claymore was afraid to speak leat! He would he begin to sob. Hoe started the car obey ber with a sigh of loneliness and turned down the canyon and his heart would grieve Soms It was another realm from the how, as she foreshadowed such an ony they had macended in such ro honest woman by any deed of his. Mem laughed nervously. ~ “No, thanks!" It was as uninspired as possible, but then it is not easy to make a brilliant answer to a stu- pid suggestion. She felt that she must improve on it a bit, but she helped it little when she added: “Just as much obliged. Good night!’ Sho left him and went to face her mother. She had not the courage to tell of the robbery. She covered the nakedness of her ringless finger with her other and, yawning ostentatious- ly, sneaked off to bed, And that was the end of her love story with Claymore. It had been a success In no respect as a love story. But as an education it had been in- vatuable. He had taught her to know her self and the volcanic emotions within her, and how to release them at com- mand. She was far from being a great or a complete artist, but she had the ambition to be ono; she had some of the resources, and sho know what the others must be. It seemed an ingratitude, almost a treachery, to take Claymore's inspira- tion and tuition and give him In re- turn only a few kind words and an evidence of her frailty before tempta- tion, But while she could command her- self to weep and to throb with en- acted love, she could not scold herself into @ genuine passion. She felt degraded in the eyes of Claymore, and hoped that she would not see him again untit the memory had blurred. But she was still more tormented with the problem of the thug who had found her in Clay- more's embrace. She would never know who he was, because his face had been masked. But he had stucied her. He would know her anywhere, and if she be came famous he would sneer aa he saw her published face, He would sneer and he would doubtless talk, CHAPTER XLIII ‘That was a dismal night in Mem’ chronicles. She was humiliated be- | fore her own soul tn a dozen ways and before tho eyes of her best friend and the anonymous, faceleas raider, Bhe could not sleep her accusing self away, The arftic within her moult kept condemning her, and noth- ing was more crlous than the fact that she had been caught, Alao, sho coul¢ not sleep for the fever In her parched eyes. The Inst! day had been apent tn the furtous cirole of the Hghts, They. had nt. most burnt her vison awpy, and one of the final close-ups without! gushing tears and stabbing pain. During the night she had a mild onset of “Gilegi eyes” and had night- mares of blindness. Her carcer would be blasted at once. Her ter- rors added to her repentances and her angulsh made s!umber impossible. As she lay staring into the dark the windows and the furniture be- gan to wake from the black and take| on definition. The world in the| dawn was oxactly like the film as she had seen it developed in the dun-| geons of the laboratory, a sudden faint revelation of outlines, a gradual clarity, and finally all the details. She rose wearily from her bed, ip and stole to the! The little garden and the| orange tree were being Ceveloped WRewiso by the chemistry of the sunrise, She felt an impulse to walk about. and, (thrusting her bare feet into slippers, she went through the door as stealthily as an escaping thief. The morning was as yet only a paler moonlight. Sho was surprised| to find the mountains missing from the horizon. It seemed odd that a sierra should be removed ovérnight It was a mist that hid them—so frail @ thing to conceal such bu!kat she watched, the vell was with- drawn into nothingness. The moun tains rolled up their mighty billows. They were as if created anew by the original edict or by that long equeeso| the gectogists imagine. As they omerged suddenly from the void, the rest of the world opened, ‘shop. Flowers began to waken: vines to take thought of further ex- plorations; birds began to whet their beaks. Httle butchers sharpening} their knives for the market. Somewhere a bird was singing. It is good poetry to praise the song of| birds, But this one sounded like a squeaking wheel. Yet it would be ri- dicuious to liken an ungreased wheel to the pipe of a half-awakenod bird, In a vacant lot at the back, rab: bits were sitting up and shivering| their noses in a posture of amazed| stupidity. Across the walks and the| grass little herds of snails were re-| turning to their corrals. They had| the lok of having been out all night and their napsacks were tipsily | awry. And they left shining wakes| wherever they went, as drunkards| leave footprints in the snow. | The flowers were putting on their| colors Uke robes, or like make-up that night bad removed. It was the| light that restored thelr beauty of| hue. | Light! They were its creatures and she was a child of light. Darkness was her death, and all her speech was reflected radiance from the sun| or from some of the little suns that tiny mankind had devised for its amusement and ccnvenience. In the yard next door blackbirds were breakfast hunting. She noted that each glistening mnie was nag- ged and bullied by a fat brown fe male. When ho found a worm she ran and took it away from him. When he did not find one she nipped racket. If he tried to swallow one If sbe stumbled over one as she wad. died, she kept it herself. seemed to be the old phrase Mem had heard as a child: “What's yours ‘se mine; what's mine's m’own.” No wonter the males were so sleek and crisply alert. No wonder their womenfolk were so obese and petu- tant. ~ Mem thought she saw the o'd-fash- foned housewife in the female black- bird. She grew plump on the toll of her smurt busband and contributed little but an appetite and a num- ber af new beaks for him to feed. She was glad that she would not be such @ woman. She would find her own food and pay her way, and she would pay it handsomely, She fillet her breast with a deep draught of this pride, She had been wicked once by inclination, but then she had been wicked as an old-fashioned kome- keeping girl. Now her wickedness wes her own. at least, and she would not let Claymore take the blame; for when you take the blame you take the credit, too, and the control. She would be no man's chattel to make or mar, The blackbirds gave ter a con- tempt for the ideal waman of old, an exultance over being a real woman of new. She stood and watched the lustrous creatures for a long while. Vance} Thompson had squancered some of the opulence of his style on the biack- birds of Los Angeles. Knowing the world as few men know it, he gave! the city supreme praise, above Al-| giers, Tunis, Monte Carlo, or Paler- mo, “And yet,” he wrote, ‘I've fallen in love with the birds. Expectally those grave and beautiful blackbirds. There are a dozen of them on my lawn—I can see them from the win- dow. The gentlemen wear blackly purple cassocks and the ladies are dressed in soft nun-colored brown. And they are so friendly, sd clean- stepping, so busy aml Diithe that they look like predestined citizens of Los Angeles. Symbols an? typos. Every city has its birds. Venice has its pigeons of Saint Mark's; Moscow its crows, those secular monks of the| Kremlin; Paris has {t sparrows, and | Stockholm its swans—ah, those black swans of the Djugarten!—and your California blackbird is the bird, ideal and appointed, of Los Angeles. Musing upon the feathered bipeda. the high-stepping Othellos and the! drooping Desdemonas of birddom, Mem's mind was soothed of its fev. ers, But her body grew chi!!l, Her! bare ankles brushed a dewy loaf and she fled into the houses. The light scourge’ her wounded eyes. CHAPTER XLIV, ‘Two days later she began work with Tom Holby'’s company in a new stu: dio — a great establishment whore one could rent epace, scenery, all or any portion of a production from manuscripts to distribution, A number of the farthest famed him with her bill or mado a pathetic} unobserved she made him disgorge it.| Her motto| PACE THREE AS 8 Sd a 2 i nov- acceptance of defeat, she could not mance. The enchantment was sar- she had been unable to face them In triteness of the plot. It was warmed® Jover like funeral baked meats. He had longed to do a story adapted from W. J. Locke's novel Septimus. Holby had wanted to play the simple Septimus. Mem, who had read no novels at all ti!l recent’y. was horribly illiterate in famous names. But she was wondrously stirred by this story as Holby, told it: Septimus loved a girl ly Mkekd him. She loved another man—ldvel him “too well,” as the curious saying it. He “betrayed” her, a3 another curious saying =, and when he had gong beyond her reach she found tha@ she was to become a mother—sti!l using the stock phrases. Holby noted that Mem was all a- shiver over the situation. He never dreamed that it had been her own. He thought that he had frightened her prudery and he tried to soften his phrascs still more. But she was uncontrollably agitated when he went on with the plot and told how Septimus, for all his inno- cence, Ciscovered the cause of tho girl's dismay—and, knowing all, of- fered to marry her so that her child might have a name, so that the girl he idolized might not be driven to who mere desperation. “Are there men like that?” Mem gasped. Holby looked at her and interpreted her question as a cynicism. “Oh, yee he answered, earnestly. ‘There ust be lots of men Like that, If I loved a girl and found her in such a plight, I think I would—r hope I would—offer to help her through it. It wouldn't be much of @ love that would die at such a sit+ | uation, woulda it?” Mem fell to thinking. A ferocious temptation assailed her to confess to Tom Holby that she had been such a girl herself, but had never dreamed that such a man existed. Perhaps when Tom Holby had courted her a little there in Palm canyon, if she had not rebuffed and despised him, but had told him the truth, he mi, have offered her his famous name; they might have been married and she might now be sitting with him in their own home with a ving child at her quick breast. The vision shock her like a blast of hot desert wind. Her baby had never seen the world. She had never seen {ts face. Where had its soul waited and whither had it returned? Had it Joined its father in that strange over- grave fealm? For a {ew mad moments Mem !tong- ed to be a wife and mother so in- sanely that she could hardly check the cry of protest at the denial. She forgot her brave independence of the early morning, her pride in her ar- tistic self-sufficiency. She wanted to be an “clCsfashioned woman,” to be fed by her husband and to feed his children, But while the tempest was raging mside her soul she was so remote jfrom her body that her face had not | disclosed her thoughts at all. | What Tom Holby saw was a dreary | smile, which he misread as mild dis ; dain for such a romantic nonsense. When she spoke at last she mere- ty asked: “And why didn't you play Septi- mus on the screen, as you say you wouk] have done in real life?’ “The censors!* he snarled. “They've got everybody frightened to death. In Pennsylvania and other states you can’t even refer to approaching ma- ternity. ‘The producers don’t want to make pictures with a big market cut off in advance, so we've got to be more prudish than a Sunday-schcb! Ubrary. “Tho censors seem to feel that if they keep the motion-picture audi- ences from even learning that bables are born of the!r mothers a great blow will be struck for morality, The books and magazines and newspapers can talk of twilight sleep and birth contro! and everything, but the poor movies can't even show a young wife sewing on baby clothes, “But let's not talk of censorship. T froth at the mouth every time I think of the sbame and the tyranny and the asininity of it. The story of Sep- timus would have been beautiful, It {s as clean as the parable tn the Bible about the woman taken tp adul- tery, and that’s given to lttle gfris to read anci it's preached in all the pulpits. But on the screen it would immediately send a’! the audience out to get into trouble, Anyway, I can’t do the story and we've had to cook up this mess of denatured ralism we are going to do. But Lord! how I should have loved to play Septimus and have you play the pitiful Iitte girl I would have married. In the story she married Sentimus and came to love him so dearly that when she met the other man she hated him.” He fell into a silent while and Mem dreamed tremendous dreams, vain and already frustrated. but beautiful with all the elogy of the might-have- been. People make love unconsciously at. times and in the truest courtships never a word is spoken. Two souls travel mystic gardens together and come to deep understandings without the exchange of a syllabled thought. Mem was so woved by Holby, The mere brooding upon him as a lover. a husband, a protector who would once have solved an ugly problem into beauty, presonteci him to Mem. in a Ught of compelling warmth, She tried to shake off the spell, but from now on there was an aureole of chivalrous self-sacrifice about Tom Holby that changed hiny altogether from the fltppant, too polite, and far too popular idol of foolish girls that she had rated him, All through the taking of that pio- ture, Mem watched him as from a Inttice that hid her from him, but dis closed him to her {n the kindllest sun, The picture had to be made tn rec- ord time because the producers bad a limited capital and an unitmited ex. perience of the disastrous expense of Joluurelinen: The cirector, Kendrick, was a slave stars oceasionally made plotures there—Douglas Fatrbanks and Mary Pickford, Betty Compson, and many another, | Mom had been lent gut to Holby. Tf she were a slave, she wan at least recetved ns A captured Circassian | princess might be recetved by a sultan | who had bought her at # high price.| When ashe appearet on the Holby greeted her tn person. tot! He Jed her into him office and described the part mhe was to play, read her the Dig scenes, He bemoaned the artificiality and | wide awake, driver, a worshiper of schedules, He demanded that the peopte be on the sot made up, costumed, colffed, and sg that the cameras might begin to grind at 9 sharp, But he Was not so punctual about letting the weary troupera knkock off at 5 Ile kept them often till nearly 7, When Mem's day of to!l was over she was #0 footsore, Bo soulsore, and had seen ro much ¢¢ Tom Holby and his manufactured love that she had no indiination to aes him of evenings, and he made ne effort to see hee, a4 Next Sunday.)