“I don’t know.... He isn’t a drill-master.... Sometimes I’m afraid he doesn’t know. “It’s a helpless feeling, Barry. I trusted Frank. I knew I could lean on him. But Mr. Creevy----” “I haven’t much use for Creevy, either,” he said bluntly. She opened the door. He found her seated before her little mirror, tucking up stray crisp curls. She wore a mauve dinner gown--a scant affair--as though her supple, milk-white body were lightly sheathed in orchid petals. She stretched back her head to him where he stood behind her; he kissed her soft lips, her throat. Leaning so, against him, she looked back again at her fresh young beauty in the mirror. “That year with Frank Donnell,” she murmured, “is saving my very skin, now. I _don’t_ know enough to go ahead without a strong, friendly power reassuring, leading me. Mr. Creevy lets me go my own way, or loses his temper and shouts at me.” “He’s rather a cheap individual,” remarked Annan. “He’s always shouting at us.... And I haven’t much confidence in Emil Shunk, either.... Oh, how I long for Frank, and for that nice, kind camera-man, Stoll! To work with gentlemen means so much to a girl.” “It means that she can do her best work,” said Annan. “In other words, it’s bad business to employ a pair of vulgarians like Ratford Creevy and Emil Shunk to direct decent people in a decent picture.” “I seem to have no point of contact with them,” she admitted. “Betsy’s company was so respectable,--and even the Crystal Films people were so decent to me that I didn’t expect to encounter film folk as common and horrid as I have met.... And the Jews are no worse than the Gentiles, Barry.” “Gentile or Jew,” he said, “--who cares in these days how an educated gentleman worships God? But a Christian blackguard or a Jewish blackguard, there’s the pair that are ruining pictures, Eris. Whether they finance a picture, direct it, release it, exhibit it, or act in it, these two vermin are likely to do it to death. “Your profession is crawling with them. It needs delousing. It’s all squirming with parasites. They carry moral leprosy. They poison audiences. Some day the public will kill them.” Eris stood up and linked her arms in Annan’s: “It’s so stupid,” she said “--a wonderful art--and only in its infancy--and already almost monopolised by beastly people.... Well, there _are_ men like Frank Donnell.... And, as for the rest of us--as far as I can judge the vast majority among us appreciate decency and have every inclination toward it.... I don’t know a woman in my profession who leads an irregular life from choice.” “It’s that or quit, sometimes, I suppose,” he said gravely. “I’ve heard so.... Before I knew anything I used to hold such a girl in contempt, Barry. I know better, now.” “With all your passion for learning,” he said, “did you ever suppose there was such sorry wisdom to acquire?”