Something choked her; she averted her head. Surprised, yet half inclined to laugh, he waited a moment. Then: “You are so delightfully grateful for nothing,” he said. “I wish I really had done you a service.” She spoke, unsteadily, still looking away from him: “You don’t understand.... I can’t trust myself now.... I seem to be emotional----” She shook her head and he saw the bobbed hair glimmer red against the sunny window. As they stood there in the curtained recess, Frank Donnell’s voice rose above the general conversation: “Isn’t that operator nearly ready in the projection room?” Mr. Zanger left the room to inquire. Annan turned and accidentally encountered Mr. Smull’s fixed smile. Something in the persistent, sanguine gaze of the man annoyed him--as though Mr. Smull had had him under impertinent observation for some time without his knowledge. He turned to Eris: “I wish you really were under obligations to me,” he said lightly, “--you assume imaginary ones so adorably. Shall we go and see how you and Betsy behave yourselves on the screen?” She nodded with a swift intake of breath--let him draw her arm through his. They followed the little crowd now moving toward the review room. Seated together there in the semi-darkness, they watched Frank Donnell and Max Stoll take their places at desks on a raised platform behind them. A stenographer, with pad and pencil, came in and seated herself at Donnell’s elbow. Out went the lights except the green-shaded globe on Donnell’s desk. The screen sprang into silvery relief. Donnell half turned, looking up over his shoulder toward the concealed operator above: “All right, Jim. Don’t speed her too much. About 85. And watch your frames.” “Are you ready, Mr. Donnell?” “Go ahead.” * * * * * No continuity was attempted. There were no titles, not even scratch ones. Take followed take, faded or irised out. Nobody unacquainted with the story could possibly follow it. In the darkness and silence there was no sound except the droning of the machine, and Donnell’s calm voice occasionally,--“Frame! _Frame_ her, Jim!” And whispered exclamations of approval at some unusually beautiful shot of Stoll’s, or at some fragment revealing Betsy, radiantly in action, or a butterfly flash of Nancy Cassell, or a lovely glimpse of Eris. The door of the outer corridor kept opening and closing to admit professionals arriving late. The darkness was becoming thronged with people standing back against the door and walls. Once, as Betsy was enduring a chaste embrace from Wally Crawford, the film broke. Everybody joined in the gaiety. Then the little audience re-settled itself with scrape of chair and rustle of skirt as Donnell’s shaded globe glimmered out, revealing a crowded room. Annan leaned over toward Betsy: “Good work,” he said cordially. “You’re splendid. I hope the story is as clever.” “Thank you, Barry. Frank thinks it ought to go over.”