“But then the worst developed. Mr. Griffith had bought an engine to transform alternating to direct current, and when we were ready to shoot the picture, we didn’t have enough ‘juice’ for the lights. We had to put a wire all the way from Mamaroneck, on poles, a costly job. Still it wouldn’t do. We were promised the power, but we didn’t get it. Sunday was my big day. Our picture had a wedding party, and I could get extras from Mamaroneck, thirty or forty of them, at two dollars a day; then, when we were ready, our lights failed us. It would be six o’clock in the evening before we could do anything. Perhaps not even then.” Desperate as was the situation, she appears never to have lost her nerve. In a letter from Harry Carr, always present, we gather that her mechanical assistants were most concerned. The kindness she had shown to the rough-necks came ripe. They almost worked themselves to the bone for her. When anything went wrong, they looked ready to faint in a body. Lillian would sit hour after hour, alongside the camera, waiting for the lights to come on. One day she sat there uncomplainingly, from nine o’clock in the morning until eleven at night, without a flicker of light. Uncomplainingly, but what must have been going on inside. There was a small studio in New Rochelle, the Fischer studio. It was a poor thing, but at least there were lights. The Mamaroneck electric people promised that if she would work there a few days, everything would be all right when she got back. So they carted themselves and their sets to New Rochelle, and began again. “It was certainly a poor place,” Lillian remembered; “Damp, the cellar full of water, no heat, and being late November and into December, it was very cold. Often, the actors had to hold their breath so it wouldn’t photograph. The next Sunday we all moved back to Mamaroneck. The lights, they told us, were all right, but that was a mistake. Back we went to the Fischer studio. In all, we moved back and forth three times. I very nearly lost my mind. “Of course, I was responsible, and spending money—oh, by the thousands. Mr. Epping, our business manager, every night brought me the items of what we had spent that day. I am not much at figures, but I could read the total, which was not cheerful. But everybody stood by me, the ‘boys,’ as we then called the electricians and property men, especially. The actors, too—everybody. “The last day’s work had to be done on Fifth Avenue, New York. It happened to come on the day before Christmas, and I didn’t want to postpone it. We engaged a bus, from which Dorothy had to look down and see her ‘husband’ ride by in a cab with another woman. To work on the street without a permit laid us open to arrest and fine, with a good chance of spending Christmas in jail. To get a permit would take time, which we could not afford. ‘Will you take a chance?’ I asked those who were going to do the scene. They agreed that they would, but things had a dubious look.