Seated in the darkened auditorium they watched the play unfold upon the screen. They watched while the hero, a noble son of the Arabic sands, rescued the heroine, who was daughter to a comedy missionary, from the clutches of the wicked governor-general. They saw the barefoot Armenian maids dragged by mocking nomads across burning wastes to the tented den of a villainous sheik, and in the pinioned procession Chester recognised the damsel of the truant curl and the ticklish nose. They saw the intrepid and imperturbable American correspondent as, unafraid, he stood in the midst of carnage and slaughter, making notes in a large leather-backed notebook such as all newspaper correspondents are known to carry. But on these stirring episodes Chester K. Pilkins looked with but half an eye and less than half his mind. He was waiting for something else. Eventually, at the end of Reel Four, his waiting was rewarded, and he achieved the ambition which all men bear within themselves, but which only a few, comparatively speaking, ever gratify--the yearning to see ourselves as others see us. While the blood drummed in his heated temples Chester Pilkins saw himself, and he liked himself. I do not overstretch the truth when I say that he liked himself first-rate. And when, in the very midst of liking himself, he reflected that elsewhere over the land, in scores, perhaps in hundreds of places such as this one, favoured thousands were seeing him too--well, the thought was well-nigh overpowering. * * * * * For the succeeding three nights Mr. Pilkins' fireside knew him not. The figure of speech here employed is purely poetic, because, as a matter of fact, the house was heated by steam. But upon each of these three evenings he sat in the Bijou Palace, waiting for that big moment to come when he before his own eyes should appear. Each night he discovered new and pleasing details about himself--the set of his head upon his shoulders, the swing of his arm, the lift of his leg; each night, the performance being ended, he came forth regarding his fellow patrons compassionately, for they were but the poor creatures who had made up the audience, while he veritably had been not only part of the audience but part of the entertainment as well; each night he expected to be recognised in the flesh by some emerging person of a keen discernment of vision, but was disappointed here; and each night he went home at ten-forty-five and told Gertrude Maud that business on the other side of the bridge had detained him. She believed him. She--poor, blinded wretch--did not see in his eyes the flickering reflection of the spark of desire, now fanning into a flame of resolution within the brazier of his ribs.