It was toward the end of the picture that his intimacy with the Montague girl grew to a point where, returning from location to the studio late, they would dine together. “Hurry and get ungreased, Son,” she would say, “and you can take an actress out to dinner.” Sometimes they would patronize the cafeteria on the lot, but oftener, in a spirit of adventure, they would search out exotic restaurants. A picture might follow, after which by street-car he would escort her to the Montague home in a remote, flat region of palm-lined avenues sparsely set with new bungalows. She would disquiet him at these times by insisting that she pay her share of the expense, and she proved to have no mean talent for petty finance, for she remembered every item down to the street-car fares. Even to Merton Gill she seemed very much a child once she stepped from the domain of her trade. She would stare into shop windows wonderingly, and never failed to evince the most childish delight when they ventured to dine at an establishment other than a cafeteria. At times when they waited for a car after these dissipations he suffered a not unpleasant alarm at sight of a large-worded advertisement along the back of a bench on which they would sit. “You furnish the Girl, We furnish the House,” screamed the bench to him above the name of an enterprising tradesman that came in time to bite itself deeply into his memory. Of course it would be absurd, but stranger things, he thought, had happened. He wondered if the girl was as afraid of him as of other men. She seemed not to be, but you couldn’t tell much about her. She had kissed him one day with a strange warmth of manner, but it had been quite publicly in the presence of other people. When he left her at her door now it was after the least sentimental of partings, perhaps a shake of her hard little hand, or perhaps only a “S’long--see you at the show-shop!” It was on one of these nights that she first invited him to dine with the Montague family. “I tried last night to get you on the telephone,” she explained, “but they kept giving me someone else, or maybe I called wrong. Ain’t these six-figured Los Angeles telephone numbers the limit? When you call 208972 or something, it sounds like paging a box-car. I was going to ask you over. Ma had cooked a lovely mess of corned beef and cabbage. Anyway, you come eat with us to-morrow night, will you? She’ll have something else cooked up that will stick to the merry old slats. You can come home with me when we get in from work.”