He looked up slowly. Ordinarily he would have risen, for this middle-aged American in normal moments was the soul of courtesy. But just at that moment, his respect for womanhood was something below zero. His look was blank, though the director in him instinctively approved her values. She was pretty, with regular features, a mop of brown hair in which the sunshine of childhood still lingered. Her mouth firm, delicately shaped, her figure slim—perfect in many ways. Jack had seen many beautiful extras in his career, and had passed through stages of enthusiasm and despair as he had seen them translated to the screen—pretty wooden figures without soul or expression, gauche of movement, hopeless. Too pretty to be clever, too conscious of their beauty to be natural. Dolls without intelligence or initiative—just “extras” who could wear clothes in a crowd, who could smile and dance mechanically, fit for extras and nothing else all the days of their lives. “Well?” he asked brusquely. “Is there a part I could play in this production, Mr. Knebworth?” she asked. His shaven lips curled. “Aren’t you playing a part, Miss—can’t remember your name—Leamington, is it?” “I’m certainly playing—I’m one of the figures in the background,” she smiled. “I don’t want a big part, but I’m sure I could do better than I have done.” “I’m mighty sure you couldn’t do worse than some people,” he growled. “No, there’s no part for you, friend. There’ll be no story to shoot unless things alter. That’s what!” She was going away when he recalled her. “Left a good home, I guess?” he said. “Thought picture-making meant a million dollars a year an’ a new automobile every Thursday? Or maybe you were holding down a good job as a stenographer and got it under your toque that you’d make Hollywood feel small if you got your chance? Go back home, kid, and tell the old man that a typewriter’s got a sunlight arc beaten to death as an instrument of commerce.” The girl smiled faintly. “I didn’t come into pictures because I was stage-struck, if that is what you mean, Mr. Knebworth. I came in knowing just how hard a life it might be. I have no parents.” He looked up at her curiously. “How do you live?” he asked. “There’s no money in ‘extra’ work—not on this lot, anyway. Might be if I was one of those billion dollar directors who did pictures with chariot races. But I don’t. My ideal picture has got five characters.” “I have a little income from my mother, and I write,” said the girl. She stopped as she saw him looking past her to the studio entrance, and, turning her head, saw a remarkable figure standing in the doorway. At first she thought it was an actor who had made up for a film test.