“What about tea? You’ve got to drink tea, my good lady, though you have fifty scenes to study. And you can’t read and eat too. If you do, you’ll get indigestion, and if you get indigestion——” She laughed. “If my landlady will loan me her parlour, you may come to tea at half-past four,” she said; “and if you have another engagement at five o’clock, you’ll be able to meet it.” Jack Knebworth was waiting for him when he went into the studio. “Heard about that entry in the scenario book?” he asked. “I see you have. What do you think of it?” Without waiting for a reply: “It looks queer to me. Foss was an unmitigated liar. That fellow couldn’t see straight. I’ve got a little bone to pick with him on the matter of a fee he accepted from a screen-struck lady who wished to be featured in one of my productions.” “How’s the girl?” asked Michael. “You mean Adele? Really, she’s wonderful, Brixan! I’m touching wood all the time”—he put his hand on the table piously—“because I know that there’s a big shock coming to me somewhere and somehow. Those things do not happen in real life. The only stars that are born in a night are the fireworks produced by crazy vice-presidents who have promised to do something for Mamie and can’t break their word. And Mamie, supported by six hundred extras and half a million dollars’ worth of sets, two chariot races and the fall of Babylon, all produced regardless of expense, manages to get over by giving a fine imitation of what the Queen of Persia would look like if she’d been born a chorus girl and trained as a mannequin. And she’s either got so few clothes that you don’t look at her face, or so many clothes that you don’t notice her acting. “Those kind of stars are like the dust of the Milky Way: there is so much splendour all round them that it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t there at all. But this girl Leamington, she’s getting over entirely and absolutely by sheer, unadulterated grey matter. I tell you, Brixan, it’s not right. These things do not happen except in the imagination of press agents. There’s something wrong with that kid.” “Wrong?” said Michael, startled. Knebworth nodded. “Something radically wrong. There’s a snag somewhere. She’s either going to let me down by vanishing before the picture’s through, or else she’s going to be arrested for driving a car along Regent Street in a highly intoxicated condition!” Michael laughed. “I think she’ll do neither,” he said. “Heard about Mendoza’s new company?” asked old Jack, filling his pipe. Michael pulled up a chair and sat down. “No, I haven’t.”