She made the moving-picture scheme a good excuse for asking Jim to grant her a talk--a business talk. To protect herself from him and from herself she made a convenience of Mrs. Neff's home. Jim met her there. She was not looking her best and her mood was one of artificial indirectness that offended him. He never dreamed that it was because she was afraid to show him how glad she was to see him. He was furious at her--so he said he would do her bidding. She dumped the financial and mechanical ends of the enterprise on his hands and he accepted the burden. He had nothing else pressing for his time. One of his first duties, Charity told him, was to call at the Hyperfilm Studio and try to engage that Mr. Ferriday for director and learn the ropes. “While you're there you might inquire about that little girl you pulled out of the pool. I sent her there. They promised her a job. Her name was--I have it at home in my address-book. I'll telephone it to you.” And she did. She had no more acquaintance with the history Kedzie was making in the moving-picture world than she had of the sensational rise of the latest politician in Tibet. Neither had Jim. He had been traveling about on his mother's yacht and in less correct societies, trying to convince himself that he was cured of Charity. He did not know that the first pictures of Anita Adair were causing lines to gather outside the moving-picture theaters of numberless cities and towns. When his car halted before the big studio where Ferriday was high priest Jim might have been a traveler entering a temple in Lassa, for all he knew of its rites and its powers. No more did the doorman know the power and place of Jim Dyckman. When Jim said he had an appointment with Mr. Ferriday the doorman thumbed him up the marble stairs. There were many doors, but no signs on them, and Dyckman blundered about. At length he turned down a corridor and found himself in the workshop. A vast room it was, the floor hidden with low canvas walls and doors marked “Keep out.” Overhead were girders of steel from which depended heavy chains supporting hundreds of slanting tubes glowing with green fire. From somewhere in the inclosures came a voice in distress. It was the first time Dyckman ever heard Ferriday's voice, and it puzzled him as it cried: “Come on, choke her--choke harder, you fool; you're not a masseur--you're a murderer. Now drag her across to the edge of the well. Pause, look back. Come on, Melnotte: yell at him! 'Stop, stop, you dog!' Turn round, Higgins; draw your knife. Go to it now! Give 'em a real fight. That's all right. Only a little cut. The blood looks good. Get up, Miss Adair; crawl away on hands and knees. Don't forget you've been choked. Now take the knife away, Melnotte. Rise; look triumphant; see the girl. Get to him, Miss Adair. Easy on the embrace: you're a shy little thing. 'My hero! you have saved me!' Now, Melnotte: 'Clarice! it is you! you!' Cut! How many feet, Jones?