LITMIR.BIZ

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palm up. It is a slender, delicate hand, yet there is a look of strength to it for all its whiteness. You lay a bill in it, and she hands you the phial. That is all. You leave, and she closes the Oregon pine door quietly behind you.

      As she turns about toward the divan again, she hesitates. Her eyes wander to a closed door at one side of the room. She takes a half step toward it and then draws back, her shoulders against the door. Her fingers are clenched tightly, the nails sinking into the soft flesh of her palms; but, still, her eyes are upon the closed door. They are staring and wild like those of a beast at bay. She is trembling from head to foot.

      For a minute, she stands there, fighting her grim battle alone and without help. Then, as with a last mighty effort, she drags her eyes from the closed door and glances toward the divan. With unsteady step, she returns to it and throws herself down among the pillows.

      Her shoulders move to dry sobs, she clutches the pillows frantically in her strong fingers, she rolls from side to side as people do who are suffering physical torture; but, at last, she relaxes and lies quiet.

      A clock ticks monotonously from the mantel. Its sound fills the whole room, growing with fiendish intensity to a horrid din that pounds upon taut, raw nerves. She covers her ears with her palms to shut it out, but it bores insistently through. She clutches her thick hair with both hands; her fingers are entangled in it. For a long minute, she lies thus, prone, and then her slippered feet commence to fly up and down as she kicks her toes in rapid succession into the unresisting divan.

      Suddenly, she leaps to her feet and rushes toward the mantel.

      “Damn you!” she screams and, seizing the clock, dashes it to pieces upon the tiled hearth.

      Then, her eyes leap to the closed door; and now, without any hesitation, almost defiantly, she crosses the room, opens the door, and disappears within the bathroom beyond.

      Five minutes later, the door opens again, and the woman comes back into the living room. She is humming a gay little tune. Stopping at a table, she takes a cigarette from a carved wooden box and lights it. Then, she crosses to the baby grand piano in one corner and commences to play. Her voice, rich and melodious, rises in a sweet old song of love and youth and happiness.

      Something had mended her shattered nerves. Upon the hearth lies the shattered clock. It can never be mended.

      If you should return now and look at her, you would see that she was even more beautiful than you had at first suspected. She has put her hair in order once more and has arranged her dress. You see now that her figure is as perfect as her face, and, when she crossed to the piano, you could not but note the easy grace of her carriage.

      Her name — her professional name — is Gaza de Lure. You may have seen her in small parts on the screen and may have wondered why someone did not star her. Of recent months, you have seen her less and less often, and you have been sorry, for you had learned to admire the sweetness and purity that were reflected in her every expression and mannerism. You liked her, too, because she was as beautiful as she was good — for you knew that she was good just by looking at her in the pictures; but, above all, you liked her for her acting, for it was unusually natural and unaffected, and something told you that here was a born actress who would someday be famous.

      Two years ago, she came to Hollywood from a little town in the Middle West — that is, two years before you looked in upon her at the bungalow on the Vista del Paso. She was fired by high purpose then. Her child’s heart, burning with lofty ambition, had set its desire upon a noble goal. The broken bodies of a thousand other children dotted the road to the same goal, but she did not see them, or seeing, did not understand.

      Stronger, perhaps, than her desire for fame was an unselfish ambition that centered about the mother whom she had left behind. To that mother, the girl’s success would mean greater comfort and happiness than she had known since a worthless husband had deserted her shortly after the baby came — the baby who was now known as Gaza de Lure.

      There had been the usual rounds of the studios, the usual disappointments followed by more or less regular work as an extra girl. During this period, she had learned many things — some of which she had never thought as having any possible bearing upon her chances for success.

      For example, a director had asked her to go with him to Vernon one evening for dinner and dancing, and she had refused for several reasons — one being her certainty that her mother would disapprove and another the fact that the director was a married man. The following day, the girl who had accompanied him was cast for a part which had been promised to Gaza and for which Gaza was peculiarly suited. As she was leaving the lot that day, greatly disappointed, the assistant director had stopped her.

      “Too bad, kid,” he said. “I’m mighty sorry; for I always liked you. If I can ever help you, I sure will.”

      The kindly words brought the tears to her eyes. Here, at least, was one good man; but he was not in much of a position to help her.

      “You’re very kind,” she said; “but I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do.”

      “Don’t be too sure of that,” he answered. “I’ve got enough on that big stiff so’s he has to do about as I say. The trouble with you is you ain’t enough of a good fellow. You got to be a good fellow to get on in pictures. Just step out with me some night, an’ I promise you you’ll get a job!”

      The suddenly widening childish eyes meant nothing to the shallow mind of the callow little shrimp, whose brain pan would doubtless have burst under the pressure of a single noble thought. As she turned quickly and walked away, he laughed aloud. She had not gone back to that studio.

      In the months that followed, she had had many similar experiences until she had become hardened enough to feel the sense of shame and insult less strongly than at first.

      She could talk back to them now and tell them what she thought of them; but she found that she got fewer and fewer engagements. There was always enough to feed and clothe her and to pay for the little room she rented; but there seemed to be no future, and that had been all that she cared about.

      She would not have minded hard work — she had expected that. Nor did she fear disappointments and a slow, tedious road; for though she was but a young girl, she was not without character, and she had a good head on those trim shoulders of hers. She was unsophisticated yet mature, too, for her years; for she had always helped her mother to plan the conservation of their meager resources.

      Many times, she had wanted to go back to her mother, but she had stayed on because she still had hopes and because she shrank from the fact of defeat admitted. How often she cried herself to sleep in those lonely nights after days of bitter disillusionment! The great ambition that had been her joy was now her sorrow. The vain little conceit that she had woven about her screen name was but a pathetic memory.

      She had never told her mother that she had taken the name of Gaza de Lure, for she had dreamed of the time when it would leap into national prominence overnight in some wonderful picture, and her mother, unknowing, would see the film and recognize her. How often she had pictured the scene in their little theater at home — her sudden recognition by her mother and their friends — the surprise, the incredulity, and then the pride and happiness in her mother’s face! How they would whisper! And after the show, they would gather around her mother all excitedly talking at the same time.

      And then, she had met Wilson Crumb. She had had a small part in a picture in which he played lead and which he also directed. He had been very kind to her, very courteous. She had thought him handsome, notwithstanding a certain weakness in his face; but what had attracted her most was the uniform courtesy of his attitude toward all the women of the company. Here at last, she thought, she had found a real gentleman whom she could trust implicitly; and, once again, her ambition lifted its drooping head.

      She thought of what another girl had once told her — an older girl who had been in pictures for several years.

      “They are not all bad, dear,” her friend had said. “There are good and bad in the picture game, just as there are in any sort of business. It’s been your rotten luck to run up against

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