"Is it you, then, who are this Combat Club which would rent from me the hall next door!" he exclaimed, showing every faultless tooth in his head.

Palla smiled: "I am empowered by the club to sign a lease."

"That is sufficient!" exclaimed Puma, with a superb gesture. "So! It is signed! Your desire is enough. The matter is accomplished when you express the wish!"

Palla blushed a little but smilingly affixed her signature to the papers elaborately presented by Angelo Puma.

"A lease?" he remarked, with a flourish of his large, sanguine, and jewelled hand. "A detail merely for your security, Miss Dumont. For me, I require only the expression of your slightest wish. That, to me, is a command more binding than the seal of the notary!"

And he flashed his dazzling smile on Palla, who was tucking her copy of the agreement into her m.u.f.f.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Puma," she said, almost inclined to laugh at his extravagances. And she laid down a certified check to cover the first month's rental.

Mr. Puma bowed; his large, heavily lashed black eyes were very brilliant; his mouth much too red under the silky black moustache.

"For me," he said impulsively, "art alone matters. What is money? What is rent? What are all the annoying details of commerce? Interruptions to the soul-flow! Checks to the fountain jet of inspiration! Art only is important. Have you ever seen a cinema studio, Miss Dumont?"

Palla never had.

"Would it interest you, perhaps?"

"Thank you--some time----"

"It is but a step! They are working. A peep will take but a moment--if you please--a thousand excuses that I proceed to show you the way!----"

She stepped through a door. From a narrow anteroom she saw the set-scene in a ghastly light, where men in soiled shirt-sleeves dragged batteries of electric lights about, each underbred face as livid as the visage of a corpse too long unburied.

There were women there, too, looking a little more human in their makeups under the horrible bluish glare. Camera men were busy; a cadaverous and profane director, with his shabby coat-collar turned up, was talking loudly in a Broadway voice and jargon to a bewildered girl wearing a ball gown.

As Puma led Palla through the corridor from part.i.tion to part.i.tion, disclosing each set with its own scene and people--the whole studio full of blatant noise and ghastly faces or painted ones, Palla thought she had never before beheld such a concentration of every type of commonness in her entire existence. Faces, shapes, voices, language, all were essentially the properties of congenital vulgarity. The language, too, had to be sharply rebuked by Puma once or twice amid the wrangling of director, camera man and petty subordinates.

"So intense are the emotions evoked by a fanatic devotion to art," he explained to Palla, "that, at moments, the old, direct and vigorous Anglo-Saxon tongue is heard here, unashamed. What will you? It is art!

It is the fervour that forgets itself in blind devotion--in rapturous self-dedication to the G.o.d of Truth and Beauty!"

As she turned away, she heard from a neighbouring part.i.tion the hoa.r.s.e expostulations of one of Art's blind acolytes: "Say, f'r Christ's sake, Delmour, what the h.e.l.l's loose in your bean! Yeh done it wrong an' yeh know d.a.m.n well yeh done it wrong----"

Puma opened another door: "One of our projection rooms, Miss Dumont.

If it is your pleasure to see a few reels run off----"

"Thank you, but I really must go----"

The office door stood open and she went out that way. Mr. Puma confronted her, moistly brilliant of eye:

"For me, Miss Dumont, I am frank like there never was a child in arms!

Yes. I am all art; all heart. For me, beauty is G.o.d!--" he kissed his fat fingers and wafted the caress toward the dirty ceiling.

"Please excuse," he said with his powerful smile, "but have you ever, perhaps, thought, Miss Dumont, of the screen as a career?"

"I?" asked Palla, surprised and amused. "No, Mr. Puma, I haven't."

"A test! Possibly, in you, latent, sleeps the exquisite apotheosis of Art incarnate! Who can tell? You have youth, beauty, a mind! Yes. Who knows if, also, happily, genius slumbers within? Yes?"

"I'm very sure it doesn't," replied Palla, laughing.

"Ah! Who can be sure of anything--even of heaven!" cried Puma.

"Very true," said Palla, trying to speak seriously, "But the career of a moving picture actress does not attract me."

"The emoluments are enormous!"

"Thank you, no----"

"A test! We try! It would be amusing for you to see yourself upon the screen as you are, Miss Dumont? As you _are_--young, beautiful, vivacious----"

He still blocked her way, so she said, laying her gloved hand on the k.n.o.b:

"Thank you very much. Some day, perhaps. But I really must go----"

He immediately bowed, opened the gla.s.s door, and went with her to the brick arch.

"I do not think you know," he said, "that I have entered partnership with a friend of yours?"

"A friend of mine?"

"Mr. Elmer Skidder."

"Oh," she exclaimed, smilingly, "I hope the partnership will be a fortunate one. Will you kindly inform Mr. Skidder of my congratulations and best wishes for his prosperity? And you may say that I shall be glad to hear from him about his new enterprise."

To Mr. Puma's elaborate leave-taking she vouchsafed a quick, amused nod, then hurried away eastward to keep her appointment at the Canteen.

About five o'clock she experienced a healthy inclination for tea and wavered between the Plaza and home. Ilse and Marya were with her, but an indefinable something caused her to hesitate, and finally to let them go to the Plaza without her.

What might be the reason of this sudden whim for an unpremeditated cup of tea at home she scarcely took the trouble to a.n.a.lyse. Yet, she was becoming conscious of a subtle and increasing exhilaration as she approached her house and mounted the steps.

Suddenly, as she fitted the latch-key, her heart leaped and she knew why she had come home.

For a moment her fast pulse almost suffocated her. Was she mad to return here on the wildest chance that Jim might have come--might be inside, waiting? And what in the world made her suppose so?--for she had neither seen him nor heard from him in many days.

"I'm certainly a little crazy," she thought as she opened the door. At the same moment her eyes fell on his overcoat and hat and stick.

Her skirt was rather tight, but her limbs were supple and her feet light, and she ran upstairs to the living room.

As he rose from an armchair she flung her arms out with a joyous little cry and wrapped them tightly around his neck, m.u.f.f, reticule and all.

"You darling," he was saying over and over in a happy but rather stupid voice, and crushing her narrow hands between his; "--you adorable child, you wonderful girl----"