Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/115

 to the retreating back of Henshaw: "All right, old top, but it'll take a good lens to catch any blight on this bunch—most of 'em haven't worked a lick in six weeks, and they're tickled pink." He knew without turning that this was the Montague girl trying to be funny at the expense of Henshaw who was safely beyond hearing. He thought she would be a disturbing element in the scene, but in this he was wrong, for he bent upon the wine glass a look more than ever fraught with jaded world-weariness. The babble of Broadway was resumed as Henshaw went back to the cameras.

Presently a camera was pushed forward. Merton Gill hardly dared look up, but he knew it was halted at no great distance from him. "Now, here's rather a good little bit," Henshaw was saying. "You, there, the girl in black, go on—tease him the way you were, and he's to give you that same look. Got that cigarette going? All ready. Lights! Camera!" Merton was achieving his first close-up. Under the hum of the lights he was thinking that he had been a fool not to learn dancing, no matter how the Reverend Otto Carmichael denounced it as a survival from the barbaric Congo. He was also thinking that the Montague girl ought to be kept away from people who were trying to do really creative things, and he was bitterly regretting that he had no silver cigarette case. The gloom of his young face was honest gloom. He was aware that his companion leaned vivaciously toward him with gay chatter and gestures. Very slowly he inhaled from a cigarette that was already distasteful—adding no little to the desired effect—and very slowly he exhaled as he raised to hers the bored eyes of a soul quite disillusioned. Here, indeed, was the blight of Broadway.

"All right, first rate!" called Henshaw. "Now get this bunch down here." The camera was pushed on.

"Gee, that was luck!" said the girl. "Of course it'll be cut to a flash, but I bet we stand out, at that." She was excited now, no longer needing to act.

From the table back of Merton came the voice of the