Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/177

 There it was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might almost have been taken for a petrified specimen of prehistoric bread. Yet it proved to be rarely palatable. It's flavour was exquisite. It melted in the mouth.

Somewhat refreshed by this modest cheer, he climbed from the window of the Crystal Palace with his mind busy on two tracks. While the letter to Gashwiler composed itself, with especially clear directions about where the return money should be sent, he was also warning himself to remain throughout the day at a safe distance from the door of the cafeteria. He had proved the wisdom of this even the day before that had started with a bounteous breakfast. To-day the aroma of cooked food occasionally wafted from the cafeteria door would prove, he was sure, to be more than he could bear

He rather shunned the stages to-day, keeping more to himself. The collar, he had to confess, was no longer, even to the casual eye, what a successful screen-actor's collar should be. The sprouting beard might still be misconstrued as the whim of a director sanctified to realism every day it was getting to look more like that but no director would have commanded the wearing of such a collar except in actual work where it might have been a striking detail in the apparel of an underworking, one of those creatures who became the tools of rich but unscrupulous roués who are bent upon the moral destruction of beautiful young screen heroines. He knew it was now that sort of collar. No use now in pretending that it had been worn yesterday for the first time.