"They haven't started cutting yet," she said delightedly. "All his close-ups will be in. Goody! There's the lad-get him? Ain't he the actin'est thing you ever saw? Now wait-you'll see others."

Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was run for the sole purpose of exposing to this small audience Merton Gill's notion of being consumed with ennui among pleasures that had palled. In the gambling-hall bit it could be observed that he thought not too well of cigarettes. "He screens well, too," remarked the girl. "Of course I couldn't be sure of that."

"He screens all right," agreed Baird.

"I think he looks like the first plume on a hearse."

"He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind you of? Catch this next one in the gambling hell--get the profile and the eyebrows and the chin--there!"

"Why--" Baird chuckled. "I'm a Swede if he don't look like--"

"You got it!" the girl broke in excitedly. "I knew you would. I didn't at first, this morning, because he was so hungry and needed a shave, and he darned near had me bawling when he couldn't hold his cup o' coffee except with two hands. But what d'you think?--pretty soon he tells me himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee and wouldn't mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he prefers Western stuff. Wouldn't that get you?"

The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill face in the light of this new knowledge.