She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it so that she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too well wrought and the working out of it too direct.
She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected the idea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her the recognition of her own brain-child.
So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about the scenario contest.
“Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!” he chuckled. “I told you you would feel different. I only wish you would get a real smart idea for a picture.”
“Nothing like that!” she told him, shaking her head. “I could not think of writing a new scenario. You don’t know what it means to me—the loss of that picture I had struggled so long with and thought so much about. I——
“But let us not talk of it,” she hastened to add. “I am curious regarding the stories that have been offered to you.”
“You need not fear competition,” he replied. “Just as I told you, all these perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas they have played or seen played. They haven’t got the idea of writing for the screen at all, although they work before the camera.”
“And that is no wonder!” exclaimed Ruth. “The way the directors take scenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of the story they are making. But these stories?”
“So far, I haven’t found a possible scenario. And I have looked at more than a score.”
“You don’t mean it!”