There was a table in the middle of the scene. Johansen instructed her. He put a letter on the table.
"Now, Miss Deane, you enter from the left there, you're kinda blue, downhearted—see? Then you spy this letter. You pick it up. It's for you, and you recognize the handwriting. It's from your sweetie—get me? You smile. You open the letter. Then your smile fades away and you weep. Get me? Try it. Now, mind, it don't really matter if you can act or not. Zenda wouldn't care about that. He could teach a wooden image to act. It's just your registering—that's all. Ready? Camera!"
In Zenith, when she had played in the high-school shows, Clancy had been self-conscious, she knew. And here, with only a bored assistant director and an equally bored camera-man to observe her, she was even more self-conscious. So she was agreeably surprised when Johansen complimented her after the scene had been taken.
"You done fine!" he said. "Now let's try another. This time, you come in from the right, happy-like. You see the letter and get blue. You read it and get happy. Got it? Shoot!"
She went through the little scene, this time with less self-consciousness. Johansen smiled kindly upon her.
"I think you got something," he told her. "Can't tell, of course, yet. The screen is funny. Prettiest girl in the world may be a lemon on the screen. Same goes both ways. But we'll hope."
But he couldn't dash her sense of success. She rode on air to Sally Henderson's office. Her employer was not there, Clancy had telephoned before meeting Walbrough, asking permission to be late, and also apologizing for not having returned to the office the afternoon before.
"Miss Henderson's gone out of town for the week-end," young Guernsey, the too foppishly-dressed office-manager, told her. "She left this for you."
"This" was an envelope which Clancy quickly opened. It contained, not her discharge, which she had vaguely expected—why should her employer write to her otherwise?—but twenty-five dollars, half a week's salary. And Clancy was down to her last dollar!
"We close at one on Saturdays," Guernsey informed her. He himself was beating the closing-time by three-quarters of an hour, but Clancy waited until one o'clock. Then she left. She called upon Miss Conover, but the plump, merry little dressmaker had nothing ready to try on her newest customer.