“You are to look, walk, talk, eat, weep, whimper, smile, sob, stalk, twirl, mince, mope, wriggle, squirm, turn, stand, run, race, limp, love, lallygag, or any old other darn thing I mention and demand just as you hear me give the orders to do it or I’ll take you and your movie aspirations and bury them for once and all ten thousand feet deep right in here in the sands of the Sahara!
“Once again,” he fixed her with his piercing eye, “I ask—do you get me?”
What Verbeena got was very hot under her boyish Eton collar and meant to answer him scornfully but she felt her heart beating as if it meant to beat it altogether.
However, the Movie Maharajah was not paying the slightest attention to how she took it at all. He was giving his attention to a flock of camera men, actors and such like arriving in 2,000 aeroplanes that left for the Sahara that morning from Los Angeles.
She could not fight down the thrill that came at the study she then began somewhat surreptitiously to make of the commanding figure of the Movie Monarch among his men. The way he talked to them was a shame. The way they took it, cringing, cowering, fawning yet with adoration in their eyes, was a wonder.
He seemed suddenly to remember her.
“What are you standing there goofing for and staring that way at me? Don’t you know that you are to be a girl in the first reel?”
“I—I,” hot shame mantled Verbeena’s cheek. Why was it she did not step straight forward and punch him in the nose? But somehow, he made her so acutely conscious of her sex, or, rather, of what sex he wanted of her.
“You are to be a girl in this first reel I tell you. Get back into your tent and take that football suit off and put on something close, clinging, and when you get it on work up a good, hippy walk—hippy and a bit slouchy. Go on instantly, and get him off and put her on.”