“He’s a Jew, Mr. Soloman is a Jew. And whoever deceived a Jew? They are the keenest people living. I didn’t know he was a Jew. If I had known—”
If she had known, what then? Would she have refused? She did not know.
“There’s nothing for it now but to go on until some one shouts: ‘Stop!’” she assured herself as her mind sobered and her heart ceased its wild flutter.
She was still very much in the doldrums when, hours later, she sat wrapped in a satin bathrobe, looking out at the city by night.
“If I only were not so impulsive!” she was saying to Florence. “I meant to unfold my bright ideas one at a time. And there I blurted them out all at once, like some little child.
“And now,” she sighed, “he says there’ll be nothing more done on the picture for two days.
“Nothing more!” Her tone took on a bitter tinge. “Nothing has been done. We went through the motions and the dialogue to-day; did it just the best we knew how, too! The camera men seemed to be making shots. But it was all a fake. People in the stadium got a big kick out of it. But it made me feel all sick inside.
“The others in the cast are so fine, too.” Her voice changed. “This boy who’s playing the part of an Italian riding into the mountains on a donkey is a dear. Just a kid, but such smooth cheeks, such big eyes, such black hair!
“And he’s nice! Not hard as steel the way you expect movie men to be. He told me this was the first real part he’d ever been in, and oh, how he did want it to be a success! But he’d heard it was all set to be a flop.”
“And did you tell him you were going to make it a grand success?”