CHAPTER VII
Kedzie wore her new frock when she reached the studio on Monday morning. She greeted Mr. Garfinkel with an entreating smile, and was alarmed by the remoteness of his response. He was cold because she was not for him. He led her respectfully to the anteroom of the sacred inclosure where Ferriday was behaving like a lion in a cage, belching his wrath at his keepers, ordering the fund-finders to find more funds for his great picture. It threatened to bankrupt them before it was finished, but he derided them as imbeciles, moneychangers, misers.
Garfinkel was manifestly afraid of Ferriday's very echo, and he cowered a little when Ferriday burst through the door with mane bristling and fangs bared.
“Well, well, well!” Ferriday stormed. “What do you want, Garfinkel? What do you want, Garfinkel? What do you want?”
“You told me to bring Miss Adair to you as soon as she arrived, and—”
The lion roared as gentle as a sucking dove.
“And this is Miss Adair, is it? Of course it is. Welcome to our little boiler-factory, my dear. Come in and sit down. Garfinkel, get her a chair and then get out. Sit down, child. I never bite pretty girls.”
Kedzie was pleasantly terrified, and she wondered what would befall her next. She gave the retreating Garfinkel no further thought. She sat and trembled before the devouring gaze of the great Ferriday. He studied her professionally, but he was intensely, extravagantly human. That was why he appealed to the public so potently. He took their feelings and set them on fire and juggled with them flaming.
He had such caloric that he kindled actors and actresses to unsuspected brilliances. He made tinder of the dry-as-dusts, and he brought the warm-hearted to a white-hot glow.