Critics of then will be regretting that American fiction, poetry, drama, art, and journalism are so inferior to foreign work, and foreign critics will admit it and tell them why. Some military writers will be pointing out that war is no longer possible, and others will be crying out that it is inevitable and America unprepared.
Doctors will be complaining that modern restlessness is creating new nervous diseases, as doctors did in 1916 A.D., B.C., and B.A. (which is, Before Adam). Doctors will complain that modern mothers do not nurse their own babies—which has always been both true and untrue—and that women do not wear enough clothes for health, not to mention modesty.
In fact, Kedzie, if she lives, will find the spirit of the world almost altogether what grandmothers have always found it. But Kedzie must be left to find this out for herself.
When, then, Kedzie saw how beautifully she photographed and how well she looked as an old lady, she wept rapturously and sighed, “I'll never give up the pictures.”
Ferriday sighed, too, for that meant to his knowing soul that she was not long for this movie world. But he did not tell her so. He told her:
“You're as wise as you are beautiful. You'll be as famous as you'll be rich. And this Dyckman lad can hurry things up.”
“How?” asked Kedzie, already foreseeing his game.
“The backers of the Hyperfilm Company are getting writer's cramp in the spending hand. They call it conservatism, but it's really cowardice. The moving-picture business has gone from the Golconda to the gambling stage. A few years ago nearly anybody could get rich in a minute. A lot of cheap photographers and street-car conductors were caught in a cloudburst of money and thought they made it. They treated money like rain, and the wastefulness in this trade has been rivaled by nothing recent except the European war. Some of the biggest studios are dark; some of the leaders of yesterday are so bankrupt that their banks don't dare let 'em drop for fear they'll bust and blow up the whole business. Most of the actors are not getting half what they're advertised to get, but they're getting four times what they ought to get.
“There are a few men and women who are earning even more than they are getting, and that's a million a minute. Now, the one chance for you, Anita, is to have some tremendous personal backing. You've come into the game a little late. This firm you're with is tottering. They blame me for it, but it's not my fault altogether. Anyway, this company is riding for a fall, and down we may all go in the dust with a dozen other big companies, any day.”
Kedzie's heart stopped. In the dark she clutched Ferriday's arm so tightly that he ouched. To have her career smashed at its beginning would be just her luck. It grew suddenly more dear than ever, because it was imperiled. The thought of having her pictures fail of their mission throughout the world was as hideous as was the knowledge to Carlyle that the only manuscript of his history was but a shovelful of ashes.