The next morning that parrot, still unmurdered, woke Kedzie early. She buried one ear deep in the pillow and covered the other with her hair and her hand. The parrot's voice receded to a distance, but a still smaller voice began to call to her. She was squirming deeper for a long snooze when her foot struck another.

Her husband!—King Log, audibly a-slumber. She pouted drowsily, frowned, slid away, and tried to commit temporary suicide by drowning herself in sleep.

Then her stupor faded as the tiny call resounded again in her soul. She was no longer merely Mrs. Anita Gilfoyle, the flat-dwelling nobody. She was now Anita Adair, the screen-queen. She was needed at the studio.

She sat up, looked at her husband, her unacknowledged and unacknowledging husband. A mysterious voice drew her from his side as cogently as the hand of Yahweh drew the rib that became a woman from under the elbow of Adam.

She rose and looked back and down at the man whom the law had united her with indissolubly. Eve must have wondered back at Adam with the same sense of escape while he lay asleep. According to one of the conflicting legends of the two gods of Genesis, woman was then actually one with man. Marriage has ever since been an effort to put her back among his ribs, but she has always refused to be intercostal. It is an ancient habit to pretend that she is, and sometimes she pretends to snuggle into place. Yet she has never been, can never be, re-ribbed—especially not since marriage is an attempt to fit her into the anatomy of an Adam who is always, in a sense, a stranger to her.

Kedzie gazed on her Adam with a sense of departure, of farewell. She felt a trifle sorry for Gilfoyle, and the moment she resolved to quit him he became a little more attractive.

There was something pitiful about his helpless sprawl: his very awkwardness endeared him infinitesimally. She nearly felt that tenderness which good wives and fond mothers feel for the gawky creatures they hallow with their devotion.

Kedzie leaned forward to kiss the poor wretch good-by, but, unfortunately (or fortunately), a restlessness seized him, he rolled over on his other side, and one limp, floppy hand struck Kedzie on the nose.

She sprang back with a gasp of pain and hurried away, feeling abused and exiled.

At the studio she was received by Garfinkel with distinction. Ferriday came out to meet her with a shining morning face and led her to the office of the two backers.

A contract was waiting for her and the pen and ink were handy. Kedzie had never seen a contract before and she was as afraid of this one as if it were her death warrant. It was her life warrant, rather. She tried to read it as if she had signed dozens of contracts, but she fooled nobody. She could not make head or tail of “the party of the first part” and the terms exacted of movie actors. She understood nothing but the salary. One hundred dollars a week! That bloomed like a rose in the crabbed text. She would have signed almost anything for that.

The deed was finally done. Her hundred-odd pounds of flesh belonged to the Hyperfilm Company. The partners gave her their short, warm hands. Ferriday wrung her palm with his long, lean fingers. Then he caught her by the elbow and whisked her into his studio. He began to describe her first scene in the big production. The backers had insisted that she prove her ability as a minor character in a play featuring another woman. Kedzie did not mind, especially when Ferriday winked and whispered: “We'll make you make her look like something the cat brought in. First of all, those gowns of yours—”

She had told him of her ill luck the day before in finding Lady Powell-Carewe out. He sent her flying down again in his limousine. She stepped into it now with assurance. It was beginning to be her very own. At least she was beginning to own the owner.

She felt less excitement about the ride now that it was not her first. She noticed that the upholstery was frayed in spots. Other cars passed hers. The chauffeur was not so smart as some of the drivers. And he was alone. On a few of the swagger limousines there were two men in livery on the box. She felt rather ashamed of having only one.

Her haughty discontent fell from her when she arrived at Lady Powell-Carewe's shop. She wished she had not come alone. She did not know how to behave. And what in Heaven's name did you call her—“Your Ladyship” or “Your Majesty” or what?

She walked in so meekly and was so simply clad that nobody in the place paid any heed to her at first. It was a very busy place, with girls rushing to and fro or sauntering limberly up and down in tremendously handsome gowns.

Kedzie could not pick out Lady Powell-Carewe. One of the promenaders was so tall and so haughty that Kedzie thought she must be at least a “Lady.” She was in a silvery, shimmery green-and-gray gown, and the man whom the customers called “Mr. Charles” said:

“Madame calls this the Blown Poplar. Isn't it bully?”

Kedzie caught Mr. Charles's eye. He spoke to her sharply:

“Well?”

He evidently thought her somebody looking for a job as bundle-carrier. She was pretty, but there were tons of pretty girls. They bored Mr. Charles to death. He had a whole beagle-pack of them to care for.

Kedzie poked at him Ferriday's letter of introduction addressed to Lady Powell-Carewe. Mr. Charles took it and, not knowing what it contained, bore it into the other room without asking Kedzie to sit down.

He reappeared at the door and bowed to her with great amazement. She slipped into a chaotic room where there were heaps of fabrics thrown about like rubbish, long streamers of samples littering a desk full of papers.

A sumptuous creature of stately manner bowed creakily to Kedzie, and Kedzie said, trying to remember the pronunciation:

“Lady Pole-Carrier?”

A little plainly dressed woman replied: “Yes, my child. So you're the Adair thing that Ferriday is gone half-witted over. He's just been talking my ear off about you. Sit down. Stop where you are. Let me see you. Turn around. I see.” She turned to the stately dame. “Rather nice, isn't she, Mrs. Congdon? H'mm!” She beckoned Kedzie to come close. “What are your eyes like?” She lorgnetted the terrified girl, as if she were a throat-specialist. “Take off that horrid hat. Let me see your hair. H'mm! Rather nice hair, isn't it, Mrs. Congdon?—that is, if she knew how to do it. Let me see. Yes, I get your color, but it will be a job to suit you and that infernal movie-camera. It kills my colors so! I have to keep remembering that crimson photographs black and cream is dirty, and blue and yellow are just nothing.”

Mr. Charles came in to say that Mrs. Noxon was outside. Kedzie recognized the great name with terror. Lady Powell-Carewe snapped:

“Tell the old camel I'm ill. I can't see her to-day. I'm ill to everybody to-day. I've taken a big job on.”

This was sublime. To have aristocrats turned away for her!

While Madame prowled among the fabrics and bit her lorgnon in study, Kedzie looked over the big albums filled with photographs of the creations of the great creatrix. For Lady Powell-Carewe was a creative artist, taking her ideas where she found them in art or nature, and in revivals and in inventions. She took her color schemes from paintings, old and new, from jewels, landscapes. It was said that she went to Niagara to study the floods of color that tumble over its brink.

She began to interest herself in Kedzie, to wish to accomplish more than the mere selling of dress goods made up. She decided to create Kedzie as well as her clothes.

“Do you wear that pout all the time?” she asked.

“Do I pout?” Kedzie asked, in an amazement.

“Don't pretend that you don't know it and do it intentionally. Also why do you Americans always answer a question by asking another?”

“Do we?” said Kedzie.

Lady Powell-Carewe decided that Kedzie was as short on brains as she was long on looks. But it was the looks that Lady Powell-Carewe was going to dress, and not the brains.

She ordered Kedzie to spend a lot of money having her hair cared for expertly.

She tried various styles on Kedzie, ordering her to throw off her frock and stand in her combination while Mrs. Congdon and Mr. Charles brought up armloads of silks and velvets and draped them on Kedzie as if she were a clothes-horse.

The feel of the crisp and whispering taffetas, the elevation of the brocades, the warm nothingness of the chiffons like wisps of fog, the rich dignity of the cloths, gave Kedzie rapture on rapture. Standing there with a burden of fabrics upon her and Lady Powell-Carewe kneeling at her feet pinning them up and tucking them here and there, Kedzie was reminded of those ancient days of six months gone when her mother used to kneel about her and fit on her the home-made school-dress cut according to Butterick patterns. Now Kedzie had a genuine Lady at her feet. It was a triumph indeed. It was not hard now to believe that she would have all the world at her feet one day.

Lady Powell-Carewe used Kedzie's frame as a mere standard to fly banners from. Leaving the head and shoulders to stand out like the wax bust of a wistful doll, she started a cloud of fabric about her in the most extravagant fashion. She reined it in sharply at the waist, but again it flared to such distances on all sides that Kedzie could never have sailed through any door but that of a garage without compression.

On this vast bell of silk she hung streamers of rosettes, flowers of colors that would have been strident if they had been the eighteenth of a shade stronger. As it was, they were as delicious as cream curdled in a syrup of cherries. The whole effect would have been burlesque if it had not been the whim of a brilliant taste. Men would look it at and say, “Good Lord!” Women would murmur, enviously, “Oh, Lord!” Kedzie's soul expanded to the ultimate fringe of the farthest furbelow.

When the fantasy was assured Lady Powell-Carewe had Kedzie extracted from it. Then pondering her sapling slenderness, once more she caught from the air an inspiration. She would incase Kedzie in a sheath of soft, white kid marked with delicate lines and set off with black gloves and a hat of green leaves. And this she would call “The White Birch.”

And that was all the creating she felt up to for the day. She had Kedzie's measure taken in order to have a slip made as a model for use in the hours when Kedzie should be too busy to stand for fitting.

It was well for Kedzie that there was a free ride waiting for her. Her journey to the studio was harrowed by the financial problem which has often tortured people in limousines. She did not like to ask Mr. Ferriday for money in advance. He might think she was poor. There is nothing that bankrupts the poor so much as the effort to look unconcerned while they wait for their next penny.

Kedzie was frantic with worry and was reduced to prayer. “O Lord, send me some money somehow.” The number of such prayers going up to heaven must cause some embarrassment, since money can usually be given to one person only by taking it from another—and that other is doubtless praying for more at the very moment.

To Kedzie's dismay, when she arrived at the studio and asked for Mr. Ferriday, Mr. Garfinkel appeared. He was very deferential, but he was, after all, only a Garfinkel and she needed a Ferriday. He explained that his chief was very busy and had instructed Garfinkel to teach Miss Adair the science of make-up for the camera, to take test pictures of her, and give her valuable hints in lens behavior.

Late in the afternoon Ferriday came in to see the result of the first lesson. He said, “Much obliged, Garfinkel” and Garfinkel remembered pressing duty elsewhere.

His departure left Kedzie alone with Ferriday in a cavern pitch black save for the cone of light spreading from the little hole in the wall at the back to the screen where the spray of light-dust became living pictures of Kedzie.

Kedzie did not know that the operator behind the wall could peek and peer while his picture-wheel rolled out the cataract of photographs. Ferriday was careful of her—or of himself. He held her hand, of course, and murmured to her how stunning she was, but he made no effort to make love, to her great comfort and regret.

At length he invited her to ride home in his limousine, but he did not invite her to dinner. She told herself that she would have had to decline. But she would have liked to be asked.

While he rhapsodized once more about her future she was thinking of her immediate penury. As she approached the street of her residence she realized that she must either starve till pay-day or borrow. It was a bad beginning, but better than a hopeless ending. After several gasps of hesitation she finally made her plea:

“I'm awfully sorry to have to trouble you, Mr. Ferriday, but I'm—Well, could you lend me twenty-five dollars?”

“My dear child, take fifty,” he cried.

She shook her head, but it hurt her to see the roll of bills he dived for and brought up, and the careless grace with which he peeled two leaves from the cabbage. Easy money is always attended with resentment that more did not come along. Kedzie pouted at her folly in not accepting the fifty. If she had said, “Lend me fifty,” he would have offered her a hundred. But the twenty-five was salvation, and it would buy her food enough to keep her and her useless husband alive, and to buy her a pair of shoes and some gloves.

As the car drew near her corner she cried that she had some shopping to do and escaped again at the drug-store.

She found her husband at home. There was an unwonted authority about his greeting:

“Well, young woman, you may approach and kiss my hand. I am a gentleman with a job. I am a Chicago gentleman with a job.”

“You don't mean it!” Kedzie gasped; and kissed him from habit with more respect than her recent habit had shown.

“I mean it,” said Gilfoyle. “I am now on the staff of the Deshler Advertising Agency. I was afraid when Mr. D. offered me an unsolicited position (he could say it to-day) that it was the red wine and not the real money that was talking, but he was painfully sober this noon, took me out to lunch, and told me that he would be proud to avail himself of my services.”

“Splendid!” said Kedzie, with sincere enthusiasm. It is always pleasant to learn that money is setting toward the family.

But something told Kedzie that her late acquisition of twenty-five dollars would not be with her long. Easy come, easy go. “How much is the fare to Chicago?” she asked, in a hollow voice.

“Twenty-two dollars is the fare,” said Gilfoyle, “with about eight dollars extra. I couldn't borrow a cent. I've got only five dollars.”

“I thought so,” said Kedzie.

“Thought what so?” said Gilfoyle.

“Nothing,” said Kedzie. “Well, I happen to have twenty-five dollars.”

“That's funny,” said Gilfoyle. “Where did you get it?”

“Oh, I saved it up.”

“From what?”

“Well, do you want the twenty-five, or don't you?”

Gilfoyle pondered. If he questioned the source of the money he might find it out, and be unable to accept it. He wanted the money more than the hazardous information; so he said:

“Of course I want the twenty-five, darling, but I hate to rob you. Of course I'll send for you as soon as I can make a nest out there, but how will you get along?”

“Oh, I'll get along,” said Kedzie; “there'll be some movie-money coming to me Saturday.”

“Well, that's fine,” Gilfoyle said, feeling a weight of horrible guilt mingled with superior wings of relief. He hesitated, hemmed, hawed, perspired, and finally looked to that old source of so many escapes, his watch. “There's a train at eight-two; I could just about make it if I scoot now.”

“You'd better scoot,” said Kedzie. And she gave him the money.

“I'd like to have dinner with you,” Gilfoyle faltered, “but—”

“Yes, I'd like to have you, but—”

They looked at each other wretchedly. Their love was so lukewarm already that they bothered each other. There was no impulse to the delicious bitter-sweet of a passionate farewell. She was as eager to have him gone as he to go, and each blamed the other for that.

“I'll write you every day,” he said, “and I'll send the fare to you as soon as I can get it.”

“Yes, of course,” Kedzie mumbled. “Well, good-by—don't miss your train, darling.”

“Good-by, honey.”

They had to embrace. Their arms went out about each other and clasped behind each other's backs. Then some impulse moved them to a fierce clench of desperate sorrow. They were embracing their dead loves, the corpses that lay dead in these alienated bodies. It was an embrace across a grave, and they felt the thud of clods upon their love.

They gasped with the pity of it, and Kedzie's eyes were reeking with tears and Gilfoyle's lips were shivering when they wrenched out of that lock of torment.

He caught her back to him and kissed her salt-sweet mouth. Her kiss was brackish on his lips as life was. She felt a kind of assault in the fervor of his kiss, but she did not resist. He was a stranger who sprang at her from the dark, but he was also very like a poet she had loved poetically long, long ago.

Then they wrung hands and called good-bys and he caught up his suit-case and rushed through the door.

She hung from the window to wave to him as he ran down the street to the Subway, pausing now and again to wave to her vaguely, then stumbling on his course.

At last she could not see him, whether for the tears or for the distance, and she bowed her head on her lonely sill and wept.

She had a splendid cry that flushed her heart clean as a new whistle. She washed her eyes with fine cold water and half sobbed, half laughed, “Well, that's over.”