[Pg 33]

"From the country, eh? Ingénue, eh?" He pronounced it "anjenoo." He tapped his stubby, broken-nailed fingers upon the edge of his desk. "Well, I shouldn't wonder if I could place you," he said. "I know a couple companies that are hot after a real anjenoo. That's nice skin you have. Turn round."

Clancy stifled an impulse to laugh hysterically. Tears were very close. To be appraised by this gross man—— Nevertheless, she turned slowly round, feeling the man's coarse eyes roving up and down the lines of her figure.

"You got the looks, and you got the shape," said Beiner. "You ain't too big, and you ain't too small. 'Course, I can't tell how you'll photograph. Only a test will show. Still——" He picked up the desk telephone and asked for a number.

"Hildebloom there? This is Beiner talking. Say, Frank, you wanted an anjenoo, didn't you? I got a girl here in the office now that might do.... Yes; she's a peach. Fresh stuff, too. Just in from the country, with the bloom all on.... Bring her around? At six? You made a date, feller."

He hung up the receiver and turned to the furiously blushing Clancy.

"You're lucky, kid. Frank Hildebloom, studio manager for Rosebush Pictures, asked me to keep my eyes open for some new girls. He's a queer bug, Frank. He don't want professionals. He wants amateurs. Claims most of the professionals have learned so many tricks that it's impossible to unlearn them. I'll take you over to him. Come back here at five."

Somehow or other, Clancy found herself outside[Pg 34] the office, found herself in the elevator, in the street down-stairs. She'd expected much; she had come to New York with every confidence of achieving a great success. But doubts linger unbidden in the hearts of the most hopeful, the most ambitious, the most confident. To have those recreant doubts scattered on the very first day! Of course she'd photograph well. Hadn't she always taken good pictures? Of course, moving pictures were different; still—— She wished that there were some one whom she knew intimately—to whom she could go and pour out the excitement that was welling within her. What an angel Fanchon DeLisle had been! Poor Fanchon—a soubrette in a cheap burlesque company! But she, Clancy Deane—she was forgetting. She, Florine Ladue, would "do something" for Fanchon DeLisle, who had set her feet upon the path to fortune.

[Pg 34]

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