Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

The Glory Road M') From the past her thoughts returned to tho present. W hat should she do3 The answer came quickly with do vacillation or uncertainty. She would stand by her pledged word tn Paul, and Holt should be dismissed forever from her lite. But even in the instant of proud decision, she shrank. Never to see Holt again alone; to r all the happiness they had known ; deliberately, perhaps, to bind herself in what might be a ghastly mistake' These bilities suggested themselves with terrible vividness. But she did not turn back. And with her decision came comparative peace. Also came what seemed a compelling necessity to confer to Paul. Slowly she got up from the bed and groping in the dark, turned on the lights. Then, both physically and nervously exhausted, she commenced to take oft" her outer clothes. After bathing her face and braiding her hair she put on her silk kimono, and sat down to her table to write. But with the pen in her hand, she paused. "What about him?" she thought. "I don't matter any more, but he does. Can I do this to him?" She knew the terrific intensity of Paul's inner feelings, and hesitated. "It must have very, very great justification," she thought. She mused, fighting down the thoughts of Holt, telling herself over and over that that was buried forever. "Since — it's over, — why needlessly break Paul's heart? I shall marry him anyway. I can at least spare him this." She sat long, and in the silence the black marble clock in the living room struck ten. Then at last she dipped her pen. "Stephen," she wrote, "I can never forgive myself for what happened last night. It ends everything. I shall never see you alone again, and if you are the man I think you are, you will respect this wish. "June Magregor." XVII DAUL TEMPLE'S life in New York and at the Fort Lee Graphic studios was like that of any other laboring man. The amount of time and attention he could give to it was limited only by his ability to -t sleep. Temple lived in a suite of two rooms and a bath at the \nsoni.i Hotel, a great gray pile on Broadway in the 7o>, situated con veniently between the Rialto, which, com mencing at Sixty-sixth Streel runs south ward, and the 1 30th Street leii\ wluie he crossed the I ludson to Fori Lee. He rose profanely at six o'clock every morning and proceeded to bathe and shave. I'.\ seven he was downstairs and at break fast in the hotel dining room. At quarter to eight the man from the garage brought his roadster around to the hotel, and he drove leisurely northward to the ferry, drinking in the sweet freshness >>( the morn ing along Riverside Drive at a time when the pearly mists were still hanging above the Hudson. Leaving the ferry on the Jersey side, he drove several miles north along the pali sades to the big studio, whose glass roofs rose high above their surrounding white walls. His baggage usually consisted of a leather brief-case full of scenarios, notes or stories he had been working on the night before, and he went at once to his office, a clean square room in the main building, comfortably furnished and well lighted. This was always about half past eight. Here he quickly ran through his heap of mail, setting aside important matters for his personal answer, and diverting the greater part of it to his stenographer, a very clever girl who, through long practice could answer any routine letter quite as well as himself. She also dispatched Paul's photograph to any who sent a quarter of a dollar for that purpose. It was this person's boast, to his relief, that she was the only woman in America who had never felt romantic yearnings towards Paul Temple. But it was Paul's unique distinction to have developed during the last year into primarily a man's actor. Where in Briscoe's wilderness camp of the August before most of his personal letters had been from women, now more than half of them came from men who had been stirred to admiration by the intense virility and force of his portrayals. And it was the strength of his inner convictions and feelings thrown into his work that made these so powerful — a thing which June had long realized. PAUL and his company always assembled before nine o'clock, though the start and progress of the day's work if "exteriors" or outdoor sets were used, depended