a grand dame and an old man with snow-white hair sat apart from the crowd, and Eden dropped down beside them.
"What was the name?" asked the old man, his hand behind his ear. "Ah, yes, I'm glad to meet any friend of Paula's. We're a little clamorous here tonight, Mr. Eden. It's like the early days when I was trouping—how we used to skylark on station platforms! We were happy then—no movies. Eh, my dear?" he added to the woman.
She bent a bit. "Yes—but I never trouped much. Thank heaven I was usually able to steer clear of those terrible towns where Main Street is upstairs. Mr. Belasco rarely asked me to leave New York." She turned to Eden. "I was in Belasco companies fifteen years," she explained.
"Wonderful experience, no doubt," the boy replied.
"Greatest school in the world," she said. "Mr. Belasco thought very highly of my work. I remember once at a dress rehearsal he told me he could never have put on the piece without me, and he gave me a big red apple. You know that was Mr. Belasco's way of—"
The din had momentarily stopped, and the leading man cried:
"Suffering cats! She's telling him about the apple, and the poor guy only just got here. Go on, Fanny, spring the one about the time you played Portia. What Charlie Frohman said—as soon as he came to, I mean."
"Humph," shrugged Fanny. "If you young people in this profession had a few traditions like us, the pictures wouldn't be such a joke. I thank my stars—"
"Hush, everybody," put in Paula Wendell. "Introducing Miss Diane Day on Hollywood's favorite instrument, the ukulele."
The girl she referred to smiled and, amid a sudden silence, launched into a London music-hall song. Like most of its genre, its import was not such as to recommend it for a church social, but she did it well, with a note of haunting sweetness in her voice. After another of the same sort she switched suddenly into Way Down upon the Swannee River and there were tears in her voice now, a poignant sadness in the room. It was too solemn for Rannie.
"Mr. Eddie Boston at the piano, Mr. Randolph Renault handling the saxophone," he shouted, "will now offer for your approval that touching ballad, So's Your Old Mandarin. Let her go, Professor."
"Don't think they're always like this," Paula Wendell said to Eden above the racket. "It's only when they have a hotel to themselves, as they usually have here."
They had it indeed to themselves, save for the lads of the village, who suddenly found pressing business in the lobby, and passed and repassed the parlor door, open-mouthed with wonder.
The approval shown the instrumental duet was scant indeed, due, Mr. Renault suggested, to professional jealousy.
"The next number on our very generous program," he announced, "will follow immediately. It's called Let's Talk about My Sweetie Now. On your mark—Eddie."
"Nothing doing," cried the girl known as Diane. "I haven't had my Charleston lesson today, and it's getting late. Eddie—kindly oblige."
Eddie obliged. In another moment every one save the two old people in the corner had leaped into action. The framed, autographed portraits that other film celebrities had bestowed on the proprietor of the Desert Edge rattled on the walls. The windows shook. Suddenly in the doorway appeared a bald man with a gloomy eye.
"Good lord," he shouted. "How do you expect me to get my rest?"
"Hello, Mike," said Rannie. "What is it you want to rest from?"
"You direct a gang like this for a while, and you'll know," replied Mike sourly. "It's ten o'clock. If you'll take my advice for once, you'll turn in. Everybody's to report in costume, here in the lobby tomorrow morning at eight-thirty."
This news was greeted with a chorus of low moans. "Nine-thirty, you say?" Rannie inquired.
"Eight-thirty. You heard me. And anybody who's late pays a good stiff fine. Now please go to bed and let decent people sleep."
"Decent people?" repeated Rannie softly, as the director vanished. "He's flattering himself again." But the party was over, and the company moved reluctantly up the stairs to the second floor. Mr. Renault returned the saxophone to the desk.
"Say, landlord, there's a sour note in this thing," he complained. "Have it fixed before I come again."
"Sure will, Mr. Renault," promised the proprietor.
"Too early for bed, no matter what Mike says," remarked Eden, piloting Paula Wendell to the street. "Let's take a walk. Eldorado doesn't look much like Union Square, but night air is night air wherever you find it."
"Lucky for me it isn't Union Square," said the girl. "I wouldn't be tagging along, if it was."
"Is that so?"
They strolled down Main Street, white and empty in the moonlight. In a lighted window of the Spot Cash Store hung a brilliant patchwork quilt.
"To be raffled off by the ladies of the Orange Blossom Club for the benefit of the Orphans' Home," Eden read. "Think I'll take a chance on that tomorrow."
"Better not get mixed up with any Orange Blossom Club," suggested Paula Wendell.
"Oh, I can take care of myself. And it's the orphans I'm thinking of, you know."
"That's your kind heart," she answered. They climbed a narrow sandy road. Yellow lamplight in the front window of a bungalow was suddenly blotted out.
"Look at that moon," said Eden. "Like a slice of honeydew melon just off the ice."
"Fond of food, aren't you," remarked the girl. "I'll always think of you wrestling with that steak."
"A man must eat. And if it hadn't been for the steak, we might never have met."
"What if we hadn't?" she asked.
"Pretty lonesome for me down here in that event." They turned about in silence. "You know, I've been thinking," Eden continued. "We're bound to come to the end of things at the ranch presently. And I'll have to go back—"
"Back to your freedom. That will be nice."
"You bet it will. All the same, I don't want you to forget me after I've gone. I want to go on being your—er—your friend. Or what have you?"
"Splendid. One always needs friends."
"Write to me occasionally. I'll want to know how Wilbur is. You never can tell—is he careful crossing the streets?"
"Wilbur will always be fine, I'm sure." They stopped before the hotel. "Good night," said the girl.
"Just a minute. If there hadn't been a Wilbur—"
"But there was. Don't commit yourself. I'm afraid it's the moon, looking so much like a slice of melon—"
"It's not the moon. It's you."
The proprietor of the Desert Edge came to the door. Dim lights burned in the interior of the hotel.
"Lord, Miss Wendell," he said. "I nearly locked you out."
"I'm coming," returned the girl. "See you at the ranch
