"Which one is it?" he asked, referring to the envelope.

"It's Passion's Perils." she answered with a jaunty affectation of
amusement. "The Touchstone-Blatz people sent it back. The slip says
its being returned does not imply any lack of merit."

"I should think it wouldn't!" said Merton warmly.

He knew Passion's Perils. A company might have no immediate need for
it, but its rejection could not possibly imply a lack of merit,
because the merit was there. No one could dispute that.

They walked on to the Bijou Palace. Its front was dark, for only
twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, could Simsbury muster a
picture audience; but they could read the bills for the following
night. The entrance was flanked on either side by billboards, and
they stopped before the first. Merton Gill's heart quickened its
beats, for there was billed none other than Beulah Baxter in the
ninth installment of her tremendous serial, The Hazards of Hortense.

It was going to be good! It almost seemed that this time the
scoundrels would surely get Hortense. She was speeding across a vast
open quarry in a bucket attached to a cable, and one of the
scoundrels with an ax was viciously hacking at the cable's farther
anchorage. It would be a miracle if he did not succeed in his
hellish design to dash Hortense to the cruel rocks below. Merton, of
course, had not a moment's doubt that the miracle would intervene;
he had seen other serials. So he made no comment upon the gravity of
the situation, but went at once to the heart of his ecstasy.