Sir Roy turned toward her "I would like your fascinating little twinkling rather nice ankles did I not like you much and much better", he suggested. To which the tall, lithe and lethal Armenian snorted over his Veuve Cliquot, or wasn't it Veuve Cliquot?--one never knows, does one as the birds on the ledges above the tower of St. Anne Who Was Awfully Good To Goodlooking Women have often chirped into the air of Mayfair on a bright and glimmerful day of sunshine and the sheene of nicest stockings on not the nicest ladies--

Michael Arlen's "The Dancer of Paris" is at the Metropolitan. Conway Tearle supports Dorothy Mackaill. And that is that or more. Anyway for so and so many minutes close up follows close up and paragraph, inane and sententious as only Arlen can be, follows paragraph, while people turn each to each and both to both and coyly say, "Typically Arlen." Which may or may not mean anything.

Miss Mackaill is a delightfully queer and intriguingly dear person (I can't forget those subtitles) and one just knows she has it. But the direction decided to make an intimate story more intimate by confining it to a series of close ups. And no girl, as the hook nose of the Armenian who admitted he was an Armenian and was therefore probably an Armenian since no one would call himself an Armenian if it weren't once suggested, can really be attractive beneath a microscope. Though she can dance, very well or more or less, as The Honorable Peter Pufferingsfordshire would include, dear fellow that he was and such a roue.

The picture as a whole has, all Arlen aside, very little to commend it. The story is rather thin and the direction has watered it sufficiently to make it even thinner. It is an attempt to bring whimsy into the moving pictures. And Barrie alone can do that. Robert Cain, who acts the part of half villain, half friend of the family, or to be exact the hero's "battle field chum", does so with no apparent knowledge of the histrionic art. Frances Grant, the Mammy who tours around with Miss Mackaill as Miss Mackaill seeks her revenge, is a bit stifling after the first broad grin. The patrons of the Metropolitan might however disagree-at least they did one night this week. Perhaps she, broad grinned daughter of darkness, is also a part of that world which is "so typically Michael Arlen".

Lupino Lane is not. Nor are those dancers in a revue which carries the trite title--"Southern Memories". Some of their steps are excellent, especially the flight of wooden ones on which they mix Charleston and Russian with occasional departures from the norm. Al Mitchell can return to Roseland. He and his band are not absolute necessities. In fact Mr. Arlen would not abide them. He would do just what a certain critic did the other night, only more so. Which after all as the birds which nest on the towers of Our Lady of the Evening would complacently chirp is something