The evening he wrote all this down, he was so excited he drummed his fingers. He tugged on his beard. He stood and sat down. The lights burned late in his office. He was not a pacer; instead, he stood up on his captain’s chair and looked out over his transom, at the stacks, imagining hooded figures slipping between them, an opalescent crown-coffin jar marked “chloroform,” the slow turn of his doorknob in a gloved hand.

He wrote a letter to Annette Kellerman.

He did not want to seem like a fool, so he was carefully withholding of both his analysis and his praise. “I have seen Neptune’s Daughter. Having consulted Vergil, Ovid, and Livy, I conclude that Neptune did not have a daughter. Perhaps your photoplay was illustrative of an incident from Poseidon’s daughters, Rhode and Benthesicyme, which would be understandable, for people are frequently confused. Did your scenario describe the bathing customs at Peloponnesus? Please advise.” After considering whether such a supplement might make him seem swell-headed, he enclosed a monograph he had composed on the cinematic art. It was called The Photoplay: A Psychological Study.

A month later, he received an envelope with a New Jersey postmark. Inside was an inscribed photograph of Miss Kellerman in her one-piece bathing suit, along with a folded single piece of pale-violet stationery on which was written a note in purple ink, with letters so small and finely composed they might have been etched by a needle. Miss Kellerman had never before received a letter from Harvard about her film, and she expressed pleasure at Münsterberg’s attention. She didn’t know about Poseidon, but she was planning on making more movies in Hollywood, California. If he was ever in Hollywood, California, he should come to the studio and say hello.

Münsterberg carried the letter to class, placed the photograph on his shelf, watched Neptune’s Daughter again as if visiting with a friend at teatime. After consulting colleagues, he was horrified to learn that Hollywood was a cauldron of vices unknown since the days of Pliny’s Villa Comedia. What was Annette Kellerman doing there? Perhaps it was his duty to rescue her, but perhaps she had already succumbed. He watched Neptune’s Daughter again, searching her eyes for shiftiness and opium, decadence and kohl makeup, but came away realizing something far more disturbing instead: there had been a camera, a scenario, painted sets, flats and scrim, canvas rigging that sometimes actually waved in the background. He had known this. And yet there was a whole new set of illusions whose depths he had not plumbed. He looked at the opening titles and realized with a thud that, according to copyright, the film had been made in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He had been so sure it was made in Bermuda.