name and who feel that because we are in reduced circumstances we
have simply ceased to be.

"So when I was old enough to realize exactly what conditions were and
what we faced I was determined to do something. It was a friend who was
kind enough to believe and tell me that I had talent for acting who
first interested me in motion picture work. And, not to tire you with
long, boresome details, I was lucky. Somehow it was not difficult and I
am now receiving enough to keep us comfortable without encroaching, as I
said, on what little father has left.

"There, you have my story," she concluded, settling back in her chair.

"And the work, do you like it?" he asked.

"I do like it," she replied. "And, besides, what else could I do? You
have said yourself that I could never be a stenographer, a school
teacher or a nurse or a shop girl."

"You could be anything," he hastened to explain, "from a shop girl to
a--to a--a queen."

"That's better," she concurred, smiling.

"Those tears you shed back there before the camera, who were they for?"

"For the man I loved--in the story," she explained. "I was 'emoting'--as
they call it--over his death. The inspiration was provided by the
orchestra you heard playing. My director thinks it's wonderful that I
can shed tears whenever he asks me to. He says it's a relief not to have
to substitute drops of glycerine or hold a raw onion under his leading
woman's nose to bring about the required lachrymal effect. To be able to
cry easily before the camera, he says, is the supreme test, because to
shed real tears you must have imagination and imagination is
everything."

"And how do you do it?"

"There are plenty of causes for tears in life, far too many, don't you
think?" she said. "When my director calls for tears I simply think of
one of the many--pictures I have seen of starving children, an empty
stocking at Christmas time, a homeless kitten, an orphan baby."

"Don't you ever think of the story and cry because you are carried away
by the imaginative sorrow of the death of the man you love?"

"No," she said, laughing. "How can I? Most of the time I'm really
glad--not in the story, of course--that he's out of the picture. The
publicity man always refers to me as a star of the emotional type and
writes yards upon yards of stuff about how I actually 'live' the part I
am playing. My imagination doesn't carry me that far, though, and if
imagination is everything, as my director says,