attract less attention. But if it has to be, it
has to be, and I'll do anything to bring my little girl back to us."

"You will do the sensible thing if you permit the publication of Alma's
picture and a brief story that she is missing," John said.

Mrs. Sprockett drew from her bag a photograph of her daughter and gave
John a description of her and the facts relative to her disappearance.

"If anything has happened to her it will kill me," she said, as she rose
to go. "I'll owe a debt I can never repay to the one who brings her back
to me."

The photograph of Alma and the brief story that went with it appeared in
the second edition and John wondered if Mrs. Sprockett's husband had
dared to make the suggestion that had sent his wife to the police.

Soon after Mrs. Sprockett left the office, John, unable to wait a minute
longer without hearing her voice, telephoned to Consuello's home. He
wanted to tell her again that he loved her, and again and again, and he
wanted to hear her tell him, as she had before he left her, that her
"dreamings had come true, the brightest and the best." But it was Betty
instead of Consuello who answered his call.

"Conny is at the studio," Betty said. "She was called there unexpectedly
concerning something about her new picture."

"Did she tell you anything before she left?" he asked.

Betty laughed.

"She told me everything," she replied.

"And is she happy?" he asked.

"Happier than I have ever seen her," Betty assured him. "I'll tell her
that you called."

"That I called and that I----" he stopped himself.

"Love her," Betty finished for him.

"More and more every minute," he said, not to be abashed by Betty's good
natured presumptuousness.

But whenever throughout the day his thoughts of Consuello and their
great love brought him happiness, the haunting realization that his
mother still clung to her prejudice against her occupation wore upon
him. He had gone to his room after she had left him the night before and
at breakfast there had been a strained effort by both of them to avoid
recalling the cause for her distress. He had pleaded and begged her so
often to overcome her intolerant dislike for Consuello that he was
beginning to fear he would never be able to win her over. Not for much
longer, he realized, could he keep his mother's feelings against her
from Consuello.

Late in the afternoon, when the clatter of the telegraph instruments and
the typewriter had lulled,