r of the Range" was finished that a great
revulsion in the management of this particular company stopped
production with a stunning completeness that left actors and actresses
feeling very much as if the studio roof had fallen upon them. Lorraine's
West vanished. The little cow-town "set" was being torn down to make
room for something else quite different. The cowboys appeared in
tailored suits and drifted away. Lorraine went home to the Casa Grande,
hating it more than ever she had hated it in her life.

Some one up-stairs was frying liver and onions, which was in flagrant
defiance of Rule Four which mentioned cabbage, onions and fried fish as
undesirable foodstuffs. Outside, the palm leaves were dripping in the
night fog that had swept soggily in from the ocean. Her mother was
trying to collect a gas bill from the dressmaker down the hall, who
protested shrilly that she distinctly remembered having paid that gas
bill once and had no intention of paying it twice.

Lorraine opened the door marked LANDLADY, and closed it with a slam
intended to remind her mother that bickerings in the hall were less
desirable than the odor of fried onions. She had often spoken to her
mother about the vulgarity of arguing in public with the tenants, but
her mother never seemed to see things as Lorraine saw them.

In the apartment sat a man who had been too frequent a visitor, as
Lorraine judged him. He was an oldish man with the lines of failure in
his face and on his lean form the sprightly clothing of youth. He had
been a reporter,--was still, he maintained. But Lorraine suspected
shrewdly that he scarcely made a living for himself, and that he was
home-hunting in more ways than one when he came to visit her mother.

The affair had progressed appreciably in her absence, it would appear.
He greeted her with, a fatherly "Hello, kiddie," and would have kissed
her had Lorraine not evaded him skilfully.

Her mother came in then and complained intimately to the man, and
declared that the dressmaker would have to pay that bill or have her gas
turned off. He offered sympathy, assistance in the turning off of the
gas, and a kiss which was perfectly audible to Lorraine in the next
room. The affair had indeed progressed!

"L'raine, d'you know you've got a new papa?" her mother called out in
the peculiar, chirpy tone she used when she was exuberantly happy. "I
knew you'd be surprised!"

"I am," Lorraine agreed, pulling aside the cheap green