e grasp of Gordon Balch, who is trying
to force his attentions on her." This is where Vida Sommers has to look
frightened, though in a later picture one sees that her fright changed
to "A Mother's Honest Rage." The result is that Gordon Balch gets his,
and gets it good. The line under his last appearance is "The End of a
Misspent Life." Vida Sommers here registers pity. As Ma Pettengill had
said, her face seemed never to have a moment's rest.

While I studied these exhibits my hostess had not been silent upon the
merits of her little actress friend. Slowly she made me curious as to the
origin and inner life of this valued member of an exalted profession.

"Yes, sir; there she is at the top, drawing down big money, with a
nice vine-clad home in this film town, furnished from a page in a
woman's magazine, with a big black limousine like a hearse--all but
the plumes--and a husband that she worships the ground he walks on.
Everything the heart can desire, even to being mother to some of the
very saddest persons ever seen on a screen. It shows what genius will
do for a woman when she finds out what kind of genius she's got and is
further goaded by the necessity of supporting a husband in the style to
which he has been accustomed by a doting father. She's some person now,
let me tell you.

"She spent a week with me in Red Gap last fall, and you'd ought to seen
how certain parties kowtowed to me so they'd get to meet her. I found
that about every woman under fifty in our town is sure she was born for
this here picture work, from Henrietta Templeton Price to Beryl Mae
Macomber, who's expecting any day to be snapped up by some shrewd manager
that her type is bound to appeal to, she being a fair young thing with
big eyes and lots of teeth, like all film actresses. Metta Bigler,
that teaches oil painting and burnt wood, give Vida a reception in her
Bohemian studio in Red Gap's Latin Quarter--the studio having a chain
of Chianti bottles on the wall and an ash tray with five burnt cigarette
ends on a taboret to make it look Bohemian--and that was sure the biggest
thrill our town has had since the Gus Levy All Star Shamrock Vaudeville
Company stranded there five years ago. It just shows how important my
little actress friend is--and look what she come up from!"

I said I wouldn't mind looking what she come up from if she had started
low enough to make it exciting.

Ma Pettengill said she had that! She had come up from the gutter.