, Opeloosa and Kicking Horse between. These might readily have
been consigned to the depths of the wastebasket unopened, unread. But
there was always the chance that, intermingled with this mass of
adulation, there might be a real letter, from a real friend, or a
business communication of importance from some picture company possibly,
prepared to offer her two thousand dollars per week, instead of one
thousand, at the expiration of her present contract. So the mail had to
be carefully opened, at least, even if the bulk of it was tossed aside
unread.

Her mother usually assisted her in this daily task, but to-day Mrs.
Morton, oppressed by a slight attack of indigestion, slept late, and
Ruth proceeded with the operation alone.

She was a singularly attractive girl, combining a wholesome and quite
unassumed innocence with a certain measure of sophistication, gained by
daily contact with the free and easy life of the studios. Her brown eyes
were large and wondering, as though she still found it difficult to
realize that within four years she had stepped from comparative poverty
to the possession of an income which a duke or a prince might readily
have envied. Her features, pleasing, regular, somewhat large, gave to
her that particular type of beauty which lends itself best to the
eccentricities of the camera. Her figure, graceful, well modeled, with
the soft roundness of youth, enabled her to wear with becoming grace
almost any costume, from the simple frock of the school girl to the
costly gowns of the woman of fashion. Add to this a keen intelligence
and a delightful vivacity of manner, and the reason for Ruth Morton's
popularity among motion picture "fans" from coast to coast was at once
apparent.

She sat in the handsomely appointed dining-room of the apartment on
Fifty-seventh Street which she and her mother had occupied for the past
two years. The room, paneled in dull ivory, provided a perfect setting
for the girl's unusual beauty. In her kimono of Nile green and gold, she
presented a figure of such compelling charm that Nora, her maid, as she
removed the empty coffee-cup, sighed to herself, if not with envy, at
least with regret, that the good God had not made _her_ along lines that
would insure an income of over fifty thousand dollars a year.

Ruth sliced open half a dozen more letters with her ivory paper knife
and prepared to drop them into the waste basket. One was from a
manufacturer of cold cream, soliciti