great love for him, her desire to
protect him, guard his happiness and assure his success in life was the
cause for the unreasonable attitude she had taken toward the girl who
had been so kind to him. Perhaps his mother still clung to her
hastily-formed idea that he was in love and that his "undisciplined
heart"--the descriptive words were fresh in his mind from his reading
again of "David Copperfield"--would lead him into trouble.

And then he easily comprehended her aversion to motion pictures and
those who played in them, insupportable by facts as it was. The strict,
narrow training she had received as a girl had nurtured in her an
abhorrence of public performers, particularly actors and actresses,
whom she regarded without exception as libertines. This misconception
had been increased by the scandalous and equally slanderous stories that
had reached her ears concerning motion pictures and the life led by
those engaged in the producing of photoplays in Hollywood.

The faults of one or two who became involved in scandal of some sort she
gave to all. Because a motion picture actress, as human as any other
woman and as liable to imperfection, sought a divorce in the courts she
instantly, in Mrs. Gallant's mind, became an immoral character. A motion
picture actor attacked by a blackmailer because of his wealth and
prominence, was adjudged guilty of whatever wrong of which he was
accused. It was an unfair and unjust attitude common to thousands of
women as wholesome in character, as kindly and merciful in disposition
and as saintly to those who loved them and were loved by them, as Mrs.
Gallant.

In his unsuspecting delight in being able to explain to his mother why
Consuello lived apart from her parents, he had completely overlooked her
foible in disliking motion picture players simply because they were
members of that profession. Likewise he had forgotten precaution by
telling her that Consuello had received him in her dressing room. He
had been unable to tell her that Consuello, although she enjoyed work
and had a pride in it, had entered the pictures to provide for her aging
parents. The confidence, as he regarded it, that Consuello had placed in
him in informing him that she and Gibson were engaged to be married, he
could not, he felt, reveal.

He pondered for a time over a disconcerting thought that possibly it had
not been proper after all, for Consuello to have allowed him to see her
in her dressing room, alon