acting and
posing for moving pictures, which was what the two girls, and their
father, a veteran actor, were engaged in, Ruth always played the
romantic parts, while nothing so rejoiced Alice as to have a hoydenish
part to enact.

Alice hastened along the streets, now covered with a film of newly
fallen snow. It was sifting down from a leaden sky, and the clouds had
added to the darkness which was already coming that November evening.

"Oh, it's good to be alive, such weather as this!" Alice exulted as she
hastened along, the crisp air and the exercise bringing to her cheeks a
deeper bloom. Her eyes shone, and there was so much of life and youth
and vitality in her that, as she hastened along through the falling
snow, which dusted itself on her furs, more than one passerby turned to
look at her in admiration. She was a "moving picture" in herself.

She lingered long in the quaint little French shop, there were so many
bargains in the way of lingerie. Alice looked at many longingly, and
turned some over more longingly, but she thought of her purse, and knew
it would not stand the strain to which she contemplated putting it.

"I'll just have to wait about the others, Madame," she said, with a
sigh. "I've really bought more now than I intended."

"I hope zat Mademoiselle will come often!" laughed the French woman.

Back through the streets, now covered with snow, hastened Alice,
tripping lightly, and now and then, when she thought no one was watching
her, she took a little run and slide, as in the days of her childhood.
Not that she was much more than a child still, being only a little over
fifteen. Ruth was two years her senior, but Ruth considered herself
quite "grown up."

"I wonder if daddy has come back yet?" Alice mused, as she hastened on
to the apartment. "That looks like Russ Dalwood ahead of me," she went
on, referring to the son of the neighbor across the hall. Russ "filmed,"
or made the moving pictures for the company by whom Mr. DeVere and his
daughters were engaged. "Yes, it is Russ!" the girl exclaimed. "He has
probably come right from the studio, and he'll know about daddy. Russ!
Russ!" she called, as she came nearer to the young man.

He turned, and a welcoming smile lighted his face.

"Oh, hello, Alice!" he greeted, genially. "Where's Ruth?"

"Just for that I shan't tell you! Don't you want to walk with _me_?" she
asked, archly. "Why must you always ask for Ruth when I meet you alone?"

"I did