ny other star of whom she
admired the attainments; she could play a whole series of parts from
which her lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From time to
time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara Walbrook herself,
though assuming the role with less intrepidity than he.

It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars than Barbara
Walbrook, for the reason that the latter was "the real thing." She was
living her part, not playing it. She was "letter perfect," in
Steptoe's sense, not because a director moved her person this way, or
turned her head that way, but because life had so infused her that she
did what was right unconsciously. Letty, by pretending to enter at the
door and come forward to the mirror as to a living presence, studied
what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook walked with a swift, easy
gait which suggested the precision of certain strong birds when
swooping on their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty aimed at
the same effect till she made a discovery.

"I can't do it her way; I can only do it my way."

The ways were different; yet each could be effective. That too was a
discovery. Nature had no rule to which every individual was obliged to
conform. The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and got his
attractiveness from being so. The minute you abandoned your own gifts
to cultivate those with which Nature had blessed someone else you lost
not only your identity but your charm.

Letty worked this out as something like a principle. However many the
hints she took it would be folly to try to be anything but herself.
After all, it was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If
Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the grand manner had tried
to be Mercola Merch who was all vivacious wickedness--well, anyone
could see! So, if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing and
she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the street, the sparrow
would be more successful as a sparrow than in trying to emulate the
eagle.

And yet there was a value to good models which at first she found
difficult to reconcile with this truth of personal independence. This
too she thought out. "It's like a way to do your hair," was her method
of expressing it. "You do what's in fashion, but you twist it so that
it suits your own style. It isn't the fashion that makes you look
right; it's in being true to what suits you."

There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something deeper