glancing up at the vivid face above her resentfully. "I'll bet you've never known what it is to feel that way in your life."

"Oh, I'm too busy for such nonsense," returned Gloria in her serene and caressing voice.

Indeed, it would be difficult for any one favored with Miss Gloria Greene's acquaintance to imagine her wishing to depart a life to the enjoyment of which she has vastly added for thousands of people. For under a slightly different name Miss Greene is known to and admired by most of the theater-going populace of the United States. From the top of her ruddy, imperiously poised head to the tip of her perfectly shod toes, she justifies and fulfills in every line and motion the happy thought which inspired the dean of American playwrights to nickname her "Gloria." Deeper than her beauty and abounding vitality there lies a more profound quality, the rare gift of giving graciously and naturally. It is Gloria Greene's unconscious and intuitive mission in life to lend color and light and cheer to colorless, dim, and forlorn folk wherever she encounters them. That is why Darcy Cole was, at the moment, dribbling tears and aspirations for an immediate demise all over Gloria's rare Anatolian rug. Not that Darcy really desired to die. She merely wished Gloria Greene to make life more practicable for her.

"That's imagination, you know," continued the actress.

"It isn't," snivelled Darcy.

"Then it's indigestion. Have a pill."

"I won't!" declined the girl rudely. "You're making fun of me. They all make fun of me. I do wish I was dead!"

"Do you, indeed!"

Setting two slim but powerful hands upon the girl's shoulders, Gloria Greene proceeded methodically to shake her. She shook her until her hat (oh, but it was a bad and shabby hat!) came off and rolled upon the floor. She shook her until her hairpins fell like hail and her brown-black hair struggled out of its arrangement (oh, but it was a poor and tasteless arrangement!) and tumbled about her face (and, oh, but it was a sallow and torpid face!). She further shook her until her eyes bulged out and a faint flame shone on her cheeks, and her buttons began to pop, and her breath rattled on her teeth, and she could barely gasp out:

"St-t-t-top! You're shaking me to p-p-pieces!"

"Why not?" inquired Miss Greene blandly, and shook harder than before.

"D-d-d-dud-dud-don't" wailed the victim. "W-w-wait a m-m-m-minute!"

The shaker desisted, still maintaining her grip. "What's the matter?" she inquired.

"You're killing me!"

"Then you don't want to die, after all?" inquired the other.

"Not that way!" gasped the girl.

"It's my regular treatment for dead-wish-ers.

"It's brutal," whimpered Darcy. "Everything's brutal. The world's brutal. I hate it! I wish I—Glooo-oria! Don't begin again!"

"What do you wish?" demanded the administrator of discipline implacably.

"I wish I'd never come here at all."

"That's different," commented Miss Greene, "though it probably isn't true, either. Now sit down. Tell me all about it. I've got a few minutes to spare."

"It's very long," began Darcy dolefully. "You're trying to dodge. Begin at once. Or must I apply my treatment again?"

"Ow! No! Don't!" implored the girl. "I'll tell. But I don't know where to begin."

"Begin in the middle," suggested Gloria helpfully. "Then you can work both ways."

"I will. Well, then, you see, Maud's gone and got engaged."

"To whom?"

"Holcomb Lee, the illustrator."

"Why should that make you want to die? Are you in love with Mr. Lee?"

"I in love with Holcomb!" Darcy's bitter grin dismissed that supposition. "I'm not in love with anybody. It isn't that."

"Then what is it?" asked the patient Gloria.

"It's the whole thing. Helen Barrett is going to marry Paul Wood."

"If any woman know any just reason why these twain should not be joined together in holy matrimony, let her now speak or forever after hold