Miss Talmadge laughed merrily. “Well,” she retorted, “it hasn’t always been like this, has it, Constance? Remember the old Vitagraph days when we always had to eat inside a quarter? It wasn’t a question with us of soup to nuts, but of soup or nuts.” I happened to be at a dance several years ago which was attended by both the sisters. Norma Talmadge took that evening only several turns about the room. Constance, on the other hand, danced every number. I myself was lucky enough to benefit by this protracted exercise and as I did so I caught over Constance’s shoulder the eyes of Norma following her sister’s figure through the ebb and flow of dancers. The quality of that glance will always linger with me. Why, indeed, should it not? For here she was--young, beautiful, an idol of the screen--and she was surveying this sister only a few years younger with the fond, admiring glance which some dowager might bestow on one of the younger generation. My interest was so piqued by this matter of the self-appointed wallflower that I asked a close friend of the Talmadges if this were a habitual attitude of Norma’s. “Oh, dear, yes!” replied she. “Norma’s always like that. Very seldom do you find her dancing more than several times an evening. What she just loves is to think of Constance as the belle of the ball.” [Illustration: CONSTANCE TALMADGE Dainty sister of Norma and Natalie and aunt of Buster Keaton’s solemn-faced baby.] [Illustration: NORMA TALMADGE In private life, Mrs. Joseph Schenck. A noted screen leader.] “And how about Natalie?” I asked. “Indeed, yes. Norma and Constance are as devoted to her as they are to each other, and they all three unite in worshipping their mother.” “A close corporation,” I commented. “Yet Buster Keaton and Joe Schenck seem to come in for almost as high dividends as the original stockholders.” “Of course,” assented my informer, “a Talmadge-in-law is all right so long as he is also an in-picture. For you’ve got to remember that pictures are the leading interest of the whole family. In fact, I think that was largely the trouble between Constance and her husband. He was not only outside the profession, but I understand that he objected to Constance going on with her work on the screen.”