As a whole, however, she had done better work than in “The White Sister.” In “Broken Blossoms,” for instance—and she has done immeasurably better work since: in “La Bohême,” in “The Scarlet Letter,” in “Wind,” in her part of Helena in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” her stage play of 1930. Also, a good deal of her personality was lost in “The White Sister”—had become mere costume. Of all people, Lillian is the last to be standardized by uniform. The picture itself was hardly a structural triumph. Briefly, its beginning and its middle seem not very logical, its ending hopelessly disproportionate. A volcanic eruption, an earthquake and a flood, for no better reason, when all is said, than to kill a poor soldier who had already spent five years shut up in a rabbit-hutch. Nothing he had done warranted his being drowned like a rat in a flooded ditch. If all of us who have been tempted to kidnap the woman we loved, in, or out of the Church, deserve drowning, then it’s high time to invite a return engagement of Noah’s flood. If Ronnie Colman—Giovanni, I mean—had, perforce, to renounce his heart’s desire, surely a simpler and less unbeautiful way than that might have been invented. A volcano, an earthquake and a flood—such a rumpus, only to bring death and redemption to one unhappy soldier! To have let him ride or sail out of the picture, going back to Africa, would have been infinitely less expensive, and even more heartbreaking, assuming that this was what the picture intended to be. At any rate, it caused the shedding of many tears. In Germany, it was immensely popular—in no other land are tears such a luxury. It had been Lillian’s wish to dedicate the picture to the Sisters of the Ursuline Academy in St. Louis, her old school, and she hoped to go back there and run it for them, but was never able to carry out this purpose. * * * * * From the Director of Entertainments at Sing Sing Prison, Lillian received an invitation to appear before the prisoners, on the occasion of a showing—not of the new picture, but of “Broken Blossoms,” which, it appears, had strangely enough become their favorite picture—for five years had been voted as such. [Illustration:“THE WHITE SISTER”]