“The time is coming when educational pictures will fill library shelves, exactly as books do now, and the universities should anticipate library educational advance. This is a great reason why cinema courses should be given in colleges.” She did not write her speeches. She carried in her head a few main points, and spoke extemporaneously. Her clear, trained voice, reached every part of the great edifice—a treat for those who heard her. One of them, a woman, wrote: If I were a poet, I suppose I might make a lovely poem about you; or I might, were I a painter, try to put on my canvas something so glorious that it would speak to everyone of what an inspiration and delight you are; but I am nobody at all—nobody except your sincere admirer. And it was another woman who wrote of “Orphans of the Storm”: I cannot get over your acting: I never feel the reality of a character so keenly as when you portray it. And there is no raving. Why, I have watched you play emotional scenes in which you scarcely moved a finger, and still, as someone said: “Your silence is as golden as the voice of Bernhardt.” Which brings us back to the picture itself. It was a beautiful and successful production. Some of the sets were especially fine: The garden picture, for instance, with its setting of palace and fountain and richly costumed guests, its magnificent outer gates. The court scene, the sinister tribunal of the Revolution, was terribly realistic; the ghastly guillotine climax was quite as horrible as it was intended to be, with only the usual fault of such picture episodes, that the suspense was too prolonged—prolonged to a point where the horror evaporated. The finest scene in the picture is where Dorothy, as the blind Louise, is singing in the street, while Lillian, in a room above, absorbed in the narration of Louise’s mother, hears and gradually recognizes her sister’s voice, and then is unable to reach her. The awakening recognition, gradual, tender, startled, in Lillian’s face, compares with the best of her screen work. * * * * * The old stage-coach in which Lillian and Dorothy drove to Paris ... whatever became of it? It was too good to go the way of old properties. “Orphans of the Storm” was worthy of Griffith and of Lillian. It seems fitting that their long association should finally end in this distinguished and happy way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PART THREE I ITALY