"Why, mother, what are you talking about?" he gasped. "She is my friend and there is nothing to make me think that she is anything but what I believed her to be, a dear, kind friend." Mrs. Gallant clasped her hands at her waist and straightened her shoulders. "She dared--dared to receive you alone in her dressing room," she said. "John, don't you understand what that means? Don't you know how wrong it was? Do decent girls do such things? An actress! I've heard enough about them. An actress who allows herself to be kissed and held in men's arms! An associate of--" He raised his hand quickly. "Mother!" he expostulated, "you can't say that. You can't, you can't." For a moment they stood facing each other and an expression of despair crossed her features as she whirled around and left the room. John stood stunned until he heard the door of her bedroom close. With a heavy sigh he threw himself into a chair and bowed his head in his hands, staring distractedly at the design in the rug under his feet. Until far into the night he sat there, thinking, thinking, thinking. Mingled exasperation and perplexity racked his brain and finally he attempted to collect his thoughts and reason it all out. It was ridiculous, he thought, and yet so serious. Gradually he came to study the entire situation from the viewpoint of his mother and by doing so he came to a solution of the difficulty. His heart softened toward her and he found an excuse for her antipathy for Consuello. Primarily, he understood his mother's great love for him, her desire to protect him, guard his happiness and assure his success in life was the cause for the unreasonable attitude she had taken toward the girl who had been so kind to him. Perhaps his mother still clung to her hastily-formed idea that he was in love and that his "undisciplined heart"--the descriptive words were fresh in his mind from his reading again of "David Copperfield"--would lead him into trouble. And then he easily comprehended her aversion to motion pictures and those who played in them, insupportable by facts as it was. The strict, narrow training she had received as a girl had nurtured in her an abhorrence of public performers, particularly actors and actresses, whom she regarded without exception as libertines. This misconception had been increased by the scandalous and equally slanderous stories that had reached her ears concerning motion pictures and the life led by those engaged in the producing of photoplays in Hollywood.