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Mrs. Stitt again in enquiry, but the woman’s face, deliberately closed against her gaze, told her nothing. Turning back to the letters, she picked up the first and drew out a sheet of cheap, ruled tablet paper. She opened it to a scrawled message in pencil:
    Dear Blanche Hudson: Last night I and my husband watched that picture of yours Hasty Honeymoon. While we were watching it I said to my husband that seeing you again after all these years was just like seeing an old time girlhood chum. Back in those days I was a real fan of yours and when Hasty Honeymoon first came out I was just starting to go with this boy…
    Blanche’s gaze blurred, and she put a hand to her eyes, unable to read any further. It was silly… silly… but something deep inside her had been touched so suddenly and so by surprise shecouldn’t help herself. Her hand fell to the letters in her lap. Fan letters! After all these years! To think there were still those who remembered—who cared enough to write.… It was incredible… incredible.…
    “You didn’t see them before, did you?”
    Taking her hand from her eyes, Blanche looked up in confusion; for a moment she had quite forgotten about Mrs. Stitt. Still unable to speak, she shook her head.
    “I didn’t think so.”
    But Blanche had already returned to the letters. Taking up the one marked
Personal,
she looked for the return address and found the name
William Carroll.
    Her hand was seized with such a trembling she could hardly get the letter open. Bill Carroll had been her leading man in four of her most successful films. The romance the studio had contrived for them had never quite jelled, but they had been the closest of close friends. For a while, that is, until the accident. Afterwards, Bill had tried repeatedly to visit her, both at the hospital and, later, at home, but she had refused to see him, just as she had refused to see the others. And, like the others, he had finally drifted away. But how wonderful it was to hear from him now. Particularly now, this morning, when she had made her decision to leave this house and make a new life for herself outside. If they could be friends again… In her anxiety to get the letter out of the envelope she nearly tore it.
    Dear Blanche
(she read),
I know the odds are against this ever reaching you, but after seeing “Blonde Byline” on TV the other night I just had to write. If by some miracle you should happen to read this, you will notice that I have included my present address and telephone number. Of course I must warn you that I am an old married man now—and I do not use the word old figuratively—but then…
    The letter, falling from her hand, joined the others in her lap. She started to pick it up again, but a sharp clearing of the throat reminded her that Mrs. Stitt was still waiting for her reaction.Forcing herself, as nearly as she could, into a state of composure, she looked up.
    “Where—where did you find these? I thought the morning mail——”
    Mrs. Stitt drew her mouth down into a thin line of disapproval. “Those weren’t in the morning mail,” she said flatly, “they were in the trash. I took some papers out to the barrel and if I hadn’t just happened to look down——”
    “In the trash?” Blanche stared at the woman. “But—are you sure?”
    Mrs. Stitt nodded portentously, then jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. “I guess she just—tossed them out!” As a means of expressing her controlled but active dislike for Jane, Mrs. Stitt, from the first days of her employment, had refused ever to call her by name. “I don’t claim I actually saw her doing it, I don’t say that.”
    “But where——?”
    “They came from the TV station that’s showing your pictures. The big envelope they came in was there, too.”
    Blanche made a gesture of limp confusion. “Jane must have thrown them out by mistake. If the studio insignia was on the envelope she probably thought it was some sort of