Masking With color?

I know how to mask in Mx but the one thing I haven’t figured out if it’s possible or not is if you can Create a mask with color that effects the object being masked. For example i found a simple tutorial here http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash5/lightingmask.htm

now you see how they have it a black and white gradient. And they change the alpha values, Well istead of being black and white, i tried to change the colors of the mask to see if the object would be affected. No change. I want the mask to be like bluish color thus affecting the color of the text that is being masked.

Is this possible?