erwood stepped
out.

Lillian's head and face were so swathed in veils that I did not
realize what the change in her appearance of which she had warned me
was until I was alone with her in my room, which I intended giving up
to her and her husband while they stayed. Then, as she took off her
hat and veils, I almost cried out in astonishment--for at my first,
unaccustomed glance, instead of the rouged and powdered face, and dyed
hair, which to me had been the only unpleasant things about Lillian
Underwood, the face of an old woman looked at me, and the hair above
it was gray!

There were the remnants of great youthful beauty in Lillian's face.
Nay, more, there were wonderful possibilities when the present crisis
in her life, whatever it might be, should have passed. But the effect
of the change in her was staggering.

"Awful, isn't it?" she said, coming up to me. "No, don't lie to me,"
as she saw a confused, merciful denial rise to my lips. "There are
mirrors everywhere, you know. There's one comfort, I can't possibly
ever look any worse than I do now, and when my hair gets over the
effect of its long years of dyeing, and my present emotional crisis
becomes less tense I probably shall not be such a fright. But oh, my
dear, how glad I am to be with you. I need you so much just now."

She put her head on my shoulder as a homesick child might have done,
and I felt her draw two or three long, shuddering breaths, the dry
sobs which take the place of tears in the rare moments when Lillian
Underwood gives way to emotion. I stroked her hair with tender,
pitiful fingers, noticing as I did so what ravages her foolish
treatment of her hair had made in tresses that must once have been
beautiful. Originally of the blonde tint she had tried to preserve,
her locks were now an ugly mixture of dull drab and gray. As I stood
looking down at the head pillowed against my shoulder I realized what
this transformation in Lillian must mean to Harry Underwood.

He it was who had always insisted that she follow the example of the
gay Bohemian crowd of which he was a leader, and disguise her fleeting
youth, with dye and rouge. It was to please him, or, as she once
expressed it to me, "to play the game fairly with Harry" that she
outraged her own instincts, her sense of what was decent and becoming,
and constantly made up her face into a mask like that of a woman of
the half-world. No one could deny that it disguised her real age, but
her bes