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 best friends, including Dicky and myself, had always felt that the real mature beauty of the woman was being hidden.

“Of course, this is terribly rough on Harry,” Lillian said at last, raising her head from my shoulder, and speaking in as ordinary and unruffled a tone as if she had not just gone through what in any other woman would have been a hysterical burst of tears.

“It really isn’t fair to him, and under any other conditions in the world I would not do it.  He’s pretty well cut up about it, so much so that he cannot always control his annoyance when he is speaking about it.  But I know you will overlook any little outbreaks of his, won’t you?  He wanted to come down here with me, you know he’s always anxious to see you, or I would have run away by myself.”

Her tone was anxious, wistful, and my heart ached for her.  I could guess that when Harry Underwood could not “control his annoyance” he could be very horrid indeed.  But I winced at her casual remark that her husband was always anxious to see me.  Harry Underwood held in restraint by his very real admiration for his brilliant wife had been annoying enough to me.  I did not care to think what he might be when enraged at her as I knew he must be now.