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“The century is very young,” she smiled.

“Well, Rand’s seen them all in the last fifteen or ssss1 twenty years and knows what he’s talking about. We were at your opening together and he said then you were paralyzing.”

“Did I do that to you, too?”

“Paralyze me? Bet your life you did! When you walked out on that stage and raised your head, a ramrod went up my back. ‘That’s Lizzie Parsons,’ I said to myself, ‘or I’ll be shot.’ Then I thought I must be loony, that when I’d see you in a better light without the short wig, I’d laugh at my mistake. But in the second act I knew I was right, in spite of the black hair—”

“It’s dyed, Lou.” She made the confession haltingly. “At first I didn’t want to. My hair seemed sort of part of me—the color, I mean. But that’s just why he made me do it; it was a question of personality, he said. I begged him to let me wear a wig but he was afraid it would be detected. And he was right, I dare say. He’s always right.”

“Don’t you worry about the way it looks, either. You used to be just pretty. Now you’re a beauty!”