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Updated: May 31, 2025
We went down the hall to a wonderful room of ivory and gold, which I knew must be Lillian's guest room. In a big ivory-tinted bed the girl lay, a pitiful wreck of the dashing, insolent figure she had been. Her face was as white as the pillows upon which she lay, while her hands looked utterly bloodless as they rested listlessly upon the coverlet. Only her eyes held anything of her old spirit.
So out came the plain graduation-dress, folded carefully away since the night she read the valedictory, three months ago; she sewed a rip in the gloves saved from the same occasion, and she took out the fan which her grandmother had given her, a wonderful fan she had considered it until she saw a few of Lillian's.
Remembering Lillian's advice to make the transition gradual from the frigid courtesy of my former meetings with Grace Draper to the friendly warmth we had planned for our campaign, I adopted the manner one would use to a casual but interesting acquaintance. I kept the conversational ball rolling on almost every topic under the sun. But I found that the burden of the talk fell on my shoulders.
She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her. I saw now, and wondered why I had not realized before the reason for Lillian's sudden abandonment of the rouge and powder and dyed hair which she had used so long.
His brain was still perilously active, and not only cut and refined the dialogue, but made most radical modifications of the "business." Helen began to show the effects of the strain upon her; for she was not merely carrying the burden of Lillian's Duty, and directing rehearsals of the new piece she was deeply involved in the greatest problem than can come to a woman.
And so sweet she was, so unconscious of any thought of rivalry! That night she came late to Lillian's room to say good-night once more, to counsel hope, and urge an effort to sleep. Even when she seemed gone at last, she opened the door again to blow a kiss and smile anew. When the door had closed finally Lillian, standing near the mirror, could but note the difference.
In fact, not a foot of the town was left unsearched, but all to no avail, and the once happy home of the Franklins was steeped in sorrow and despair. The morning after Lillian's disappearance, Mrs. Foley inquired of the boys in the neighborhood if they had seen anything of her son Tom, who, she declared, had been gone since the previous morning.
"Oh," I gasped, "do you think he's going to keep this up?" "Looks like it," Lillian returned, "but simply ignore him. He has all the ear-marks of a gentleman. I don't think he will annoy you. Now forget him and enjoy your ice, and then we'll go and get that hat." Under Lillian's guidance the selection of the hat proved an easy task. Lillian bade me good-by at the door of the hat shop.
“I'm not,” allows Lillian. “To my notions all that votin' business is nothing for a lady to get mixed up in. No, sir.” Lillian makes that noise with her upper lip again. Lillian's lips are very red, her eyebrows very black. I'll not do anything, though, with my eyebrows. Says Lillian: “No, siree, not for a lady. I got a good bet up on the election. Yes, sir!—fifty dollars on Harding.”
From the friendly shelter of the curtain Douglass could study the house without being seen, and a little glow of fire warmed his heart as he recognized five or six of the best-known literary men of the city seated well down towards the front, and the fifteen minutes' wait before the orchestra leader took his seat was rendered less painful by his pride in the really high character of his audience; but when the music blared forth and the curtain began to rise, his blood chilled with a return of the fear and doubt which had assailed him at the opening of Lillian's Duty.
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