hade of her hair: the color of warm ashes. There was no
woman of his acquaintance with that rare shade of blonde hair.

He opened his eyes. She was sitting two seats ahead of him and the
lights of the stage gave a faint halo to a small well-shaped head
defined by the low coil of hair. She had a long throat apparently, but
although she had dropped her wrap over the back of the seat he had no
more than a glimpse of a white neck and a suggestion of sloping
shoulders. Rather rare those, nowadays. They reminded him, together
with the haughty poise of the head, of the family portraits in the old
gallery at home. Being dark himself, he admired fair women, although
since they had taken to bobbing their hair they looked as much alike as
magazine covers. This woman wore her hair in no particular fashion.
It was soft and abundant, brushed back from her face, and drawn merely
over the tips of the ears. At least so he inferred. He had not seen
even her profile as she passed. Profiles were out of date, but in an
old-fashioned corner of his soul he admired them, and he was idly
convinced that a woman with so perfectly shaped a head, long and
narrow, but not too narrow, must have a profile. Probably her full
face would not be so attractive. Women with _cendre_ hair generally
had light brows and lashes, and her eyes might be a washed-out blue.
Or prominent. Or her mouth too small. He would bet on the profile,
however, and instead of rushing out when that blessed curtain went down
he would wait and look for it.

Then he closed his eyes again and forgot her until he was roused by the
clapping of many hands. First-nighters always applaud, no matter how
perfunctorily. Noblesse oblige. But the difference between the
applause of the bored but loyal and that of the enchanted and quickened
is as the difference between a rising breeze and a hurricane.

The actors bowed en masse, in threes, in twos, singly. The curtain
descended, the lights rose, the audience heaved. Men hurried up the
aisle and climbed over patient women. People began to visit. And then
the woman two seats ahead of Clavering did a singular thing.

She rose slowly to her feet, turned her back to the stage, raised her
opera glasses and leisurely surveyed the audience.

"I knew it!" Clavering's tongue clicked. "European. No American
woman ever did that--unless, to be sure, she has lived too long abroad
to remember our customs."

He gazed at her eagerly