She did not answer, only mentioned that she had been ill at the time.
“Do you consider it your best picture?”
She hesitated.
“If not, what would be your choice?”
Again she hesitated, then:
“‘White Sister,’ perhaps.”
We saw that, too, and “Romola,” and poor little Mimi, and Hester Prynne, made when Lillian had become, beyond all question, “First Lady of the Screen.”
It was toward the end of March that we saw the last of her great silent pictures, “Wind.” The motion picture had arrived at mechanical perfection when it was made. It was one of the several “swan songs” of that ill-fated year. I thought it a remarkable picture—beautiful in its stark un-beauty. It only seemed unfortunate in that it presented the most sordid of human aspects against a background of wind-cursed wastes.
Lillian watched it almost without a word. I think she approved her part in it, and why not? Technically, she was at her best. We drove home rather silently.
“It was the exact opposite of ‘Broken Blossoms,’” I ventured to say.