CHAPTER XXIV
Kedzie wanted to be a lady, and with the ladies stand—a tall tiara in her hair, a lorgnette in her hand.
She had succeeded dizzily, tremendously, in her cinema career. The timid thing that had watched the moving-picture director to see how he held his wineglass, and accepted his smile as a beam of sunshine breaking through the clouds about his godlike head, now found his gracefulness “actory,” his intimacy impudent, and his association compromising. Ferriday's very picturesqueness and artistry convinced her now that he was not quite the gentleman.
Kedzie was beginning to imitate the upper dialect already. She who but a twelvemonth past was dividing people into “hicks” and “swells,” and whose epithets were “reub” and “classy,” was now a generation advanced.
Ferriday saw it and raged. One day in discussing the cast of a picture he mentioned the screen-pet Lorraine Melnotte as the man for the principal male rôle.
Kedzie sighed; “Oh, he is so hopelessly romantic, never quite the gentleman. In costume he gets by, but in evening clothes he always suggests the handsome waiter—don't you think?”
Ferriday roared, with disgust: “Good Lord, but you're growing. What is this thing I've invented? Are you a Frankenstein?”
Kedzie looked blank and sneered, “Are you implying that I have Yiddish blood in me?”
She wondered why he laughed, but she would not ask. Along many lines Kedzie did not know much, but in others she was uncannily acute.