His father broke in again, “It might save a few hours of dodging and cross-examination if you'd tell us who and what she is.”
“She is known professionally as Anita Adair.”
So parochial a thing is fame that the title which millions of people had learned to know and love meant absolutely nothing to the Dyckmans. They were so ignorant of the new arts that even Mary Pickford meant hardly more to them than Picasso or Matisse.
Jim brought out a photograph of Kedzie, a small one that he carried in his pocket-book for company. The problem of what she looked like distracted attention for the moment from the problem of what she did and was.
Mrs. Dyckman took the picture and perused it anxiously. Her husband leaned over her shoulder and studied it, too. He was mollified and won by the big, gentle eyes and that bee-stung upper lip. He grumbled:
“Well, you're a good chooser for looks, anyway. Sweet little thing.”
Mrs. Dyckman examined the face more knowingly. She saw in those big, innocent eyes a serene selfishness and a kind of sweet ruthlessness. In the pouting lips she saw discontent and a gift for wheedling. But all she said was, “She's a darling.”
Jim caught the knell-tone in her praise and feared that Kedzie was dead to her already. He saw more elegy in her sigh of resignation to fate and her resolution to take up her cross—the mother's cross of a pretty, selfish daughter-in-law.
“You haven't told us yet how she won her—fame, you said.”
And now Jim had to tell it.