Lillian enjoyed rehearsing when it did not last too long. There were some half-a-dozen of the fairies, and they flew—flew wonderfully, suspended on wires, pulled from somewhere below by eighteen strong Germans. She loved the flying sensation—so much that she would go before rehearsal-time and rehearse a little on her own account. She tried all the wires, and the big Germans delighted in sending her soaring into the air. In the play, she was the “Gold Fairy,” that flew highest. And there was one scene where she rested on a wall. Belasco, watching the rehearsals one day, was asked by a reporter what he thought of her looks. Belasco sent a glance at the slender figure on the wall, at the unearthly face surrounded by a tumbling mass of gold. “Most beautiful blonde in the world,” he said, and next day that label found its way into print and general circulation. Not long ago—a month or two before he died—Belasco qualified—a little: He had not then, he said, seen _all_ the beautiful blondes in the world. Perhaps he should have said: “_One_ of the most beautiful.” But as Belasco had seen a very great number of beautiful blondes—probably the pick of them—the verdict will be allowed to stand as reported, especially as it was never questioned. Lillian’s beauty was not then what it became later:—as revealed in “The White Sister,” for instance, in “Romola,” in “La Bohême,” and more recently in “Uncle Vanya.” * * * * * “The Good Little Devil” did not follow any of the announced dates. It opened successfully in Washington, or Philadelphia, and was in Baltimore for Christmas. They gave two performances that day, during the second of which there was an accident—serious enough, though it might have been worse. In the act where she landed on the wall, she left it with a step-down of six feet. The wire, of course, lifted her down, but in this performance something was wrong, and she literally stepped into space. The sickening, helpless feeling of expecting support and finding none! The fall made her quite ill; her understudy had to finish the play. “I cried all night,” she wrote Nell, “I was so lonely and broken-hearted.” She was apparently not injured, but terribly shaken; and then, the audience had laughed. Mr. Belasco hurried to her dressing-room to comfort her. The audience was not laughing at her, he said, but at the incident. She must not mind that; everything was going to be all right. It was, but the shock had weakened her.