Dangerous as the whole proceeding seemed nothing really happened, and Linda's fears gradually faded into a mere curiosity and interest. A curtain hung across the door to the rest of the establishment, but it had been brushed partly aside; and she could see, in the compartment they had vacated, another man bending with waving irons over the liberated mass of a woman's hair. He was very much like M. Joseph, but he was younger and had only a dark scrap of mustache. As he caught up the hair with a quick double twist he leaned very close to the woman's face, whispering with an expression that never changed, an expression like that of the wax heads in the show-case. He bent so low that Linda was certain their cheeks had touched. She pondered at length over this, gazing now at the man beyond and now at M. Joseph flitting with the cold-air tube about her mother; wondering if, when she grew older, she would like a hair-dresser's cheek against hers. Linda decided not. The idea didn't shock her, the woman in the other space plainly liked it; still she decided she wouldn't. A different kind of man, she told herself, would be nicer. Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp, unpleasant odor--the odor of scorched hair; and she was absolutely rigid with horror at an agonized cry from her mother. “It's burning me terribly,” the latter cried. “Oh, I can't stand it. Stop! Stop!” M. Joseph, as white as plaster, rushed to the wall and reversed the handle, and Mrs. Condon started from the chair, her face now streaming with actual tears; but before she could escape the man threw himself on her shoulders. “You mustn't move,” he whispered desperately, “you'll tear your hair out. I tell you no harm's been done. Everything is all right. Please, please don't cry like that. It will ruin my business. There are others in the establishment. Stop!” he shook her viciously. Linda had risen, terrorized; and Mrs. Condon, with waving plucking hands, was sobbing an appeal to be released. “My head, my head,” she repeated. “I assure you”--the man motioned to a pallid girl to hold her in the chair. With a towel to protect his hand he undid a screw, lifted off the cap and untwisted the cotton from a bound lock of hair; releasing it, in turn, from the spindle it fell forward in a complete corkscrew over Mrs. Condon's face. “Do you see!” he demanded. “Perfect. I give you my word they'll all be like that. The cursed heat ran up on me,” he added in a swift aside to his assistant. “Has Mrs. Bellows gone? Who's still in the place? Here, loose that binding ... thank God, that one is all right, too.”