"Really, Gud, you ought to have had some well-known writer do this book about you--some one who had already been suppressed, or, better yet, a Russian." "Who are the Russians?" asked Gud. "They are the supremists in dancing, the theorists in politics, the idealists in economics and the realists in literature. But you are romantic, aren't you, Gud?" "I think so. At least I feel so--did you always wear your hair that way?" "Oh, no, indeed. You see, I used to wear it shorn like that of a boy, for that fashion was once the insignia of the female intelligence. But all the fat bankers' wives aped us, so now our only chance for distinction is to ape our mothers, and I wear my mother's hair. See, I will take it off and show it to you." "It is very lovely," said Gud, as he fingered her mother's hair. "I think I should have loved your mother, and it is very sweet of you to wear this hair in remembrance of her. Most women who have risen to your intellectual heights forget their mothers." "It is very kind of you to say that, but distinction is in being different, and so we ultra-intelligent women are again showing respect for our mothers to distinguish us from the mob of the commonplace intellectuals who came flopping into the pool of progress and muddied the water.... It is a great race, dear Gud, this struggle to keep ahead of the apings of the stupid." "Yes, yes, so I find it. Little up-start muddling gods have quite fogged up the milky way with their nebulous creations--but pardon me if I suggest that I would rather that you put your mother's hair back on." She had some difficulty in putting her mother's hair on straight; so Gud reached over, and with a few deft touches, arranged it for her. Then, plucking a button from his robe, he burnished it on his sleeve until it shone silvery bright, and then he held it before her. She looked into the mirroring silver and gave a little rapturous cry of joy, for the hair of her mother, on which they had both wasted so much henna, had been turned into a brilliant shade of fluorescent opalescence--a color that no artist of the Latin Quarter had ever painted and that no artist of the Village had ever imagined. "Oh, Gud," she cried, "now I know that I love you, for they will go mad about it and I shall be the queen of the studios." "I would rather that you remain just a woman as you have so sweetly shown yourself to be." "Never!" cried she who wanted something that no one could understand, "never, never, will I be content to be just a woman! I must be, oh so much more. I must have super-personality, and hyper-yearnings, and ultra-strivings and transcendent seekings after ultimate mysteries--really I don't think you understand me at all!" "Has any one ever understood you?" asked Gud. "No," she breathed in soft expectancy. "Only a little while ago you were searching for something that no one could understand--have we not found it in yourself?" "Perhaps," she spoke dubiously.