At first glance her beauty was striking—fresh-faced and delicate with large eyes, her little black dress cinched at the waist, her hair pinned in a chignon. At second glance, her deep, intelligent eyes were entrancing, still vivid on newspapers yellowed from light and air and lined with age that Fate didn’t offer to her.

She had seen the faces of shattered dreams, the zippy Ziegfeld girls, the doll-faced divorcées, the wellborn wives in opulent ivory towers, knocked down and knocked right out.