Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/260

 them all to affect her. It was unbelievable that Paul would discuss her with these two. Oh! to see her innocent expression change if she were to tell her that at this moment he was awaiting her. Let him wait for his effrontery in flaunting this girl.

"Pah! this champagne is nothing, cognac would improve it, Jacques." Her voice was frayed and a little indistinct.

"Mr. Bigelow and his party wait—you promised," he said, but observing her mounting frenzy, shrugged.

An orchid broken from a spray lay on the sodden table and, picking it up, she thrust it suddenly into the tumbler of champagne. She was a great cell of controlled power, like the dynamo one heard and felt throbbing on narrow rue Caumartin as one walked holding Paul's arm. But she was more clever than a machine. Far more clever than the four observing her with their puppet faces. Sagging fat Figente and his musical boy toy who would leave him if she snapped her fingers. The hot intelligent one in the mischosen frosty gown. And the Leda whose twilight gown revealed more than it concealed, but without subtlety, as was her speech. One could easily learn from her what Paul had done and said.

"Drink before it is warm," she invited the puppet of her will.

"I shouldn't because I have two shows tomorrow, but here goes."

Lucy was glad Simone was a little drunk because it was making her more friendly.

Simone drained the orchid glass and confided, "It is good to put Scotch or cognac in their water, it revives them as it does us. I adore the scent of orchis, it is a waiting jungle stillness."

"I'll remember that. I never noticed their odor, I suppose, because I use too much perfume. To tell you the truth, I don't think they suit me as well as you."

"You are too modest, though perhaps les muguets would suit you better."

"I don't know what they are. The only French I know is bon jour, bon nuit, oui oui, non non, and oo la la," Lucy said, feeling less constrained because of Simone's increasing friendliness.

"Lilies of the valley," Vida murmured dryly, jealous of being out of it and, at the same time, further revising her opinion of Lucy who, until the advent of Simone, had appeared the paragon of worldly wisdom. Seeing her respond too naively to the older woman, who suddenly and for some undetectable reason was playing up to Lucy, was provoking. Or was it that Lucy's naivete made her a kind of Candide, seemingly willing to submit to the thoughts and wishes of 248