Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/313

 corset. Dated, because what is merely new becomes old as you look at it. It isn't what's new in the arts that is lasting, only the art in the new."

Lucy was angry. Just when she liked him better to discover he had no use for dancing—or dancers! "I don't know what you're talking about—everybody else says the Russian Ballet is the last word."

He heard the distress in her voice but felt impelled to take his stand against jargon. "There are no last words in the arts, or even first." The words seemed inconsiderate of her feelings and he tried to reassure her. "Perhaps dance is different because the human body is capable only of movement within its radius and so must repeat itself over and over."

She was not solaced. "Lots of men writers think the ballet is poetic. It takes years of hard work to do. You make me feel I'm wasting my time," she said unhappily.

"I'd be very disturbed if you related what I said—generally—to what you want to do as a dancer. I was merely talking impersonally about my impressions, which are those of one who isn't a balletomane."

"Ilona Klemper hates ballet too."

"I don't dislike it. I enjoy watching the evolutions and balance of its design but I can't get interested in its superimposed stories. Perhaps it's because I wasn't read fairy tales as a child."

She suspected his meaning and couldn't help laughing, though she didn't feel like laughing. "You're fresh."

"So are you."

He didn't mean what she did, but it made her happy the way he said it.

"In a way I agree with you," she conceded. "I got tired of doing the same routine in the show, that's why I am studying with Ranna." She faltered for the briefest pause, separating the lover from the teacher. "In Hindu dancing everything means something, even how you hold your fingers," she recited, hoping Vermillion would not find anything in this with which to disagree. If he did she would leave him here and now because she wasn't going to have anyone who didn't even care about dancing criticize Ranna. His attitude toward ballet was enough already to tell her they never could be friends.

"So I've heard. I've seen something of stylized dance symbols in various countries. A dancer who is an artist uses such symbols as a poet does. There's an old theatre on the Bowery near Chinatown Rh