Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/32

 found so much pleasure in giving her pain. When she grew big he began to leave her. Big things, big rooms, big spaces, always made her feel unprotected and defenseless.

But Lucy was immediately at home in the large room. The clean floor felt wonderful under the thin soles of her cheap high-heeled slippers and she sniffed happily the acrid perfume of resin and floor-mop oil. To Lucy, Miss Klemper was not a star but a teacher, like teachers at school, but not as pretty as Miss Shaver. Miss Klemper was a teacher who would teach her what to do in order to get a place in the Empire dance line.

Ilona Klemper had felt herself a star in the shabby mother's deference, but Lucy's matter-of-fact questions antagonized her. No girl under sixteen should bleach her hair or wear such a bizarre almost ankle-length draped skirt and put on lipstick. A beauty like this one, she thought, examining Lucy jealously, never would apply herself to work because anyone could see she was boy-crazy.

"The beginners' class is Fridays at four, but you may find it hard to catch up as it is the middle of the term."

"I can do some steps already, so maybe I don't have to start at the beginning. Shall I show you?"

"All right—you'll find slippers in the dressing room."

"Oh, these are O.K.," Lucy said. Walking to the center, she paused, nodded her head to set the tempo as she hummed a popular tune. Then she tapped lightly with the toe of her left foot in preparation and was off for a chorus of grapevines, high steps in place, a few hulas, and at last the slow high kicks she had seen at the Empire.

As Ilona Klemper watched, the floor seemed to become a stage. One would think the girl had stage experience, she thought, her jealousy blending with reluctant admiration. A natural sense of rhythm. But the girl's dancing was crude, the common type of theatrical dancing men liked. However, she showed promise. One day when she became a première ballerina she would say—"I owe it all to my great teacher, Ilona Klemper, a great dancer herself."

"Be careful," she called to Lucy, "be careful not to break your ankles in those slippers."

Most young girls have an element of beauty of one kind or another which with nurturing may, if they are not ambitious beyond their capabilities, help them through the agonizing years of post-adolescence. Ilona Klemper from childhood however had had a dry spinsterish appearance. Her timidity as a girl unattractive to boys 20