Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/338

 "Often individuals are named rightly. Nothing could be more appropriate than Amadeus—loved of God—for Mozart."

"And in our show," Lucy contributed, "a girl is married to a drunk whose name is Pickle."

Eyes turned suspiciously to observe their mirth.

While Vermillion had assented to her plea that, as she did not wish to be alone Christmas Eve, they go together to Figente's party, Simone had been unable, when he called for her at the Chennonceaux, to persuade him to go first to her hotel for a drink. She resolved to take his refusal with good grace and on no account to appear possessive. It would be sufficient that they were together again at Figente's and who could doubt what happiness would result later?

At the moment Simone was not feeling particularly joyous. After the restraint she had exercised all night, it was infuriating to see him in high spirits settled comfortably close to the Claudel. The girl was vicious, without feeling, calculating, a nymph of merely outer beauty who was without understanding of the arts. She could destroy Paul who would never protect himself. The Claudel, he would discover, never would accept his fitful secretive moods. She bent forward from her narrow flanks, sparkling cognac eyes on Lucy. "Ah, chérie!"

He did not look at her. "Paul," she said in a tone of unmistakable intimacy, "come and meet Nino and Horta, then we must go."

She knew her tone had centered interest in them. He looked at her expressionlessly, a warning she knew, but unable to restrain herself, she shrugged with the rueful exaggeration of a performer, her husky voice rising shrilly. "He exhausts me. I must drop before he sees how tired I am, whether posing, or in those long walks he considers a promenade. I tell you!"

The Marqués was surprised that a woman of Simone's experience had not learned that nothing was so offensive as public parading of intimacy, she was behaving like the putas of his youth. But Lucy of the disturbing eyes would worry any woman, or man.

Lucy observed Simone gravely. That's the way I want to be in love once in my life, she thought.

Simone, aware of the spectacle she was making, could not desist. It was a studied provocation, the two sitting intimately, and that laugh uniting them was a cruel flaunting of his rejection of her. She had not heard him laugh thus lightheartedly since the first 326