Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/404

 eyes. The far side of the room out beyond armpits and the white tablecloth and its bottles and glasses on the table beyond tilted off perspective under the hanging wrought iron chandelier.

"I don't know how it is in composing music or in writing," he continued, as though he hadn't stopped, "but it's as though each painting is part of a long soliloquy. It seems to me that the term art is an ideal one works toward and never quite achieves for it is always beyond. A painter—and probably a writer and composer—doesn't set out to make a personal style, contrive one arbitrarily. The style grows out of his work. Except in those who copy—and that ain't art, is it?"

He was, Vida realized with a shock, speaking to her, and she looked at him dumbfounded as he smiled. A hot current shot through her at this recognition of her presence. The recital was over and only one more trouble to solve and she would settle down to work.

"It certainly ain't," she agreed happily.

Lucy sat up abruptly. Vida, who always had been a second self, had a self all her own approved by Vermillion.

"Some party!" grumbled one of the girls.

"He certainly wrecked it," another agreed.

"Let's put on a record and dance, that'll stop him."

"I'm seriously thinking of playing Camille," Tessie said to Semy, the idea having just occurred to her.

"I'd like to see that!" he said enthusiastically.

"Would you really? I'm so glad. I never thought of it myself until Jack Barrymore said I must do it and then, oddly enough, the last time I was in Paris, a little while after Jack spoke of it—that was about two years ago—Sacha Guitry said the same thing, though I think Yvonne Printemps would object to my doing it with him. I do think though that much of its pictorial qualities would be lost on the stage—things like Camille's walks in the country with Armand."

"Yes, the stage is too limited for today's audiences," Semy said. He knew what she was after. It was a good idea—Camille for pictures, but for Biggens' Dorothy Destine—and in public domain too.

"I couldn't agree more and now I really must go. It's been a perfectly wonderful party. I hope you will come and lunch with Beman and me soon," Tessie said, knowing when to stop after having got in a first word.

"I'd love to."

"You're just one of those," Vent said rudely to Vermillion, "who 392