Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/420

 what happened when we got through touring the U.S. and he said he might be able to repeat the tour next year if we had a new program and next summer he might be able to arrange a London and Paris season. But he didn't seem so interested in that. Ranna said as long as we were going to be in California we ought to go to Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and India, and Judock jumped at that because it seems there's more money there than in Europe and not all concert artists want to go to the Orient. I said I didn't want to go that way and he left it to Ranna to talk me into it and the tour because it's" all off if I won't go. I'll tell you something about Ranna it took me a long while to find out. He only seems impractical—it's his act to get you to take care of him and give him his own way.

"But I'm not going. After all, I've turned down going on tour for Samuels, and Beman too. I just don't want to go so far away. I guess you think I'm crazy after all my talk about wanting to be a concert artist, and I don't know what's going to happen to me, but whatever does will be here in New York. I would consider it if Judock let us play here, and then—Paris. He was flabbergasted when I suggested he put us on for a am. He says a concert audience is limited, and you can't have a run in New York unless you're subsidized, like the Opera. Did you know artists pay Judock to put on their shows! Well, anyway, the sun may rise in the east and set in the west but I'm not going to follow it around the world with Ranna."

At nine the evening of sailing Vermillion opened wide the windows to the refreshing spring rain and returned to packing. Tire room already was barren of signs of work and strange. Skeleton furniture stood as he had found it. The easel, trestle table, and a crate of canvases had been moved to storage. The old trunk, filled with paints, books, notebooks, and endless items he'd sort out in Paris, already was on the docks. The paint box was closed and there remained only two suitcases to be packed with clothes. On the money from Vedder, already alarmingly depleted in the process of moving and ship fare, he could with luck work in Paris for a year counting on what might come in by acting as agent for the art supply house. "I love you, but I can't afford you," he said to his City, reluctant to leave now that the hour had come. Even the stink wafted up the river from slaughterhouses, against which he sometimes had 408