Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/422

 "Tonight! But I thought you sailed tomorrow? That's less than an hour!" she said in consternation.

"That's right, twelve-o-one, one minute after today," he said, opening the bottle.

"There were so many things I wanted to ask you. You see I have so few friends, I hate to lose one," she faltered.

He held back his impulse to take her in his arms, and kicked aside an old turtle neck sweater unraveling on the floor.

"You exaggerate. I'm sure you have dozens," he said briskly.

"Oh sure, I have hundreds—you don't have to worry about me," she said, trying hard to smile brightly because she could see he didn't want to be bothered.

The cork popped. "This is just what I needed. I'll take you home on my way to the ship."

"I'll go along, I love to wave goodbye," she said. Any second now she'd be crying, then what would he think of her?

"No," he said sharply, "I don't like being waved off."

"You're like me, I like to come and go as I please."

He struggled with the last obstinate bag, pulling out the turtle neck sweater. "This is too warm for Paris anyway."

"I'll take it, maybe I'll use it for an apache number." She tried to sound gay, rolled it up, and placed it next to her purse.

"What are your plans now?" he asked, putting the image of Lucy in the sweater from his mind.

"As Bert Savoy says 'I'm glad you ast me, I'm glad you ast me,'" she said brightly to keep on making it seem a party. "Judock, the concert manager, has offered us a transcontinental tour, U.S. and Canada. Not Ilona."

"That's fine. It's what you want, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," she said doubtfully. "But so tar it's only for one season. If we tour again next season we must have a whole new program. I don't know whether I could ever think of anything as good as the Laurencin ballet again."

"Sure you will," he encouraged. "There are all sorts of ideas that would be fine for you. You could do a Gavami ballet which would be much in the same genre but an earlier period. You could do Mimi Pinson as a ballet—that's the story La Bohème was partly founded on; or you might try Poe's Masque of the Red Death—which would have to be done in very early dance styles. Perhaps to Bach."

"I can see you are getting me set for years of work," she said 410