Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/479

 slender arm in turn, waving it ruthlessly as if in a kind of mad ballet until with a shuddering deep sigh the rigid body slowly unbent.

"I'll take it," she said to the waiter through a crack in the door, shoving him a few uncounted bills.

"Drink it," she coaxed, her arm in back of Lucy's head as the wan lips opened and received chokingly the drops. Then Lucy began to suck at the cup in the rhythm of a baby at breast and opened her eyes.

"You make me sick, what do you mean getting into a state like this?" Vida scolded.

The only answer was a determined rap on the door.

"Miss Claudel is fine," she told the suspicious manager. "She's just had a relapse, she's been very sick, you know, but she's fine now. I'll take her home as soon as she feels up to it."

She rubbed and slapped and at length was able to move her to the chaise longue and put the bedding to dry on the radiator.

"Do you want to be a story on the front page of a tabloid with one of those cosmograph photos?" she scolded.

"You didn't come and I just wanted to sleep and sleep," Lucy mumbled.

"You're crazy," Vida said brusquely and later, when she was fit to listen, told her about Beman.

"It doesn't mean a thing," she said indifferently. "You don't realize it, Vida, because you don't know show business—I'm finished. Beman will never want me for a show. I started almost at the top too soon. Beginning is easy. It's keeping up that kills you unless you're tough as nails, and don't care about anything else. Even yourself. Only success. It's different with you. You're an artist. Or will be. I'm not. I don't know why, and I don't care. Not any more."

"That's nonsense! We're only twenty, and it takes a long time to become an artist," Vida protested on her own behalf as well.

The next morning at eleven Vida was still with Lucy. Though awake, Lucy was encased in an impenetrable armor of lethargy. Vida was about to send for a doctor when the telephone rang.

"Mr. Beman would like Miss Claudel to lunch with him tomorrow at Sardi's," said a brisk secretary.

"I'm so sorry," replied secretary Bertrand, "but Miss Claudel has an engagement—but she could lunch day after tomorrow, shall we say here at the Athenée?" Rh