Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/501

 Mistinguette. Odeon. Rachmaninoff. Cecile Sorel. Empire. Cirque Medrano. Fr&res Frattelini.

"Beman wants to bring our show to Paris."

"You'd be a sensation here."

"Oh, New York is good enough for me. But maybe I will. I'm very different in this show than when you saw me."

"I hope not."

That was better, but he might have gone farther.

He stopped her before a small dimly lighted window in which reposed several ancient wine bottles thick with greenish dust.

He must be awfully poor to bring me to this rundown place, she thought.

A tripled moon lowered by brass cherubs lighted a dozen round tables. The disintegrating silver on the backs of the mirrors and tarnished gilt fleur de lys on terra cotta walls gave the room a hazy bloom. But there was nothing dingy about the napery or the battery of copper and silver chafing dishes, presses, and services; and there was an unmistakable air of contentment in the habitues celebrating culinary rites.

At their entrance, hands stopped in passage and eyes turned unbelieving to see what gave the impression of a goldwasser flake having floated in. Two graybeards in evening dress lost the thread of their conversation and separately decided to remain for a second demitasse and fine. A man with a grey clipped mustache and wearing a mourning band on his sleeve pretended he was in someone's way and shifted his chair for a better look.

"This is 1900—the clientele have a nostalgia for the 'good old days' here—but they're not above keeping up-to-date in business or politics. The one with the red carnation is the Foreign Affairs Minister. The brunette with him is not foreign to affairs. Those two short pudgy ones with the redhaired woman are deputies from the Chamber. She's a member of the Théâtre Franfais, and mistress of the one across from her."

"Was she a 'rat'?"

"Possibly—but everyone in the Chamber knows her fat boy friend is. The woman in black with the thin mouth and fat pearls is not the mother but the wife of the man to her left. She's from one of the richest families in France."

"How do you know all this?"

"Paris is a small town in here, I come occasionally with a Rh