Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/303

 lived in an ugly street near the Conservatoire, within earshot of a hundred pianos. He found her in a studio littered with music, stretched upon a low divan in a dusty robe of purple, on her lap an Italian libretto of Thaïs, in which she was to make her first appearance in Naples. One half the room was as bare as a stage; the other half as cluttered as a Turkish bazar.

"Where is Olga?" she asked him as soon as he was seated in the chair to which she had motioned him.

The question sank into him like a rock.

"How should I know!" he temporized.

"I thought you might."

"They told me she was at her aunt's."

"Well she's not."

Grover felt numb, sitting in this cross between a workshop and a harem and staring at a strangely curt, strangely angry Mamie who might or might not know many things that were vital to him.

"What makes you so concerned about her?"

To his astonishment he saw tears in Mamie's eyes. He was so accustomed to her histrionics that he had lost sight of the fact that she might have a real feeung or two.

"My heart is broken," said Mamie.

To Grover it seemed merely that her vanity was a little bent, but he held his peace.

"My love was real," she went on.

"Who for?"

"Oh, don't be so dumb!"