Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/68

 had been spoiled. And the most annoying part of it all was that Rhoda had done nothing for which she could be technically reproached. She certainly might have been more tactful about referring to Noémi Janvier, for she knew,—indeed he had in a very weak and mellow moment confessed it to her,—that Mme. Janvier had for years been the goddess whom he secretly and ardently worshipped from a distance. Rhoda knew that he had got up at eight o'clock on cold winter mornings to stand in line for student tickets to hear Janvier sing Dalila, Carmen, Kundry, Elektra. For Rhoda, Janvier was merely a flamboyant public personality; for him she was a symbol, an embodiment of intangible forces that had stirred his imagination to the depths, arousing vague creative longings in him. More than that, Janvier was the glamorous centre of a group in Paris, a friend of half the people he hoped, some day, to know. That Rhoda should have had the privilege of talking to her, of stripping her to the soul with her merciless gray eyes and then come and 'gloat, or even worse, maintain a tacit but superiorish indulgence toward his romantic interest in the lady,—was a little too much. If Sophie would only invent some pretext to get Rhoda out.

But Sophie was politely saying, "Do tell us about the fête. What are you doing in it?"

"A lot of thankless work," said Rhoda. "Organizing committees, collecting funds, bullying workmen, doing nineteen things at once and expecting a twentieth