Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/41

 in her ears, moistened her palms from the bottle of Boudoir Liquid Hair Pomade and slicked her already glittering hair. Satisfied that Augustus should at least appreciate what he had lost, she stole darkly down two flights of stairs and saw Augustus standing beneath the hall chandelier, leaning on his cane.

'Ah...Lanice.'

'How courteous of you to seek me out, Mr. Trainer.'

'You left me most unceremoniously, Lanice. Could you not have trusted me with your plans?'

'No. I couldn't even trust myself...'

She had intended to send Augustus away without letting him sit down, but wishing privacy she motioned him into the more formal of the two drawing-rooms. She sank delicately into a red Chinese chair in front of the screen, massive as the gates of Paradise, curiously made of carved teak and fat jade. She wished to rid herself of him forever, but could not help looking up at him sadly with more meaning in her long black eyes than in her heart.

'Augustus,' she said, with the gentility of one of her own mawkish heroines, 'it is best for you, as well as for me, that we part. I am more definitely pledged to my Art than I ever could be to you.'

'No, no, Miss. It is not your art that has come between us, although I admit that you have talent. It is the chagrin you feel at your mother's ridiculous conduct.'

'Ridiculous?' The girl's heart was pounding and her neat ivory hands twisted the bracelets on her