She persisted though Figente acted as if he didn't want to talk about them.
"He's sort of odd, isn't he? He looks foreign—like that Veronese painting—his name too. But his accent is New York, like yours. I know your father was a foreigner but you look more American."
"Not at all! I resemble the San Figente side," he quickly corrected, inferring a denial of his princely and unusual appearance. "Vermillion is not an uncommon name, merely another word for red, just as there are many color names—Brown, Black, White, Blue, Green, Rose, Gold, Silver. He is of partly French ancestry. His father, a physician, came over as a child, and his mother was from upstate New York, English I believe. They were both killed in an accident when he was two and he was taken care of by his grandmother who died when he was sixteen. He's been on his own since then."
"Have you known him long?"
"I consider that I really discovered him in Paris, though I had encountered him once before. I went to browse among some old drawings in the back of a small lithographer's shop. In Paris the artists don't print their own drawings and this shop, Daudin's, has done such printing for generations so I thought I might discover a Gavarni or Forain or Degas or something. Instead I discovered Vermillion, who was working there. We recognized each other immediately, but our friendship actually began at Daudin's. The first time I saw him was at a cafe in Bordeaux, that was in 1919, he was celebrating his nineteenth birthday and arrival in France. He'd worked his passage on a freighter and was celebrating with its engineer. My French sailor friend and I were at the next table and I insisted on sending over a bottle of good wine to replace what he had ordered so that his education might begin immediately. One bottle led to another and at last we all put him on the train and I had no further interest in him until Daudin's, where I saw this memory drawing he had made after seeing Simone Calvette in the theatre. She was a friend of mine and I introduced them soon afterwards."
"But I can't see what such a grown woman can see in such a boy."
"I would hardly say you are old enough to be his mother. Simone is celebrated as a singer of songs of the feminine heart and, with her talent in interpreting human longings, her knowledge of art, she perhaps perceives in Vermillion a quality you cannot see."
"You mean," she asked in dismay, disregarding the side remark
