would learn to like him, more for Mother's sake. In a way too I can't blame him for thinking he could behave like that, since I let him give us this apartment. But the trouble with me is I can't be like the women in the de Goncourt book. They don't seem interested in being in love, only in what they can get. Maybe I'm the type who would rather give the man my apartment. Take care of somebody. Nobody ever could be close to Lyle.
Chapter 20
"WHEAHFOAH AHT THOU RRROMEO?"
The painted dummies sporting Franklin & Co. wigs and transformations smiled welcome from across the street as she sat crosslegged on the hard mattress of the double bed in the Derby Hotel. Sophie's Corsets were for flatter figures this year, than for those fatties who tried to wear them. The Debutante Slouch. They would have gone to the Astor but Kel Moyle and some other men she didn't like stayed there. It was nice and private at the Derby. Nobody important, just Broadway types. Gamblers, bookies, small-time vaudevillians. No dope fiends: they were thrown right out. It was like starting all over, except now she was première danseuse. Beman, however, was distant because she had broken with Lyle, and avoided the subject of his new show when she brought it up. Might mean going back to a Samuels revue. That wouldn't be so bad except it wasn't art. Beman's shows were more high class.
Late in the autumn Mae said one night after the show, "I found a nice furnished apartment in a new apartment-hotel on Park Avenue, two rooms and kitchen, just what we need."
"That's grand, and let's hire that friend of Soler's maid. You know—Cleo. I'm going to buy a lot of books and study hard. I'll be a regular old maid."
"I think you ought to go out more and have some fun," Mae reproved, but Lucy shook her head.
She knew Mother hoped she would find another Lyle but the boys in the show were more fun. Figente was right, experience had only taught what love wasn't. There probably was no such thing as
