others to attain answers to the two questions which obsessed her: the meaning of love; and what made you an artist?
Lucy eyed Simone, wondering whether a compliment had been intended or whether she appeared too kiddish for orchids.
"I realize how much I missed in not knowing French even though you made me understand something by the way you sang. Now more than ever I want to learn so that the next time I hear you it will mean even more to me, because I think you are such a great artist it's a shame to miss a word."
Simone took a deep draught of cognac and smiled with an intimacy that made Lucy prickle. No wonder Vermillion had been attracted, she seemed to have a kind of power over anyone she looked at.
"You must come," Simone was saying, "and let me explain my songs. After all, we artists of the theatre must collaborate."
Figente could hardly believe his ears: Simone collaborating with another performer, anyone, except perhaps with a lover. It proved that the woman was drunk as well as drugged. Or was she no longer interested in men, was that why Vermillion had hurried away?
That here, unexpectedly, someone as famous as Simone Calvette should apply that magic word artist to her was overwhelming to Lucy, because it meant the singer thought it possible for her to become one. "I would like that better than anything in the world."
"We really must go, Lucy!" Figente no longer could control his impatience. It always was better having parties at home where when people became tiresome, as after a time everyone invariably did, one could go to bed.
A tall woman with clipped black hair, pomaded and sleek as a man's, and wearing a man's black opera cape, strode into the room. It was, Figente saw, Maxine Purcell, of opposite predilections to his own, and he nodded distantly, as she to him, as though members of separate branches of a secret society. His intuition concerning Simone was confirmed: in such relationships he was, he applauded himself, infallible.
"Simone dear, Jacques says you are too exhausted and so I've ordered a carriage if you think a drive would rest you. There is a most amusing place in Harlem that might relax you—we could go there through the Park."
Through the haze of the third cognac Simone recalled the promise to the persistent millionairess, one of several promises for after the performance. But Paul was waiting.
