"Miss Claudel doesn't want to be disturbed until one," the switchboard girl said.
I'm not going to sit around on a beautiful day and wait until she gets ready to answer the phone, Vida thought huffily, and went out to take in the beauties of Fifth Avenue scintillating with mid-morning activity.
"I feel as though I'm dreaming, being back and with such a luxurious apartment," she telephoned Figente to thank him, not mentioning the burns and scratches on some of his best pieces.
"I'm delighted it's all right. Have you spoken to Lucy?"
"Not yet. I have to phone now."
"She's gone out and won't be back until evening. No, she left no message," reported the operator.
If Lucy doesn't want to see me, I'm not going to keep calling, Vida resolved, piqued at what now seemed deliberate evasion.
"Come on over at four," Clem said in hearty greeting, and she never had felt so glad to hear his voice.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask you to come earlier," he said when she arrived on the dot. "Ilona was here but she had to leave to speak about her theory of movement at an anthropological society."
He pulled out a canvas on which a stark conventionalized Ilona, clad in a flat triangle of purple, wielded in jointed angles a hatchet.
"It's her latest work, 'Prodinus,' " he explained. "It expresses the synthesis of the pioneer spirit inherent in great leaders. The hatchet symbolizes hewing to the core. I think I caught it," he ended in a bravura of uncertainty.
It reminded Vida of old prints of Carrie Nation, the wrecker of saloons, but she did not feel like arguing the point.
"It's just like Ilona. Would you believe it, I haven't seen Lucy yet. We keep missing each other," she said, hoping he would tell her something without her having to ask.
His mouth grew sullen. "She never comes here. I haven't seen her since the party after the recital. Sуmy says he's seen her a couple of times at Piselli's and other supper clubs."
He finished abruptly as if ridding himself of her image and Vida was reluctant to disclose that she too did not know what Lucy was doing. "I must tell you how proud Congress is of you," she said.
"What you tell me," he said after listening, "makes me even more sure I want to get back to the grass roots and away from this bunch of foreigners who kowtow to French painting. That's all the important collectors buy."
