"One of the girls at Master's danced there a season. I think she paid to get in. She said their ballet isn't much."
It isn't.
"Do you think it was better when Degas made his drawings?"
"I doubt it. I think, as you put it in the Louvre yesterday, his genius rubbed off onto his models."
"Well, his ballet girls certainly have perfect positions, better than most dancers. Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror while practicing I ask myself do I look like his dancers?"
"I should say not."
She laughed happily. "That isn't what I mean. It helps to look at the drawings. Of course I'm not really a great ballerina. I didn't work hard enough when I was young and now I'm too old."
"Aren't you exaggerating?"
"Well, I feel old. I started when I was twelve, some start younger."
"In Degas's day, I think the younger dancers at the Opéra were called 'rats.'"
"Rats! Why?"
"I guess because of their scurrying about."
"I don't like that. I'll bet a man thought that up. It's mean. They probably were being chased."
He grinned. "No doubt. But rats do a little chasing too. The inference was that ballet rats came from the sewer world of Paris."
"Maybe they had to make a living."
That rush of sympathetic concern! But it wasn't a living with her. Threw over Bigelow, and how many others after? An invidious rage seized him and darkened his face at visualizing the unending parade of shadows who were her firsthand teachers. Trouble was she let—lets—too many catch up with her. Momentary pleasure couldn't be much for her to go from that one to this one. Point was, he wanted her around—but not making the rounds. No time for jealousy of boys—and girls. Simone probably lied. Feeds on the torment of jealousy.
She looked at him sidelong. Those long silences of his! He was angry about something. He did that often, not saying anything when you said something, as if walking alone.
The crowds on the Boulevards were extras in a play to make it a big production. Red, green, white, posters with black lettering diagonal or straight across, large and small. Sacha Guitry. A.B.C.
