him with her presence of other unfulfilled projects. Though the first impulse, planning, was fun. The actuality was tiresome.
"What can I do to help in this wonderful venture, Raymond?" she said, rising reluctantly. Figente was not going to ask her to stay, and she would have to eat dinner alone as Kevin had taken his Dublin friend to McSorley's saloon.
Now that he was certain she was leaving, Figente forced a smile. "We'll find something for you to do."
Her shabby gown made from an old Paisley shawl reminded him of her many generosities to others and himself and he felt a twinge of discomfort. "That reminds me, Mary, I want you to have that lovely piece of Persian brocade over the screen."
"There's Egypt in your dreamy eyes," Lucy sang in uncertain modulations, tapping time with the round French toe of her stilt-heeled slipper on the taxi's rubber floor. Her voice broke and she stopped, laughing. "I have a good time sense but I can't carry a tune. It's a good thing I didn't have to start in the chorus." She stretched out a flesh-silk leg and frowned. "Darn it, a run. Lucky I always carry an extra pair in my purse." She slipped off a lace-edged blue-satin garter, rolled down the stocking into a neat ring, replaced it, and held out two perfect legs to make certain the stockings matched. "It's a good idea to roll your stockings off and on because silk snags so easily," she said.
It seemed to Vida nothing marked the difference between Lucy and herself so much as stockings. She was glad she had had sense enough to change, before going to Figente's, from walking lisles into the silk of which Aunt Mabel had given her three pairs for graduation. Even those were service weight, and darker than Lucy's. She wished she could hitch up rolled stockings like Lucy and not be embarrassed and thus dispense with a garter belt. These preoccupations would have surprised Lucy who believed Vida too sensible to be interested in such silly things.
"I really enjoyed this afternoon, didn't you? Ranna is a wonderful dancer. Imagine being able to move your head from side to side like that. And the smooth way every movement moved into the next. That's what Master is always telling us. But what I liked best was that every movement seemed to mean something. Not just routine—I'd like to study with him."
In the night's warm violet the taxi paused at the spangled 23rd
