It was embarrassing to see him so upset about having asked. "I guess I can make her another. Take it," Clem said reluctantly.
"I can't tell you what this means to me. Believe me, I wouldn't think of accepting it but I honestly think that from your viewpoint it is a good idea for Horta to have it. She goes to town for anyone she likes and sure will for you if she owns one of your paintings. She'll make you the fashion. I think I'll talk her into getting her friends to let you do their portraits instead of Alveg Dahl, tell her she ought to encourage American art instead of foreigners."
"That's damned decent of you. But I'm afraid I'm not what you'd call a fashionable portrait painter."
"Listen, if you do portraits of fashionable people, you're a fashionable portrait painter. Anyway, what do you care, so long as they talk about you, and cough up? The thing is to get in."
Good old Semy, a friend one could count on, Clem thought.
Chapter 31
OUR GIRLHOOD IS GONE
To Vida Bertrand the capricious February weather seemed an enemy hacking at her nerves. The spiteful fits of rain and freeze that shabbied coats and shoes mimicked the shabbiness clothing her spirit. Then the coal-sooted wan chill sky thickened into a dark woolly blanket and a blizzard paralyzed the city while she, benumbed with fear of pregnancy, tried to reassure herself along with the forecasts of "fair and warmer."
Dismal flat noon light seeped into Lucy's living room griming wisps of underclothes and wrinkled newspaper pages lying strewn as though refuse blown in from the streets, while a strident pianola jangled "Runnin' Wild."
"For God's sake turn that thing off and stop meandering around," Vida beseeched, shivering though the steam radiator was whistling full blast.
With a hollow giggle Lucy halted. "Don't you like it? Look, I can make it play with expression." She sat down at the instrument,
