"I thought your number extremely interesting, it reminded me of Kandinsky, though your line is more intellectually pure, like Mondrian's—it got me right here," Mary Doyle, resplendent in a gold turban, Oriental earrings, and a gown of Figente's India silk, declared to Ilona, thumping the plump covering of her solar plexus.
"One dances for the few who understand," Ilona said, grateful that at last someone showed interest in art.
"I'm going to compose a wonderful dance for you," Cynski said. "My universal langidge will be the music. I use nothing so old-fashion like drums and fiddles—yes."
Lucy shifted her weight from one side to the other, her eyes feeling as though toothpicks kept them open, and her lips ached from smiling and responding to strangers until it seemed to her she was a needle caught in the groove of a cracked phonograph record.
In time the room began to clear.
In a few minutes I can say I'm tired and leave too, she thought, and saw Vermillion coming toward her.
"Where have you been, the party is almost over?" she demanded, feeling weak inside.
"I had a drink—or two—with Figente," Vermillion said, as though it had been for only a moment.
"You mean," she said understandingly, "you went down to keep him and Nino company."
"I wasn't much of a substitute for you," he said.
He too had felt sorry for poor old Figente, she thought. "Let's all sit down, I'm worn out," she said, not knowing how to begin to ask what he thought of the ballet.
"You must be, but you also must be feeling very good about tonight," he said.
And all of a sudden she felt wonderful.
"I have a profound conviction," Semy was saying, spacing his words to reach Vermillion to whom he had taken an instantaneous dislike at Figente's, "that motion pictures are the open sesame of the human spirit. They make all the arts obsolete unless used in relation to the motion picture camera."
"You're right," said Alfred Vent the composer, hoping to implant in Semy's mind the thought to mention him to Biggens for that movie sound recording which was in the air. "Have you heard Blanc? He's been experimenting integrating his music along film lines."
