Lottie at the mirror was dabbing at her nose with a hasty powder-pad. She regarded Charley now, through the glass. "Aunt Charlotte's more—more understanding than mother is."
"Yes, but it's been pretty expensive knowledge for her, I'll just bet. Some day I'm going to ask her why she never married. Great-grandmother Thrift had a hand in it; you can tell that by looking at that picture of her in the hoops trimmed with bands of steel, or something. Gosh!"
"You wouldn't ask her, Charley!"
"I would too. She's probably dying to tell. Anybody likes to talk of their love affairs. I'm going to cultivate Aunt Charlotte, I am. Research work."
"Yes," retorted Lottie, brushing a bit of powder from the front of the blue silk, "do. And lend her your Havelock Ellis and Freud first, so that she'll at least have a chance to be shocked, poor dear. Otherwise she won't know what you're driving at."
"You're a worm," said Charley. She jumped off the footboard, took her aunt in her strong young arms and hugged her close. An unusual demonstration for Charley, a young woman who belonged to the modern school that despises sentiment and frowns upon weakly emotional display; to whom rebellion is a normal state; clear-eyed, remorseless, honest, fearless, terrifying; the first woman since Eve to tell the truth and face the consequences. Lottie, looking at her, often felt puerile and ineffectual. "You don't have half enough fun. And no self-expression. Come on and join a gymnastic dancing class. You'd make a dancer. Your legs are so nice and muscular. You'd love it. Wonderful exercise."
She sprang away suddenly and stood poised for a brief moment in what is known as First Position in dancing. "Tour jeté—" she took two quick sliding steps, turned and leaped high and beautifully—"tour jeté—" and again, bringing up short of the wall, her breathing as regular as though she had not moved. "Try it."
Lottie eyed her enviously. Charley had had lessons in gymnastic dancing since the age of nine. Her work now was professional in finish, technique, and beauty. She could do Polish Csárdás in scarlet boots, or Psyche in wisps of pink chiffon and bare legs, or Papillons d'Amour in flesh tights, ballet skirts aflare and snug pink satin bodice, with equal ease and brilliance. She was always threatening to go on the stage and more than half meant it. Charley would no more have missed a performance of the latest Russian dancers, or of Pavlova, or the Opera on special ballet nights than a student surgeon would miss an important clinic. In the earlier stages of her dancing career her locomotion had been accomplished entirely by the use of the simpler basic forms of gymnastic dance steps. She had jeté-d and coupé-d and sauté-d and turné-d in and out of bed, on L train platforms, at school, on the street.
Lottie, regarding her niece now, said, "Looks easy, so I suppose it isn't. Let's see." She lifted her skirt tentatively. "Look out!"
"No, no! Don't touch your skirts. Arms free. Out. Like this. Hands are important in dancing. As important as feet. Now! Tour jeté! Higher! That's it. Tou——"