And Lily handed round the hat again and collected more than on the day before, even among those who had had their money back.
“Take that to the Bambinis,” they said. “We’ve been behaving like Dagoes, damn it! Artistes ought not to act as such!”
“’K you! ’K you!”
And Lily Clifton walked off, very proudly, with her maid, to hand the money to Nunkie, who was acting as treasurer.
“And, meantime, one’s got to live,” said Lily to herself, when she was outside.
After the spurious gaiety of the moment, she seemed to be returning to her distress, with no work, no money, the Bijou closed, Harrasford taking possession of the theater. She revolved all this in her head, without succeeding in connecting the whole: rags of ideas hung in her brain, like the strips of scenery at the back of the stage. She had not even the courage to go and take her bike ... to-morrow ... to-morrow. The Hours, the pink one and the scarlet one, who came out of the bar also, resigned themselves gaily. Their salary mattered so little. As they explained to Lily, you’re always well paid, when you have rich friends, and, if you haven’t, all you have to do is to look out for them:
“Like Poland, what! A fat lot she cares the old boy’s ruined! All she will do is to find another, change her owner!”
Lily had knocked up against everything, seen everything, heard everything, in her adventurous life; but this way of getting out of a difficulty always made her blush to her eyes. No, a triumph at the Astrarium: that was the only solution for her, Lily Clifton! She was eager also to hand the money to Nunkie. The Bambinis’ money was a different matter from Jimmy’s: they were hungry children. Nunkie must be at the theater now, with his Three Graces, quite close, and they were going to perform at the Astrarium. So it was not essential never to have appeared in Paris! That meant one more chance for her!
“Come along, Glass-Eye!”
They now passed into the noisy quarters. The Olympia opened its furnace of light before them. The Three Graces stood displayed in life-size on posters, with others beside them, names which Lily knew vaguely, as she knew them all, from seeing them somewhere,—as she knew the stage-entrance of the Olympia, by instinct, in the dark street, at the side: the mouth by which the monster nightly swallowed and rejected its fill of meat. A courtyard ... three steps up ... turn to the right ... Lily was at home again, amid rainbow lights.