“He’s over there, I think,” replied Lily, without troubling to look at him.
There was no jealousy about the architect. He stayed for a moment, sniffed at the scent-bottle, smiled at the photographs on the wall. A green-eyed impersonator, a blue-eyed impersonator: the room could have been full of impersonators, for all he cared. Dark girls, yellow girls, fair girls, so many playthings to distract him from his rules and compasses. He was bored at once; turned to another at once; and it was all so amusing! He was the typical lover of the woman of the stage, with his little surface passions. And very amiable withal, knowing them all, and friendly with them, a great purveyor of anecdotes:
“The Para-Paras, you know, Lily, committed suicide in their room ... awful poverty. The wife wasn’t ... Tottie enough ... and the husband was teaching the English accent to continental clowns! Poland? A magnificent engagement in Russia. Old Martello hasn’t three days to live. Oh ... and Nunkie! There’s news among the Three Graces! The troupe’s done for this time!”
And he told how, last night, poor Thea, while mending her uncle’s overcoat, found in the lining an old letter from America ... from some swain she had had over there ... a letter glowing with love and regret. Yes, Nunkie knew how to hold his nieces, the architect explained, laughing ... watched them like a Spanish duenna, confiscated the letters that came for them, if necessary, the old rogue, and calmed their ardors with a few drops of bromide in a glass of water, every evening, on the pretense of keeping them from catching cold in the drafts. Oh, the old rogue! And Thea had almost fainted with grief in her dressing-room when she read the letter.
“Quite a business, Lily! A scandal in their little home! Very funny, eh?” he added, as he ogled Lily’s pigeon’s eggs and rolled a cigarette.
Lily, who had seen poor Thea cry before and who knew to what extent her lover’s treachery had humiliated her, was secretly furious to hear that josser talk carelessly of things like that: did he imagine, the idiot, that they weren’t built like other people, in the profession, that they had no feelings? What need had the public to know about their lives? It was among themselves, quite among themselves, all that!
“Get out of my sight, you damned josser!” said Lily. “Go and eat coke!”
But the other, greatly amused, described his latest discovery, a pearl, in an out-of-the-way neighborhood ... at Vaugirard fair ... an extraordinary girl, showing off on a couple of trestles in front of a canvas booth, in which her man lifted weights to the light of the Argand burners:
“Picture this girl, Lily,” said the enthusiastic josser, “picture this girl on her trestles, doing weights, balancings, all sorts of things. A body like a boy’s, all muscle, and thin: whew! Not that much fat on her, no hips, arms and shoulders, like Michael Angelo’s flayed model. And I talked to her afterward! And her man gave me a queer look you know ... I got a blow....”
“Well done!” cried Lily, clapping her hands. “The beam, eh? That’ll teach you to meddle in other people’s business! Oh, you don’t know those tenters! One of these days you’ll be picked up with your face smashed in, or shot through the chest with a revolver.”