"Exactly. That's what I am now. Lucie de Clive, Monsieur, a vaudeville actress. That's me."
"A nice party, isn't it?" she said. "Syvorotka and Lucie?" "But—tell me before everything else, can I stay here?"
"Stay here? Pardon me, Baroness…."
"Call me Lucie, please…."
"Pardon me, Lucie, but really I don't quite comprehend. In these times, of course, everything has changed; but still I wish I could understand it correctly…."
"Oh, yes, you will not be bad to a poor girl, Alex, will you? I simply have to stay here—I have no other place to go."
To show her resoluteness, she took off her shabby overcoat and started to arrange her belongings, an impossible suitcase and something heavy rolled in a yellow and red blanket, looking to me from time to time with curiosity and doubt.
"Lucie de Clive! A woman certainly could not think of anything less snobbish even in these circumstances. You look like a real Russian Katka-Chort in this outfit."
"That's what is required. How did you happen to pick out your name?"
We both laughed. Indeed, if our meeting were compared to all the luxury and brilliance of the Cote d'Azur, or Petrograd—it was laughable. "Have we anything to eat?" she asked.