"That's true--_c'est bien vrai, ca_. I 'ave been lucky. I shall always
be lucky. Everybody knows that. They say: 'Our Gyp, she will 'ave a
good time at 'er funeral.' No, no. Monsieur Rufus, I will not drink.
If I drink I might dance--'ere on this table--and ze company is so ver'
respectable. Listen." She laid her hand on Stonehouse's arm as
unconsciously as though he had been an old friend. "Listen. They play
ze 'Gyp Gal-lop.' That is because I am 'ere. Ze conductor, 'e know
me--he like 'is leetle joke. _C'est drole_--every time I 'ear it played
I want to get up and dance and dance----" She hummed under her breath,
beating time with her cigarette.
"I'm Gyp Labelle;
If you dance with me. . . ."
Obviously she knew that the severely elegant men and women on either hand
watched her with a covert, chilly hostility. But there was something
oddly simple in her acceptance of their attitude. Therein, no doubt, lay
some of her power. She was herself. She didn't care. She was too
strong. She had ruined people like that--people every whit as hostile,
and self-assured, and respectable--and had gone free without a scratch.
She could afford to laugh at them, to ignore them, as it pleased her.
(And what would Frances Wilmot with her wrong-headed toleration, have
urged in extenuation? A hard life, perhaps? Stonehouse smiled
ironically at himself. The old quarrel was like an ineradicable drop of
poison in the blood.
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