“Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?”

“Partly, dear friend.  But I’m one of those nobodies who cherish a degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum of inconvenience to others.  Human happiness is what I venture to consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same humans.  Man first, then man’s work, that’s the order of mundane importance to me.  And if you’ve got to criticise the work, for God’s sake do it with your hand on the man’s shoulder.”

“Our little socialist,” said Ogilvy, patting Annan’s blonde head.  “He wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when they’re ornamental and feminine.  Yes?  No?” he asked, fondly coddling Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins.

Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to their several occupations, Burleson said: 

“That’s a winner of a model—­that Miss West.  I used her for the fountain I’m doing for Cardemon’s sunken garden.  I never saw a model put together as she is.  And that’s going some.”

“She’s a dream,” said Ogilvy—­“un pen sauvage—­no inclination to socialism there, Annan.  I know because I was considering the advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, and fascinatingly chaste salutes—­just to break the formality.  She wouldn’t have it.  I’d taken her to the theatre, too.  Girls are astonishing problems.”

“You’re a joyous beast, aren’t you, Sam?” observed Burleson.

“I may be a trifle joyous.  I tried to explain that to her, but she wouldn’t listen.  Heaven knows my intentions are child-like.  I liked her because she’s the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer yourself if you collide with your fiancee—­visiting relative from ’Frisco, you know.  She’s equipped to impersonate anything from the younger set to the prune and pickle class.”

“She certainly is a looker,” nodded Annan.

“She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good play at the unsophisticated intellectual,” said Ogilvy with conviction.  “And it’s a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the Opera as it does in a lobster palace.  But she’s no socialist, Harry—­she’ll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with you, but it’s nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the chaste embrace—­that’s all.”

“She’s a curious kind of girl,” mused Burleson;—­“seems perfectly willing to go about with you;—­enjoys it like one of those bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a ‘Miss.’”

Annan said:  “The girl is unusual, everyway.  You don’t know where to place her.  She’s a girl without a caste.  I like her.  I made some studies from her; Kelly let me.”

“Does Kelly own her?” asked Burleson, puffing out his chest.