“He discovered her.  He has first call.”

Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation.

“Oh, hell,” he said, in his loud, careless voice, “anybody can take Valerie West to supper.  The town’s full of her kind.”

“Have you taken her anywhere?” asked Annan, casually.

Allaire flushed up:  “I haven’t had time.”  He added something which changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an expression not entirely agreeable.

“The girl’s all right,” said Burleson, reddening.  “She’s damn decent to everybody.  What are you talking about, Allaire?  Kelly will put a head on you!”

Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh: 

“Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our neatly manicured fiction.  He’s what is known as the original mark.  Jezebel and Potiphar’s wife in combination with Salome and the daughters of Lot couldn’t disturb his confidence in them or in himself.  And—­in my opinion—­he paints that way, too.”  And he went away laughing and swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head.

“There strides a joyous bounder,” observed Ogilvy.

“Curious,” mused Annan.  “His family is oldest New York.  You see ’em that way, at times.”

Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan, ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with ponderous and powerful strides.  And the others followed, presently, each in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as their common destination was the big new studio building which they as well as Neville inhabited.

Passing Neville’s door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a piano and gay voices.

“Hi!” exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, “let’s assist at the festivities.  Probably we’re not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?”

“It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion,” said Annan, gravely, following him in unannounced—­“Oh, hello, Miss West!  Was that you playing?  Hello, Rita”—­greeting a handsome blonde young girl who stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably.  Then she glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite shape darting up into space.

“What’s all that, Kelly?  Leda chased by swans?” asked Ogilvy, with all the disrespect of cordial appreciation.

“It’s the classic game of follow my Leda,” observed Annan.

“Oh—­oh!” exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; “such a wretched witticism, Mr. Annan!”