“Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly,” insisted Ogilvy.  “Put pants on those swans.”

Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure.

“Where have you been, Rita?” asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair.  “Nobody sees you any more.”

“That’s because nobody went to the show, and that’s why they took it off,” said Rita Tevis, resentfully.  “I had a perfectly good part which nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully because I hate to have anything that others want.  Now there’s nothing doing in the millinery line and I’m ready for suggestions.”

“Dinner with me,” said Ogilvy, fondly.  But she turned up her dainty nose: 

“Have you anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?”

“Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy’s fortune,” said Annan, regretfully.  “But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type—­”

“I don’t want to pose for Mr. Allaire,” said the girl, pouting and twirling the handle of her parasol.

But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just finished a solid week of her.

“What I’ll do,” she said with decision, “will be to telephone John Burleson.  I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement.”

“Isn’t he a dear,” said Valerie, smiling.  “I adore him.”

She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work.

“John Burleson,” observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, “is easily the nicest man I know.”

“Help!” said Ogilvy, feebly.

Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands passed idly here and there over the keys: 

“Sam can be very nice, Rita; but you’ve got to make him,” she said.

“Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn’t require watching?” inquired Annan, mildly.

Rita surveyed him with disdain:  “Plenty.”

“Don’t believe it.  No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in whom she has perfect confidence.”

“Here’s another profound observation,” added Ogilvy; “when a woman loses confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him.  But when a man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and it’s the beginning of the end.  What do you think about that, Miss West?”

Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering: 

“I don’t know how it would be,” she said, “to lose confidence in a man you really care much about.  I should think it would break a girl’s heart.”

“It doesn’t,” said Rita, with supreme contempt.  “You become accustomed to it.”