Theatrical agents wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three tottering unities along Broadway.  She also had chances to wear very wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn’s new dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies strolled haughtily about all day long, displaying to agitated Gotham the most startling gowns in the extravagant metropolis.

She had other opportunities, too—­such as meeting several varieties of fashionable men of various ages—­gentlemen prominently identified with the arts and sciences—­the art of killing time and the science of enjoying the assassination.  And some of these assorted gentlemen maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or business acumen, or charitable extravagances....  Yes, truly, Valerie West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously philanthropic world.  And she was making a great deal of money—­for her—­but nothing like what she might very easily have made.  And she knew it, young as she was.  For it does not take very long to learn about such things when a girl is attempting to earn her living in this altruistic world.

“She’ll spread her wings and go one of these days,” observed Archie Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor any other artist temporarily in vogue.  For he was an adaptable man, facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to the fitful breeze of popular favour.  And his work was in great demand.

“She’ll be decorating the tonneau of some big touring car with crested panels—­and there’ll be a bunch of orchids in the crystal holder, and a Chow dog beside her, defying the traffic squad—­”

“No, she won’t!” snapped Rita.  “She’s as likely to do that as she is to dine with you again.”

Allaire, caught off his guard, scowled with unfeigned annoyance.  Repeated essays to ingratiate himself with Valerie had finally resulted in a dinner at the Astor, and in her firm, polite, but uncompromising declination of all future invitations from him, either to sit for him or beside him under any circumstances and any conditions whatever.

“So that’s your opinion, is it, Rita?” he inquired, keeping his light-blue eyes and his thin wet brush busy on his canvas.  “Well, sister, take it from muh, she thinks she’s the big noise in the Great White Alley; but they’re giving her the giggle behind her back.”

“That giggle may be directed at you, Archie,” observed Rita, scornfully; “you’re usually behind her back, you know, hoisting the C.Q.D.”

“Which is all right, too,” he said, apparently undisturbed; “but when she goes to Atlantic City with Querida—­”