olis.

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 wi