oment, slowly caressing his foxy hair.

"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of
anybody. Nobody can paint like you.... But I'd like to get a look in,
Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another--" he
added impudently--"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them,
there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em."

Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick
in getting any _wife_ you want."

"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that
keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes
brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny
himself--"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added,
carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself."

Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively.

"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences
until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a
disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida
and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself.

Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the
ceiling.

"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her."

"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the
sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days,
and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly
principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be
hell to pay; but _he_ will get over it and she'll get aboard the
toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida."

Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the
window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived.
And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present
moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee.

He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had
begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but
he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of
starvation had hardened nothing of his heart.

Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet
certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience,
for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared
passionately for love as he di