th Querida--"

"That is an utter falsehood," retorted Rita, calmly. "Whoever told you
that she went there with Querida, lied."

"You think so?"

"I know so! She went alone."

"Then we'll let it go at that," said Allaire so unpleasantly that Rita
took fiery offence.

"There is not a man living who has the right to look sideways at Valerie
West! Everybody knows it--Neville, Querida, Sam, John Burleson--even you
know it! If a man or two has touched her finger tips--her waist--her
lips, perhaps--no man has obtained more than that of her--dared more
than that! I have never heard that any man has ever even ventured to
offend her ears, unless"--she added with malice, "that is the reason
that she accepts no more invitations from you and your intimate
friends."

Allaire managed to smile and continue to paint. But later he found use
for his palette knife--which was unusual in a painter as clever as he
and whose pride was in his technical skill with materials used and
applied _premier coup_.

With October came the opening of many theatres; a premature gaiety
animated the hotels and restaurants; winter fabrics, hats, furs, gowns,
appeared in shops; the glittering windows along Fifth Avenue reflected
more limousines and fewer touring bodies passing. Later top hats
reappeared on street and in lobby; and when the Opera reopened, Long
Island, Jersey, and Westchester were already beginning to pour in
cityward, followed later by Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbour. The police
put on their new winter uniforms; furs were displayed in carriages,
automobiles, and theatres; the beauty of the florist's windows became
mellower, richer, and more splendid; the jewellery in the restaurants
more gorgeous. Gotham was beginning to be its own again, jacked up by
the Horse Show, the New Theatre, and the Opera; and by that energetic
Advertising Trust Company with its branches, dependencies, and mergers,
which is called Society, and which is a matter of eternal vigilance and
desperate business instead of the relaxation of cultivated security in
an accepted and acceptable order of things.

Among other minor incidents, almost local in character, the Academy and
Society of American Artists opened its doors. And the exhibition
averaged as well as it ever will, as badly as it ever had averaged.
Allaire showed two portraits of fashionable women, done, this time, in
the manner of Zorn, and quite as clever on the streaky surface. Sam
Ogilvy proudly displa