ocialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the
advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent,
and fascinatingly chaste salutes--just to break the formality. She
wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are
astonishing problems."

"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson.

"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she
wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her
because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer
yourself if you collide with your fiancee--visiting relative from
'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the
younger set to the prune and pickle class."

"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan.

"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good
play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction.
"And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the
Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist,
Harry--she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with
you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the
chaste embrace--that's all."

"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;--"seems perfectly
willing to go about with you;--enjoys it like one of those
bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'"

Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to
place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some
studies from her; Kelly let me."

"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest.

"He discovered her. He has first call."

Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation.

"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take
Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind."

"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually.

Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which
changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an
expression not entirely agreeable.

"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to
everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on
you!"

Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh:

"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our
neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the or