urels at your feet."

Louisville society was fond of George Steele, and, when on occasion he
dropped back from "the happy roads that lead around the world," it was
to find a welcome in his home city only heightened by his long
absence.

"Who is this greater celebrity?" demanded Miss Buford. She knew that
Steele belonged to Duska Filson, or at least that whenever he returned
it was to renew the proffer of himself, even though with the knowledge
that the answer would be as it had always been: negative. Her
interest was accordingly ready to consider in alternative the other
man.

"Robert A. Saxon--the first disciple of Frederick Marston," declared
Mr. Bellton. If no one present had ever heard the name before, the
consequential manner of its announcement would have brought a sense of
deplorable unenlightenment.

Bellton's eyes, despite the impression of weakness conveyed by the
heavy lenses of his nose-glasses, missed little, and he saw that Duska
Filson still looked off abstractedly across the bend of the
homestretch, taking no note of his heralding.

"Doesn't the news of new arrivals excite you, Miss Filson?" he
inquired, with a touch of drawl in his voice.

The girl half-turned her head with a smile distinctly short of
enthusiasm. She did not care for Bellton. She was herself an exponent
of all things natural and unaffected, and she read between the
impeccably regular lines of his personality, with a criticism that was
adverse.

"You see," she answered simply, "it's not news. I've seen George
since he came."

"Tell us all about this celebrity," prompted Miss Buford, eagerly.
"What is he like?"

Duska shook her head.

"I haven't seen him. He was to arrive this morning."

"So, you see," supplemented Mr. Bellton with a smile, "you will, after
all, have to fall back on me--I have seen him."

"You," demurred the debutante with a disappointed frown, "are only a
man. What does a man know about another man?"

"The celebrity," went on Mr. Bellton, ignoring the charge of
inefficiency, "avoids women." He paused to laugh. "He was telling
Steele that he had come to paint landscape, and I am afraid he will
have to be brought lagging into your presence."

"It seems rather brutal to drag him here," suggested Anne Preston. "I,
for one, am willing to spare him the ordeal."

"However," pursued Mr. Bellton with some zest of recital, "I have
warned him. I told him what dangerous batteries of eyes he must
encounter. It s