"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 with 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.