And went quite mad over Valerie--so much so that she remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in the modest background.
When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said: "Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady.

What was she trying to make you do ?" "She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with Louis," said Valerie, laughing.

"What _is_ the Five-Minute Club, Louis ?" "Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair--one of the incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of near-society." Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said: "Would you care to go, Valerie ?" "Yes--if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together." "Why not ?" "I don't know....

Considering what we are to become to each other--I thought--perhaps the prejudices of your friends--" He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's edge.
"The world must take us as it finds us," he said.
"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it ?" "You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us--or rather you ?--and torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her bally club! It's across to her, now.

And as half of society has exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many people as innately decent as ourselves." * * * * * A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair.
It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find in music what does not belong there and never did.
In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious.
Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for some of the draughtmanship; but not for all.