Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a piano and gay voices.
"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities.
Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?"
"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely, following him in unannounced—"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you playing? Hello, Rita"—greeting a handsome blonde young girl who stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite shape darting up into space.
"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all the disrespect of cordial appreciation.
"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan.
"Oh—oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism,
Mr. Annan!"
"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted
Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans."
Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure.
"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair.
"Nobody sees you any more."
"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions."