_)
THE VOICE: (_At length_) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.
BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?
THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much
that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.
BEAUTY: (_Placidly_) It all sounds so vulgar.
THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your
fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp.
You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you
danced the old ones.
BEAUTY: (_In a whisper_) Will I be paid?
THE VOICE: Yes, as usual--in love.
BEAUTY: (_With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the
immobility of her lips_) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?
THE VOICE: (_Soberly_) You will love it....
(_The dialogue ends here, with_ BEAUTY _still sitting quietly, the stars
pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty,
blowing through her hair._
_All this took place seven years before_ ANTHONY _sat by the front
windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's_.)
CHAPTER II
PORTRAIT OF A SIREN
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and
the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth
Avenue.
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