"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 seemed to me unfair to let him charge into the lists of loveliness all unarmed--with his heart behind no shield." "And he ... how did he take your warning?" demanded Miss Buford. "I think it is his craven idea to avoid the danger and retreat at the first opportunity. He said that he was a painter, had even been a cow-puncher once, but that society was beyond his powers and his taste." The group had been neglecting the track. Now, from the grandstand came once more the noisy outburst that ushers the horses into the stretch, and conversation died as the party came to its feet. None of its members noticed for the moment the two young men who had made their way between the chairs of the verandah until they stood just back of the group, awaiting their turn for recognition.