Her attitude was not necessarily identified with her heavy, lizardish animality, though that had something to do with it; but rather with a vague, kindly generosity which permitted her to feel that it was hard to break with Gardner Knowles and Lane Cross after they had been so nice to her.

Gardner Knowles had sung her praises here, there, and everywhere, and was attempting to spread her fame among the legitimate theatrical enterprises which came to the city in order that she might be taken up and made into a significant figure.
Lane Cross was wildly fond of her in an inadequate way which made it hard to break with him, and yet certain that she would eventually.
There was still another man--a young playwright and poet by the name of Forbes Gurney--tall, fair, passionate--who had newly arrived on the scene and was courting her, or, rather, being courted by her at odd moments, for her time was her own.

In her artistically errant way she had refused to go to school like her sister, and was idling about, developing, as she phrased it, her artistic possibilities.
Cowperwood, as was natural, heard much of her stage life.

At first he took all this palaver with a grain of salt, the babbling of an ardent nature interested in the flighty romance of the studio world.

By degrees, however, he became curious as to the freedom of her actions, the ease with which she drifted from place to place--Lane Cross's studio; Bliss Bridge's bachelor rooms, where he appeared always to be receiving his theatrical friends of the Garrick Players; Mr.Gardner Knowles's home on the near North Side, where he was frequently entertaining a party after the theater.