don't
see why he has such a cold all the time--and such flushed cheeks--" Her
voice quivered and she checked herself abruptly.

"Suppose I ring up Dr. Colbert on my own hook?" whispered Neville.

"Would you?"

"Certainly. And you can tell John that I did it on my own
responsibility."

Neville and Valerie went away together, and Rita returned to the studio.
Burleson was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her.
She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio
beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded
shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into
rough semblance of human figures.

It was a damp place at best; there were always wet sponges, wet cloths,
pails of water, masses of moist clay about. Her blue eyes wandered over
it with something approaching fear--almost the fear of hatred.

"John," she said, "why won't you go to a dry climate for a few months
and get rid of your cold?"

"Do you mean Arizona?"

"Or some similar place: yes."

"Well, how am I to do any work out there? I've got commissions on hand.
Where am I going to find any place to work out in Arizona?"

"Build a shanty."

"That's all very well, but there are no models to be had out there."

"Why don't you do some Indians?"

"Because," said John wrathfully, "I haven't any commissions that call
for Indians. I've two angels, a nymph and a Diana to do; and I can't do
them unless I have a female model, can I?"

After a silence Rita said carelessly:

"I'll go with you if you like."

"You! Out there!"

"I said so."

"To Arizona! You wouldn't stand for it!"

"John Burleson!" she said impatiently, "I've told you once that I'd go
with you if you need a model! Don't you suppose I know what I am
saying?"

He lay placidly staring at her, the heavy book open across his chest.
Presently he coughed and Rita sprang up and removed the book.

"You'd go with me to Arizona," he repeated, as though to himself--"just
to pose for me.... That's very kind of you, Rita. It's thoroughly nice
of you. But you couldn't stand it. You'd find it too cruelly stupid out
there alone--entirely isolated in some funny town. I couldn't ask it of
you--"

"You haven't. I've asked it--of you."

But he only began to grumble and fret again, thrashing about restlessly
on the lounge; and the tall young girl watched him out of lowered eyes,
silent, serious, the lamplight edging her hair with