“Wilmot,” she said seriously, “if I fail with my head of Blizzard, I think I shall give up.”

“Wouldn’t it be better,” he pleaded, “to give up now?  And then, you know, you could always say if only you’d kept on you would have made a masterpiece.”

“And who would believe that?”

“I!” said Wilmot.  “It’s easy for me to believe anything wonderful of you.  It always has been.”

“And a moment ago,” she smiled, “you called me a little fool and said you’d tell my father on me.”

She rose, still smiling, and he followed her into the library.

“Are all the studios in your building occupied?” he asked.

“They are,” said Barbara, “and they aren’t.  Kelting, who has the ground floor, has gone abroad.  And Updyke, who has the third floor, has been in Bermuda all winter.”  She sank into a deep leather chair that half swallowed her.

“There’s a janitor?”

“No.  There’s a janitress, a friendly old lady, quite deaf.  She has seen infinitely better days.”

“To all intents and purposes, then,” said Wilmot, and the trouble that he felt showed in his face, “it’s an empty house, and you shut yourself up in it with some model or other that you happen to pick up in the streets, and you don’t know enough to be afraid.  You’ll get yourself murdered one of these bright mornings.”

“Oh, I think not!” said Barbara.  “There’s Bubbles, you know.”

“Oh, Bubbles!” exclaimed Wilmot.  “He doesn’t weigh eighty pounds.  This Blizzard—­look here, get rid of him.  I can’t tell you what the man is.”  He laughed.  “I don’t know you well enough.  But take my word for it, if a crime appeals to him, he commits it.  And the police can’t touch him, Barbs.”

“Why can’t they?”

“He knows too much about them individually and collectively.  They’re afraid of him.  Get rid of him, Barbs.”

Wilmot Allen’s voice was strongly appealing.  The fact that he sat forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest.  But Barbara shook her lovely head.

“You ask too much, Wilmot.  My heart’s in the beginning I’ve made.  I’ve got to go on.  It’s a test case.  If I’ve got anything in me, now is the chance for it to show.  You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me.  And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of a kind that’s almost impossible to face.”

“Then do me a favor.  It won’t interfere with your work, and it may be very useful at a pinch.”  He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic pistol.  “Accept this,” he went on, “and keep it somewhere handy as a sort of guardian.  It’s much stronger than the strongest man.”

“How absurd!” she said.  “And what are you doing carrying concealed weapons?  I’m beginning to think that you’re a desperado yourself.”