“Sure.  You’d better stay indoors, John.  You ought to buck up and get rid of that cold.  It’s been hanging on all winter.”

Burleson rumbled and grumbled and shot a mutinous glance at Rita, who paid it no attention.

“Order us a nice dinner at the Plaza, Kelly—­if you don’t mind,” she said cheerfully, going with them to the door.  She added under her breath:  “I wish he’d see a doctor, but the idea enrages him.  I 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 a halo of ruddy gold.