“My life is such a little thing compared to yours—­of such slight value and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too deeply—­that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will scarcely be altered—­the splendid, even tenor of your career will scarcely swerve a shade.

“Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have to give you; and if I am to give it—­if it is adding an iota to your happiness for me to give it—­then I must truly treat it with respect, and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better for you to possess it, or better that you never shall.

“And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you.

“V.”

By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order.

Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already deeply worried over John Burleson’s condition, had not spirit enough to meddle.

“Sam Ogilvy’s brother is a wonder on tubercular cases,” she said to Valerie, “and I’m doing my best to get John to go and see him at Dartford.”

“Won’t he?”

“He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are.  And now John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual—­an order for a tomb in Greenwood—­poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away from tombs.”

“Why, Rita!” said Valerie, shocked.

“I can’t help it; I’m really frightened, dear.  And you know well enough I’m no flighty alarmist.  Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam’s brother would tell John to go to Arizona”—­she pointed piteously to her trunk:  “It’s packed; it has been packed for weeks.  I’m all ready to go with him.  Why can’t a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?”

Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her.

“How do you think you could stand that desolation?”

“Arizona?”

“Yes.”

“There is another desolation I dread more.”

“Do you really love him so?”

Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her.

“Yes,” she said.

[Illustration:  “’And they—­the majority of them—­are, after all, just men.’”]

“Does he know it, Rita?”

“No, dear.”

“Do you think—­if he did—­”

“No....  How could it be—­after what has happened to me?”

“You would tell him?”

“Of course.  I sometimes wonder whether he has not already heard—­something—­from that beast—­”

“Does John know him?”

“He has done two fountains for his place at El Nauar.  He had several other things in view—­” she shrugged—­“but The Mohave sailed suddenly with its owner for a voyage around the world—­so John was told;—­and—­Valerie, it’s the first clear breath of relief I’ve drawn since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John’s studio.”