“You will never forget it, Kelly—­whatever becomes of the girl who said it.  Because it’s the truth, no matter whose lips uttered it.”

He released her hands and she went away to dress herself for the pose.  When she returned and seated herself he picked up his palette and brushes and began in silence.

* * * * *

That evening he went to see John Buries on and found him smoking tranquilly in the midst of disorder.  Packing cases, trunks, bundles, boxes were scattered and piled up in every direction, and the master of the establishment, apparently in excellent health, reclined on a lounge in the centre of chaos, the long clay stem of a church-warden pipe between his lips, puffing rings at the ceiling.

“Hello, Kelly!” he exclaimed, sitting up; “I’ve got to move out of this place.  Rita told you all about it, didn’t she?  Isn’t it rotten hard luck?”

“Not a bit of it.  What did Billy Ogilvy say?”

“Oh, I’ve got it all right.  Not seriously yet.  What’s Arizona like, anyway?”

“Half hell, half paradise, they say.”

“Then me for the celestial section.  Ogilvy gave me the name of a place”—­he fumbled about—­“Rita has it, I believe....  Isn’t she a corker to go?  My conscience, Kelly, what a Godsend it will be to have a Massachusetts girl out there to talk to!”

“Isn’t she going as your model?”

“My Lord, man!  Don’t you talk to a model?  Is a nice girl who poses for a fellow anything extra-human or superhuman or—­or unhuman or inhuman—­so that intelligent conversation becomes impossible?”

“No,” began Neville, laughing, but Burleson interrupted excitedly: 

“A girl can be anything she chooses if she’s all right, can’t she?  And Rita comes from Massachusetts, doesn’t she?”

“Certainly.”

“Not only from Massachusetts, but from Hitherford!” added Burleson triumphantly.  “I came from Hitherford.  My grandfather knew hers.  Why, man alive, Rita Tevis is entitled to do anything she chooses to do.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, anyway,” admitted Neville gravely.

“I look at it that way. You can’t; you’re not from Massachusetts; but you have a sort of a New England name, too.  It’s Yankee, isn’t it?”

“Southern.”

“Oh,” said Burleson, honestly depressed; “I am sorry.  There were Nevilles in Hitherford Lower Falls two hundred years ago.  I’ve always liked to think of you as originating, somehow or other, in Massachusetts Bay.”

“No, John:  unlike McGinty, I am unfamiliar with the cod-thronged ocean deeps....  When are you going?”

“Day after to-morrow.  Rita says you don’t need her any longer on that picture—­”

“Lord, man!  If I did I wouldn’t hold you up.  But don’t worry, John; she wouldn’t let me....  She’s a fine specimen of girl,” he added casually.

[Illustration:  “’You’d better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I am.’”]