“Do you suppose that is news to me?”

“Oh, no; I’m sure you find her amusing—­”

“What!”

“Amusing,” repeated Neville innocently.  “Don’t you?”

“That is scarcely the word I would have chosen, Kelly.  I have a very warm admiration and a very sincere respect for Rita Tevis—­”

“John!  You sound like a Puritan making love!”

Burleson was intensely annoyed: 

“You’d better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I am, and that there would be nothing at all incongruous in any declaration that any decent man might make her!”

“Why, I know that.”

“I’m glad you do.  And I’m gratified that what you said has given me the opportunity to make myself very plain on the subject of Rita Tevis.  It may amaze you to know that her great grandsire carried a flintlock with the Hitherford Minute Men, and fell most respectably at Boston Neck.”

“Certainly, John.  I knew she was all right.  But I wasn’t sure you knew it—­”

“Confound it!  Of course I did.  I’ve always known it.  Do you think I’d care for her so much if she wasn’t all right?”

Neville smiled at him gravely, then held out his hand: 

“Give my love to her, John.  I’ll see you both again before you go.”

For nearly two weeks he had not heard a word from Valerie West.  Rita and John Burleson had departed, cheerful, sure of early convalescence and a complete and radical cure.

Neville went with them to the train, but his mind was full of his own troubles and he could scarcely keep his attention on the ponderous conversation of Burleson, who was admonishing him and Ogilvy impartially concerning the true interpretation of creative art.

He turned aside to Rita when opportunity offered and said in a low voice: 

“Before you go, tell me where Valerie is.”

“I can’t, Kelly.”

“Did you promise her not to?”

“Yes.”

He said, slowly:  “I haven’t had one word from her in nearly two weeks. 
Is she well?”

“Yes.  She came into town this morning to say good-bye to me.”

“I didn’t know she was out of town,” he said, troubled.

“She has been, and is now.  That’s all I can tell you, Kelly dear.”

“She is coming back, isn’t she?”

“I hope so.”

“Don’t you know?”

She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her head: 

“I don’t know, Kelly.”

“Didn’t she say—­intimate anything—­”

“No....  I don’t think she knows—­yet.”

He said, very quietly:  “If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is better for us both never to meet again—­I might be as dead as Querida for any work I should ever again set hand to.

“If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem of life.  But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me.  I know that now.”