"No!--you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please remember it." Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where they hung at her side. "What's the matter with _you_, John? Rita, isn't he coming? I've a taxi outside ruining me." "John has a bad cold and doesn't care to go--" "Yes, I do!" growled John. "And he doesn't care to risk contracting pneumonia," continued Rita icily, "and he isn't going, anyway. And if he behaves like a man instead of an overgrown baby, I have promised to stay and dine with him here. Otherwise I'll go with you." "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?"