"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.'"] "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--"