The girl set the figurine on its stand with a rap and said, half angry and half amused: "I don't understand it. That's more than a month's pay for me. I could get an S.P.G. statuette just as pretty as this for ten dollars. Who do you artists think you are, anyway?" Halvorsen debated with himself about what he could say in reply: _An S.P.G. operator spends a week learning his skill and I spend a lifetime learning mine._ _An S.P.G. operator makes a mechanical copy of a human form distorted by formulae mechanically arrived at from psychotests of population samples. I take full responsibility for my work; it is mine, though I use what I see fit from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Augustan and Romantic and Modern Eras._ _An S.P.G. operator works in soft, homogeneous plastic; I work in bronze that is more complicated than you dream, that is cast and acid-dipped today so it will slowly take on rich and subtle coloring many years from today._ _An S.P.G. operator could not make an Orpheus Fountain_-- He mumbled, "Orpheus," and keeled over. * * * * * Halvorsen awoke in his bed on the second floor of the building. His fingers and toes buzzed electrically and he felt very clear-headed. The girl and a man, unmistakably a doctor, were watching him. "You don't seem to belong to any Medical Plans, Halvorsen," the doctor said irritably. "There weren't any cards on you at all. No Red, no Blue, no Green, no Brown." "I used to be on the Green Plan, but I let it lapse," the artist said defensively. "And look what happened!" "Stop nagging him!" the girl said. "I'll pay you your fee." "It's supposed to come through a Plan," the doctor fretted. "We won't tell anybody," the girl promised. "Here's five dollars. Just stop nagging him." "Malnutrition," said the doctor. "Normally I'd send him to a hospital, but I don't see how I could manage it. He isn't on any Plan at all. Look, I'll take the money and leave some vitamins. That's what he needs--vitamins. And food." "I'll see that he eats," the girl said, and the doctor left. "How long since you've had anything?" she asked Halvorsen. "I had some coffee today," he answered, thinking back. "I'd been working on detail drawings for a commission and it fell through. I told you that. It was a shock." "I'm Lucretia Grumman," she said, and went out. He dozed until she came back with an armful of groceries. "It's hard to get around down here," she complained. "It was Labuerre's studio," he told her defiantly. "He left it to me when he died. Things weren't so rundown in his time. I studied under him; he was one of the last. He had a joke--'They don't really want my stuff, but they're ashamed to let me starve.' He warned me that they wouldn't be ashamed to let _me_ starve, but I insisted and he took me in."