es I think I am considering matters too
deeply--that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will
scarcely be altered--the splendid, even tenor of your career will
scarcely swerve a shade.

"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have
to give you; and if I am to give it--if it is adding an iota to your
happiness for me to give it--then I must truly treat it with respect,
and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better
for you to possess it, or better that you never shall.

"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you
I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you.

"V."

By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order.

Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of
evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already
deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to
meddle.

"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to
Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at
Dartford."

"Won't he?"

"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now
John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual--an order for a
tomb in Greenwood--poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away
from tombs."

"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked.

"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough
I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's
brother would tell John to go to Arizona"--she pointed piteously to her
trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go
with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as
well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?"

Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her.

"How do you think _you_ could stand that desolation?"

"Arizona?"

"Yes."

"There is another desolation I dread more."

"Do you really love him so?"

Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her.

"Yes," she said.

[Illustration: "'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just
men.'"]

"Does he know it, Rita?"

"No, dear."

"Do you think--if he did--"

"No.... How could it be--after what has happened to me?"

"You would tell him?"

"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already
heard--something--from that beast--"

"Does John know him?"

"He has done two fountains fo