"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?"