"Oh," he said cheerfully, "I've knocked about the city and known all
sorts of curious people, and heard about others. So Blizzard's your new
model. Now look here, Barbara, are we old friends, or aren't we?"
"Very old friends," she said.
"Then let me tell you that you're a little fool to have anything to do
with a man like that. You can't touch pitch, you know, and--"
"I only touch him with a pair of compasses," she interrupted sweetly.
"Don't quibble," said Allen with energy; "it's not like you. That man is
so bad, so unsavory, so vile, that you simply _mustn't_ have him about.
He's dangerous."
"So is a volcano," said Barbara, "but there's no reason why the most
innocent bread-and-butter miss shouldn't paint a picture of a volcano if
she felt inspired."
"I see that there's only one thing to do. I shall tell your father."
Wilmot Allen was genuinely troubled. And Barbara laughed at him.
"I'm not a child," she said.
"That's just it," said he; "that's why you ought to be ashamed of
yourself. And anyway you are a child. All girls say they aren't until
they get into a mess of some sort, and then they excuse themselves to
themselves and everybody else by protesting that they were. 'I was so
young. I didn't know,' and all that rot."
"Blizzard," said Barbara, "is quiet, polite, and a good talker. He
comes, he sits for me, and he goes away."
The butler having left the room, Wilmot fixed his rather tired eyes on
Barbara's face, and spoke with a certain earnest tenderness. "Barbs," he
said, "take it from me, happiness doesn't lie where you think it does. I
think the very highest achievements of the very greatest artists haven't
brought happiness. Look here, old dear; put a limit to your ambition.
Say that by a certain date you'll either succeed and quit, or fail and
quit, and then see if you can't take a little more interest in your own
people, in your own heart--even in me."
"Wilmot," she said seriously, "if I fail with my head of Blizzard, I
think I _shall_ give up."
"Wouldn't it be better," he pleaded, "to give up now? And then, you
know, you could always say if _only_ you'd kept on you would have made a
masterpiece."
"And who would believe that?"
"_I!_" said Wilmot. "It's easy for me to believe anything wonderful of
you. It always has been."
"And a moment ago," she smiled, "you called me a little fool and said
you'd tell my father on me."
She rose, still smiling, and he followed her into the library.
"Are all the studios in your building occupied?" he asked.
"They are," said Barbara, "and they aren't. Kelting, who has the ground
floor, has gone abroad. And Updyke, who has the third floor, has been in
Bermuda all winter." She sank into a deep leather chair that half
swallowed her.
"There's a janitor?"
"No. There's a janitress, a friendly old lady, quite deaf. She has seen
infinitely better days."
"To all intents and purposes, then," said Wilmot, and the trouble that
he felt showed in his face, "it's an empty house, and you shut yourself
up in it with some model or other that you happen to pick up in the
streets, and you don't know enough to be afraid. You'll get yourself
murdered one of these bright mornings."
"Oh, I think not!" said Barbara. "There's Bubbles, you know."
"Oh, Bubbles!" exclaimed Wilmot. "He doesn't weigh eighty pounds. This
Blizzard--look here, get rid of him. I can't tell you what the man is."
He laughed. "I don't know you well enough. But take my word for it, if a
crime appeals to him, he commits it. And the police can't touch
him, Barbs."
"Why can't they?"
"He knows too much about them individually and collectively. They're
afraid of him. Get rid of him, Barbs."
Wilmot Allen's voice was strongly appealing. The fact that he sat
forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable
embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest. But Barbara shook her
lovely head.
"You ask too much, Wilmot. My heart's in the beginning I've made. I've
got to go on. It's a test case. If I've got _anything_ in me, now is the
chance for it to show. You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try
to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me.
And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of
a kind that's almost impossible to face."
"Then do me a favor. It won't interfere with your work, and it may be
very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic
pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a
sort of guardian. It's much stronger than the strongest man."
"How absurd!" she said. "And what are you doing carrying concealed
weapons? I'm beginning to think that you're a desperado yourself."
He rose, smiling imperturbably, and laid the pistol in her lap.
"At least," she said, "show me how it works."
He explained the mechanism clearly and with patience, not once, but
several times. "Point it," he said, "as you would point your finger, and
keep pulling the trigger until the enemy drops."
"One every two hours," Barbara commented, "until relieved."
"May you never need it," said Wilmot, earnestly.
"I never shall," said Barbara. "Must I really keep it?"
"Yes."
"But you," she exclaimed, "you will be quite unprotected all the way
from here to the nearest shop where such things are sold."
"I shall be armed again," he smiled, "before I am threatened. Indeed, to
know that you are armed has heartened me immensely. What are you doing
this afternoon?"
"I don't know," she answered with provoking submissiveness; "you haven't
told me."
"It's just possible," he said, "that the turf courts at the Westchester
Country Club have been opened. I might telephone and find out. Then we
could collect some clothes, jump into a taxi, and go out and open
the season."
"You can't afford taxis, Wilmot. And you never let anybody else pay for
anything."
"Oh," he pleaded, "I can afford a taxi this once, believe me."
"In that case," said Barbara, "I surrender."
"If you only would, Barbs."
"'Phone if you are going to, and don't be always slipping sentiment
into a business proposition," She affected to look very stern and
business-like.
"I shall engage the magic taxi," he affirmed.
"The what?"
"Don't you know? There's a magic taxi in the city--just one. You get in,
you give your order, and lo and behold, rivers and seas are crossed,
countries and continents, until finally you fetch up in the place where
you would be, and when you look at the meter you find that it hasn't
registered as much as a penny."
"Time," said Barbara, "flies even faster than a magic taxicab. So if you
are going to 'phone--"
"Is there no drop of sentiment in that exquisite shell which the world
knows as Barbara Ferris? Didn't any man ever mean anything to
you, Barbs?"
She flushed slightly, for there had come into her thoughts quite
unbidden the image of a certain young man in workman's clothes, kneeling
at a door, and removing an old japanned iron lock. She shook her head
firmly, and smiled up at him insultingly.
"Men, Wilmot," she said, "are nothing to me but planes, angles, curves,
masses, lights, and shadows. They are either suited to sculpture or
they aren't."
Wilmot laughed, and while he was busy with the telephone, Barbara tried
to think of the secret-service agent in cold terms of planes, curves,
masses, etc., and found that she couldn't. Which discovery annoyed and
perplexed her.