e past few weeks. I
gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we
have no possible interest in each other--Mr.----"

"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!"

The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising
face, repeated eagerly:

"_No possible interest_--Dan--none! He doesn't care anything about me
at all! You heard what he said, didn't you? I only like him like a
kind, kind friend."

[Illustration: "I only like him like a kind, kind friend"]

Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate
tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for
her or lose for her the man she adores.

"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to
be ashamed to let her cry like that! Can't you _understand_--don't you
see?"

"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't! I've come here from South
Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville,
and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I
could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find
her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up
with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek
reddened--"I don't like it! And that's all there is to it!" he
finished shortly.

"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more.
If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand
you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say
that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to
return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any
friends. May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who
cared for her, she should be left so deserted?"

The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion.

"Don't please blame Dan for that. He was so poor, too. He didn't have
anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would
succeed. And he was working for me, so that he could get married."

Gregs interrupted:

"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!"

"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the
other hand, refuse to hear mine. Be reasonable. Why _shouldn't_ Miss
Desprey have an order for a portrait?"

Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode:

"_She_ can't paint!" His tone was gentler. "Laura