can't paint, and
you know it!"

"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!"

And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in:

"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave
to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours,
as she seems to be."

But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try
to rescue her.

"That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse
than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I
stand_!"

The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd
find it hard to be in a better place."

Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out
his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant
obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.

"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to
have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it
right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the
noon train from the Gare Montparnasse."

But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss
Desprey said:

"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just
come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in
fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so
splendid at first! I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and
then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of
things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I
was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him
for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should
have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You
ought to _thank_ him, Dan."

Bulstrode interrupted:

"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come,
be generous."

Dan relaxed his grim humor a little.

"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to
Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see
it again!"

"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to. Centreville is good enough for
me."

(Centreville! The horrible environment he was to have snatched her
from. Bulstrode smiled softly.)

"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge.
"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode. No picture on earth is
worth a