at did it matter about her father!
What did anything matter--but that fiery tide that was whipping through
his veins.

"It is good of monsieur, it is good of mademoiselle to praise it," he
muttered.

"But it is not good of us!" she asserted earnestly. "Really, I must
try to make you understand, Jean. I can't take it under false
pretences, you know--you might hate me for it afterwards. I am sure
you would. My father says it is a wonderful piece of work--that you
are a great artist."

"I?" said Jean--and suddenly in a sweep of passion laughed a little
fiercely. "Impossible! But it is enough that mademoiselle, for some
reason that I cannot understand, thinks so much of it. It is hers."

"And I tell you that it is not impossible!" she insisted seriously.
"Listen, Jean"--her hand closed a little tighter on his arm. "Suppose
that I took it, accepted it, and some day you should find that it had
become a tremendously famous thing--what then?"

"It would still be unworthy of mademoiselle," he answered, in a low
tone.

With a little gasp, she drew back a step and looked at him--but it was
the grey eyes that dropped, and for a moment to Jean, unconscious of
his own tense poise, the rapt burning in his eyes, she seemed all
glorious with that play of colour now that was even in the pulsing
throat. But the next instant she was smiling radiantly.

"Thank you, Jean," she said naively. "I will take it very gladly, and
I will always keep it. Father will have a cast of it made at once,
and--" she stopped suddenly, turning quickly toward the door.
"Listen!" she said. "That's the motor, isn't it? Marie-Louise must
have met it on the road."

An automobile had come to a stop by the side of the house; and, a
moment later, a girl's voice, high-pitched in sarcasm, reached them.

"_Ma foi_! Fancy! She owns the house! What an aristocrat! No doubt
she will expect mademoiselle and monsieur to invite her to table with
them next! Oh, _la, la_, but you have lots to learn, _ma petite
paysanne_!"

"Oh, let her alone, Nanette!" exclaimed a man's voice sharply. "She
has done nothing but answer your own questions, except"--with a
laugh--"that she has ridden on the front seat!"

It seemed to come with a shock to Jean that snatch of conversation, as
something cold, chilling the fire that but an instant gone had been
raging within him. It was an arraignment of himself, a slap in the
face, sharply, curtly given, a reminder tha