u will understand. And to-morrow we will motor to Marseilles and get
some modelling clay for you, and you will see for yourself what you can
do with that. And then, Jean, you will go to Paris with me--and work."

"If it were true, if it should be true," said Jean numbly, "still I
could not go. One does not make _sous_ enough at the fishing to go to
Paris."

"But, great heavens!" ejaculated Henry Bliss. "That is precisely what
I am offering you, young man--money. I am rich. I will pay every
expense. I will establish you."

Jean shook his head.

"I could not do that--take your money," he said simply.

"Couldn't take it!" exploded the American earnestly--and then he
laughed--and then grew serious once more. "Listen, my boy! I do not
want you to think for a moment that this is a purely charitable little
scheme on my part--far from it! It is most of it, I am afraid, utter
selfishness. I love art--for many years I have devoted myself to it.
I cannot create myself--God knows the miserable attempts and the
miserable failures that have been mine!--and so I have tried to help
others to do what I could not do myself"--Henry Bliss was smiling now
in a kindly, wistful way. "And now to discover the greatest sculptor
of the age, to bring him out of obscurity into fame and power--can you
not see, Jean, how selfish I am? And so why do you stand there
hesitating?"

Into Myrna's face, for the girl had risen and was now standing beside
them, into the man's face so close to his, Jean stared--and then his
eyes swept about him, over his surroundings. It was magnificent, but
it was not reality--for here was the beach, and here was the boat, and
in the boat were his nets, and there was the nick in the handle of the
oar where he had fended off that night from the Perigeau Reef, and out
there, surf-splashed, was the reef itself, and his clothes were the
same rough, coarse clothes that he always wore just like every other
fisherman in Bernay-sur-Mer. It was magnificent, but it was not
reality--and yet his heart was pounding with mighty hammer beats, and
the blood was surging fiercely through his veins.

"And as for the money," Henry Bliss went on quietly. "You need have no
qualms on that score, my boy. Pay it back by all means, if you'll feel
the better for it. In a year, two years, you'll be a wealthy man.
Why, Jean, don't you understand--there isn't one of the men who will be
here shortly but would pay you any price you