t them wait!" said Jean tensely.

"Oh, no; we mustn't do that," she said laughingly, shaking her head.
"So listen, Jean. I have come to tell you that--can you guess what?
That you are not going to Paris with us after all."

"Not going to Paris!"--Jean gazed at her bewilderedly, as he repeated
the words.

"With _us_--silly boy!" she smiled teasingly. "Are you disappointed?"

She teased, and mocked, and delighted him, and fired his blood by
amazing and elusive turns. He could not cope with her yet.

"But mademoiselle knows," he blundered. "I--I do not understand. It
is a great disappointment."

"Then it mustn't be!" she declared brightly. "For it is my idea, and
if you are not pleased with it, it is I who will be terribly
disappointed. It is just a little while ago that father and I arranged
the plans. We are to go to-morrow direct to Paris, and as soon as we
get there--now listen very attentively, Jean!--we are going to pick out
an _atelier_ for you and fit it up. And you are not to come until we
send you word that everything is ready. And the day you arrive I shall
be hostess at the studio at a reception to which all Paris will be
invited. Everybody that is worth while will come, and your entree will
be a triumph. Now, Jean, will that not be splendid?"

She was smiling at him, vivacious, flushed with excitement.
Splendid--yes, it would be splendid! An entree to Paris like that! It
was the first tangible glimpse of reality out of the chaotic blaze of
luring, golden dreams.

"It--it is too good of mademoiselle!" he stammered excitedly.

Low, musical, her laugh rippled through the room again, as she looked
at him. The man was magnificent--the head, the shoulders, the splendid
strength, the mobile, changing lights and shadows in his face like a
child who had not yet learned to mask its emotions, and all this
coupled with the deliciously picturesque background of the discovery of
his art, would make him the rage in Paris. Paris would literally go
wild over him! And she? Well, he would be still more a new sensation
than ever--and perhaps, who knew?--but the man was too easily
aroused--and then there was the possibility that her father, that
Bidelot and the others had overrated him, that he would be but the
phenomenon of the moment, only to sink after a while into uninteresting
mediocrity--she would see. But for the present at least Paris would
echo and re-echo with the name of Jean Laparde. Her e