y--and,
picking up the rapiers, walked on through the salon and out into the
hall.

In a sort of miserably fascinated way Marie-Louise had followed him
with her eyes. She heard the outer door close behind him--and then
mechanically she rose to her feet, as Myrna Bliss came and stood before
her.

"So"--Myrna's voice was quivering, tense with passion--"so it remained
for Monsieur Valmain to discover the secret of the wonderful,
beautiful, entrancing model! Monsieur Valmain is right, of course. I
knew it at once, the moment I heard him say so. I was not very clever,
I suppose, or I should have seen it for myself long ago; only--you
quite understand this of course--I had forgotten, utterly forgotten,
that you even existed! But it seems that Jean could not live without
his little peasant; nor the little peasant without Jean! It is
perfectly comprehensible now why there should have been such secrecy
about his model. And so you have been living with Jean, have you, ever
since he came to Paris? The naive, innocent little _ingenue_ of
Bernay-sur-Mer!"

And then Marie-Louise lifted her head high again, and, while the hot
flushes came and swept her face, the great dark eyes held steadily on
the grey ones that were hard and cold like steel. It was not
mademoiselle of the _grand monde_ before her any more; it was a woman
whose tongue was making a sacrilege of all that was holy and cherished
in her life, making a hideous mockery of her love that was so sacred
and pure to her, making it a foul thing, smirching it, defiling it--it
was not Mademoiselle Bliss of another world than hers whom she
approached with diffidence and awe; it was a woman taunting her with a
shame from which her soul recoiled, and there came surging upon her,
born of the primitive, elemental life that had been hers, the days upon
the oars, the nights of rugged battling with the storms, a fury that
was physical in its cry for expression.

"It is not true! It is not true!" she panted--and, her hands clenched
tightly, raised as though to strike, she took a quick step forward.

Startled, Myrna Bliss involuntarily sprang back--but the next instant
she was laughing threateningly.

"You little spitfire!" she exclaimed angrily. "And so it is not true!
Look at that statue behind you, look at any in this room, at any Jean
has ever done since he has been in Paris, and--oh, yes, I see it quite
plainly myself, now that I have been shown--it is you, you everyw