"She was proud. She soon divined that he had asked her solely out of sympathy, and perhaps it was at her urging that he left Paris alone. Perhaps, it was because his fame was becoming too great to allow his remaining there longer a recluse. At all events, he went away without warning--fled precipitantly. No one was astonished. His friends only laughed. For a year they laughed, then they became a trifle uneasy. Finally, however, these fears abated. St. John, his father-in-law, admitted that he was in constant correspondence with the master, and knew where he was in hiding. He refused to divulge his secret of place. He said that Marston exacted this promise--that he wanted to hide. Then came new pictures, which St. John handled as his son-in-law's agent. Paris delighted in them. Marston travels about now, and paints. Whether he is mildly mad, or only as mad as his exaggerated genius makes him, I have often wondered." "What became of the poor girl?" Duska's voice put the question, very tenderly. "She, also, left Paris. Whether she let her love conquer her pride and joined him, or whether she went elsewhere--also alone, no one knows but St. John, and he does not encourage questions." "I hope," said the girl slowly, "she went back, and made him love her." Herve caught the melting sympathy in Duska's eyes, and his own were responsive. "If she did," he said with conviction, "it must have made the master happy. He gave her what he could. He did not withhold his heart from stint, but because it was so written." He paused, then in a lighter voice went on: "And, speaking of Marston, one finds it impossible to refrain from reciting an extraordinary adventure that has just befallen his first disciple, Mr. Saxon, who is a countryman of yours." The girl's eyes came suddenly away from the sea to the face of the speaker, as he continued: "I happened to be on the streets, when wiser folk were in their homes, just after the battle in Puerto Frio. I found Mr. Robert Saxon--perhaps the second landscape painter in the world--lying wounded on a pavement among dead revolutionists, and I helped to carry him to an _insurrecto_ haunt. He was smuggled unconscious on a ship sailing for some point in my own land--Havre, I think. _Allons!_ Life plays pranks with men that make the fairy tales seem feeble!" Steele had been so astounded that he had found no opportunity to stop the Frenchman. Now, as he made a sign, M. Herve looked at the girl. She was sitting quite rigid in her steamer chair, and her lips were white. Her eyes were on his own, and were entirely steady. "Will you tell us the whole story, M. Herve?" she asked. "_Mon dieu!_ I have been indiscreet. I have made a _faux pas_!" The Frenchman's distress was genuinely deep. "No," answered the girl. "I must know all the story. I thank you for telling me."