Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room, where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served. He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a teacup in his hand, he stood. She wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois. He had done quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did not in the least remember him. He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like that!" But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes on the Bohemian. He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time, for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a dusty mesh of gold. She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes child-like and purely blue. Under her round chin the edges of a black bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly. Her dress was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what," thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?" He remembered her boots and shuddered. He remembered the one franc a day and began his campaign. "I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he began. Her face lightened. "Oh, did you like it?" "I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek. She leaned forward! "Do you really mean that?" He said most seriously: "Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which impressed me so much." His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist. But to a lonely stranded girl the words were balm. Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress, his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet. Her speech was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she replied. "I've studied at Julian's two years now. This was my Salon picture, but it didn't get in." "If one can judge by those that _did_"--Bulstrode's tact was delightful--"you should feel honorably refused. I suppose you are at work on another portrait?" The face which his interest had brightened clouded. "No, I'm going home--to Idaho--I'm not painting any more." All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive kindness felt so much already that it ached. He hastened toward his goal with eagerness: