As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she was excited and tremulous. In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges, her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to speak, faltered, and said: "You don't know what it means to me--all you have done. And I can't ever tell you." "Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!" Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she were afraid of his eyes. "No, I won't try to tell you. I couldn't, I don't dare," she whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it. When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his nose--perhaps he had! He was not at peace. That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois. He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey. He was chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and straight-lived. In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves on playing well. Women were mysterious and wonderful to him. Because of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing. Puzzled, self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue des Acacias. With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley. She was young--her figure betrayed it. She went quickly over to a seat and sat down. She was weeping and covered her face with her hands. Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her: "My dear Miss Desprey----" She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping. "_You_!" she exclaimed with something like terror. "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" Her words shuddered in sobs. "Don't stay here! Why did you come? Please go--please." Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands. "I'm not going away--not until I know what your trouble is. You were in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you then. Now you can't refuse me. What is it?" He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say: