Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for her or lose for her the man she adores. "My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to be ashamed to let her cry like that! Can't you _understand_--don't you see?" "No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't! I've come here from South Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville, and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek reddened--"I don't like it! And that's all there is to it!" he finished shortly. "No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more. If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any friends. May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who cared for her, she should be left so deserted?" The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion. "Don't please blame Dan for that. He was so poor, too. He didn't have anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would succeed. And he was working for me, so that he could get married." Gregs interrupted: "I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!" "No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the other hand, refuse to hear mine. Be reasonable. Why _shouldn't_ Miss Desprey have an order for a portrait?" Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode: "_She_ can't paint!" His tone was gentler. "Laura can't paint, and you know it!" "Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!" And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in: "He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours, as she seems to be." But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try to rescue her. "That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I stand_!" The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd find it hard to be in a better place." Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.