"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the noon train from the Gare Montparnasse." But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss Desprey said: "When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so splendid at first! I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You ought to _thank_ him, Dan." Bulstrode interrupted: "Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come, be generous." Dan relaxed his grim humor a little. "When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see it again!" "Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to. Centreville is good enough for me." (Centreville! The horrible environment he was to have snatched her from. Bulstrode smiled softly.) "But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge. "You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode. No picture on earth is worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's." "Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed. But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine. Come, don't be foolish. If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho, take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things." Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly: "No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the world but just to go with Dan." At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms unfolded; he put them around her. "That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out his hand to Bulstrode. "That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!" "I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all wonder." They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said: