on the visitor.

"Do you mean to risk remaining in Paris now?" he demanded.

At the tone, St. John stiffened. He was humble because these people
had been kind. Now, meeting hostility, he threw off his lowly
demeanor.

"Why, may I ask, should I leave Paris?" There was a touch of
delicately shaded defiance in the questioning voice.

"Because, now, you must reckon with Mr. Saxon for pirating his work!
Because he may choose to make you walk the plank."

Steele whipped out his answer in rapid, angry sentences.

St. John met the eyes of the Kentuckian insolently.

"Pardon the suggestion that you misstate the case," he said, softly.
"I have never sold a picture as a Marston that was not a Marston--it
would appear that unconsciously I was, after all, honest. As for Mr.
Saxon, there is, it seems, no Mr. Saxon. That gentleman was entirely
mythical. It was an alias, if you please."

It was Steele who winced now, but his retort was contemptuously cool:

"Do you fancy Mr. Marston will accept that explanation?"

"Mr. Steele--" the derelict drew back his thin shoulders, and faced
the other with a glint in the pale pupils that was an echo of the days
when he had been able to look men in the face. "Before I became a
scoundrel, sir, I was a gentleman. My daughter is extremely ill. I
must remain with her, and take the chance as to what Mr. Marston may
choose to do. I shall hope that he will make some allowance for a
father's desperate--if unscrupulous--effort to care for his daughter.
I hope so particularly inasmuch as that daughter is also his wife."

Steele started forward, his eyes going involuntarily to the girl, but
she sat unflinching, except that a sudden, spasm of pain crossed the
hopelessness of her eyes. Somewhere among Duska Filson's ancestors,
there had been a stoic. Instantly, Steele realized that it was he
himself who had brought about the needless cruelty of that reminder.
St. John had disarmed him, and put him in the wrong.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said.

"I came here," said St. John slowly, "not only to notify you about
your canvases. There was something else. You were both very
considerate when I was here before. It is strange that a man who will
do dishonest things still clings to the wish that his occasional
honest motives shall not be misconstrued. I don't want you to think
that I intentionally lied to you then. I told you Frederick Marston
was dead. I believed it. Before I began this--this piracy