I didn't want to live any more."

Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. As tenderly as he
could he looked at her agitated prettiness.

"Don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it.
"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? You will let me,
won't you? You shall never know another care if I can prevent it."

She interrupted with hasty gratitude:

"Nobody else can make it all right but you."

He tried softly:

"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?"

She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much:

"Yes!"

She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his.
Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to
kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before
Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey
free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony.

The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw
herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to
receive her.

"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan! I knew he'd come; and he'll tell
you--won't you, Mr. Bulstrode? Tell him, please, that I don't care
anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me....
That you don't want to marry me or anything. Oh, please make him
believe it!"

The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy.
He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a
precipice over which he ridiculously dangled. Dan, who represented the
rescuer, was not prepossessing. He was the complete and unspoiled type
of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite
hybrid.

"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow
threw his boyish head back--"or that I care to hear him."

She gave a cry, sharp and wounded. The sound touched the now normal,
thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much
kindly sensibility as he went in.

"Of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the
situation--"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance.
That's what you want me to do, isn't it?"

She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross
lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy
at which the older man smiled while he envied it. He pursued
impressively:

"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for th