"What brought you there,
Marie-Louise? What brought you there--to Paris--from Bernay-sur-Mer?"

She did not answer.

"Ah, I know! I know!" he cried out joyously. "It was your love,
Marie-Louise--your love that brought you there. And so you love me
now, Marie-Louise--and how then can you talk of sending me away?"

"I have always loved you, Jean," she said simply. "It is because I
love you that I must not let you do this thing."

"And it is because I love you that I _will_ do it!" he burst out
passionately. "Marie-Louise, you were there that night! But is that
all? You do not say it, but perhaps you are thinking of Mademoiselle
Bliss. You have seen her? She knew you were there? That you were in
Paris? You knew that we--"

"She told me that you were to be married, Jean," Marie-Louise
interrupted quietly. "But it is not of her that I am thinking."

"She does not love me, I do not love her--_voila_! There is the end of
that!" Jean flung out his arms. "It is the work then? Well, listen,
Marie-Louise, to a wonderful secret that came to me to-night. It is
you--you--your eyes, your face, your lips, your beauty, that has made
the name of Jean Laparde! It is you that I have been modelling all
this time--it is you who have been my model--you, my Marie-Louise! And
I in my blind conceit did not realise it, and dreamed that I was
creating out of my own genius the true, perfect, glorious womanhood of
France--and it was you! You did not know that, my little one!"

"I am not that, Jean," she said steadily. "But I knew that night.
Monsieur Valmain, when he saw me, when I stepped out into the studio
and you--you were lying there on the floor, Jean--Monsieur Valmain said
so. And afterwards, Mademoiselle Bliss said so too."

"Monsieur Valmain! Myrna! The others too--they all saw you there!
They knew! Ah!"--he cried, a gathering fury in his voice. "Ah, I
begin to understand Myrna's sudden desire for a voyage to America!
There was to be no chance that we should meet, you and I, Marie-Louise!
_Nom de Dieu_, I begin to see--many things! And you, meanwhile--how
did she get rid of you? She made you leave Paris, eh? You were to go
away!"

"It was what I must do. It was not mademoiselle who made me," she
answered. "I was sick for a little while, and then I went away. Oh,
Jean, can you not see what I have been trying to make you understand?
I had no right even to have _risked_ your seeing me, and I had meant