He stared at her for a moment and could not speak. It was Marie-Louise who had been at the studio that night! There was bewilderment upon him; and there was something of finality in the gentle voice that swept the laughter from his heart, and brought a cold, dead thing there in its place. And then a sudden, eager uplift came.
"You were there that night!" he said swiftly. "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—voilà! 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!"