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.