"No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the world but just to go with Dan."
At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms unfolded; he put them around her.
"That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out his hand to Bulstrode.
"That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy—just crazy!"
"I see"—Bulstrode sympathetically understood—"and I don't at all wonder."
They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said:
"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey."
Dan Gregs grinned.
"Don't," he said, "don't look at it. It's what made all the trouble. When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand dollars—why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty cents for it.' That made her mad at first. Then she told me you thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet on her. I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd clear out."
His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty golden hair.