thief, just as surely as your father is an honest man; so you have the
advantage of me, Joan. I really doubt if I'm respectable enough for you to
know and trust."

"I'd trust 'e with anything, Mister Jan, 'cause you'm plain-spoken an'
true."

"Don't be too sure--the son of a thief may have wrong ideas and lax
principles. Many things not to be bought can easily be stolen."

Again he struck a sinister note, but this time on an ear wholly unable to
appreciate or suspect it. Joan was occupied with Barron's startling scraps
of biography, and, as usual, when he began talking in a way she could not
understand, turned to her own thoughts. This sudden alteration of his
position she took literally. It struck her in a happy light.

"If you'm not a gen'leman then you wouldn' look down 'pon me, would 'e?"

"God forbid! I look up to you, Joan."

She was silent, trying to master this remarkable assertion. The artist
stood no longer upon that lofty pedestal where she had placed him; but the
change of attitude seemed to bring him a little closer, and Joan forgot the
fall in contemplating the nearer approach.

"That's why I asked you not to call me 'Mister Jan,"' Barron added after a
pause. "We are, you see, only different because I'm a man and you're a
woman. Money merely makes a difference to outside things, like houses and
clothes. But you've got possessions which no money can bring to me: a happy
home and a lover coming back to you from the sea. Think what it must be to